For those who choose the red pill. Neo toolkit

The significance of any mass phenomenon is measured by resonance and the struggle of opinions. It always has been. The cryptocurrency that Satoshi Nakamoto invented in 2008, and its flagship bitcoin, is becoming more and more popular every year. The first in Bitcoin, as in the dollar of the digital age, came from encryption, crypto-anarchists and rebels of all stripes. The laws of mathematics are stronger than the laws invented by people, they decided, and enthusiastically engaged in the construction of a cryptocurrency ecosystem. Then the potential of a promising payment instrument was estimated by IT companies, first those who had nothing to lose, and then giants. Dell, Expedia, Dish Networks, Overstock.com are already actively accepting payments in Bitcoins, Apple, Facebook, Pay Pal and social platforms such as Reddit, they also sympathize with, but still hold a wait-and-see attitude, thinking about introducing their own cryptocurrency. Along with the growing popularity, the anxiety of those to whom the development of a new market could pose serious problems increased. Oldfags as ardent opponents, who are primarily the states and financial structures, saw in them a threat to financial stability, and for the most part declared war to a new and obscure phenomenon.



In short, everything is extremely ambiguous, and we will not continue here on the topic “For” or “Against”. One thing is important - the cryptocurrency market exists and grows with related services. To accept it or not is entirely the user's choice. The same article is for those who have chosen the red pill and have already made their choice in need of a utility that will not only help orient themselves in the world of cryptocurrencies and follow their course, but also play it, swiftly exchanging one cryptocurrency for another, or withdrawing it for quite ordinary fiat money.
')
Yes, we write in this blog primarily about startups that are looking for funding, using our crowdinvesting platform. But the “Kryptonator” in question is not just one of them. With its relatively short history of existence (from the beginning of 2014) and work in beta mode, the service already at this stage is of value to anyone who works with the cryptocurrency market and who is interested in it. In the product, which its developers modestly refer to as “stable beta”, there is no dampness and incompleteness inherent in many final user versions of most startups at a similar stage of development.

The “Kryptonator” team managed to create, in fact, a universal online e-currency wallet that allows you to store, receive, send and exchange all their diversity, (or rather, while the six main ones - Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Peercoin, Darkcoin, Blackcoin. For the remaining 400-500 there is a calculator and course monitoring) using a single personal account.



Previous experience of launching successful projects (the creation and development from scratch of one of Russia's largest commercial vehicles portal trucksale.ru, as well as a magazine of photo ads with an annual turnover of more than $ 1 million) helped the founder of the Kryptonator, Roman Pikulev, to launch a full-featured work service everything needed for such a product with minced meat - a site whose API processes more than a million requests daily, and mobile apps for iOS and Android. Although they do not yet have the functions of a wallet (so far only a calculator and courses of various exchanges, the rest is in perspective) their more than 4 thousand users in the USA, Russia, Ukraine and Indonesia have attracted their intuitive interface, convenience and speed in circulation without any advertising. Given the relatively narrow market segment and a certain elitism of cryptocurrency, the figure looks impressive. The project was noted by the specialized Russian and Western press, where articles devoted to him were repeatedly published.



Money to strengthen its position, application promotion and security (and even on such a thorny path as a cryptocurrency market) is of course necessary for a startup, for the sake of collecting them, the project, in fact, alienates a 10 percent share. However, the feeling that participation in the Kryptonator is financially no less profitable for investors remains quite stable.

Today in the world there are more than 500 different cryptocurrencies, the total value of which is about $ 9 billion. Various operations with the help of bitcoins and other crypto money are already carried out by hundreds of thousands of users. For the business, this sector is also of serious interest - only in 2014, investments in cryptocurrency projects amounted to more than $ 168 million.



The creators intend to monetize the service in several ways - with commissions for outgoing transactions and when paying for various services with cryptocurrencies from the wallet, income from exchange operations, as well as attracting sponsors to the “Spend / Pay” section, which is standard for most payment services.

Roman Pikulev , the head of the Kryptonator project , tells how the idea to create such a service appeared, how it all began, and what turned out to be by now:

“The initial idea came in November 2013, when I first encountered cryptocurrency. My eyes just ran away, how many, it turns out, there are different cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin. And with what speed new currencies appear - my head was spinning. Immediately questions began to arise, and how much is 1,000,000 doge or 25 ppc? How to quickly assess the price and calculate the cost in the usual money? Manually on a calculator is long and inconvenient, but there are no utilities. Moreover, at that time there were already more than a dozen exchanges, and each of them had its own course. How to navigate? As a result, the goal arose of making an automated service that would collect information from all exchanges and allow recalculating the cost of some cryptocurrencies to others.

For several months we created such a project, screwed various useful services to it (cryptocurrency portfolio, public API, widgets with courses for installation on websites, email notifications, etc.) released a plugin for Chrome and mobile apps for iOS / Android and started thinking about the future of the project. There were several options for further development, but the most pressing problem seems to us is the banal inconvenience of working and managing our cryptocurrency, as well as the complex and not immediately understandable process of their exchange.

Now, in most cases, in order to receive or send a cryptocurrency, you need to install a special wallet program on your computer. Accordingly, if you work with several currencies, you need to install such a program for each of them. For some electronic currencies (Bitcoin, Lightcoin), different versions of online wallets are already available for both desktop computers and mobile devices, but they allow you to work only with this one currency and do not support others.

Another important point was the following: the presence in the market of multiple cryptocurrencies creates the need for their exchange. Of course, there are cryptocurrency exchanges where you can buy, sell or exchange cryptocurrencies for each other or fiat money (rubles, dollars, etc.). However, these exchanges are quite complicated and inconvenient to use for the average user, and besides, not for each of them has the necessary cryptocurrencies (it happens that it is necessary to register for several).

These prerequisites gave rise to the idea of ​​developing a multicurrency online wallet with the ability to instantly exchange cryptocurrencies. Its key strengths are usability at the level of familiar Internet banking, accessibility for various devices and additional useful features (billing, sending cryptocurrency by e-mail, and much more).

-Roman, who are your competitors?

Specifically, I am not familiar with competitors or similar products in the Russian market. I suppose that the recently issued instructions and bills, which clearly show the negative attitude of the state to digital currencies, have an effect here. If we talk about the international market and its products, then from competitors I can particularly highlight the veterans Blockchain and Coinbase, as well as the recently announced Circle service. But there is one "but." All three companies allow you to work with only one cryptocurrency - Bitcoin. Among multicurrency solutions, we can note Holytransaction, which supports several cryptocurrencies, albeit with restrictions, but it does not have a full-fledged mobile application, which, of course, does not give it a wide audience reach.

As befits a cypherpunk, the Kryptonator understands the difficulties that lie ahead and divides the possible risks into two main categories - total prohibition of cryptocurrency at the government level and hacker attacks on servers and theft of digital currency from the users balance.

The operation of the service is carried out through the SSL protocol, using SHA-256-encryption of user data and two-factor authentication. The service opposes the threat of hacker attacks by storing the main balance of cryptocurrencies on its own backup offline servers and distributed “cold” storages. All of them are regularly checked for security vulnerabilities. There is a program to search for vulnerabilities by volunteers for a fee (bug bounty program).

A possible onslaught on the part of the authorities (alarm bells have already been received from China, the United States, France, and in Russia the alarm sounded quite recently - the Ministry of Finance’s bill on fines for using "money surrogates"), the project plans to restrain its cosmopolitan nature. Foreseeing a ban in a number of countries, the Kryptonator acquired an interface in six languages ​​from the very beginning: English, Russian, German, Spanish, French, and Chinese. Multilingual support serves as a guarantee of globality and allows the service not to depend on one particular market.

Meanwhile, there is something to be afraid of - the general trends in cryptocurrency talk about the imminent onset of the “world government” with alternative money. At first, the People’s Bank of China banned bitcoin transactions from organizations (by the way), as a result of which their circulation in China, where bitcoins were first accepted almost everywhere, declined sharply. Then France and several other countries spoke negatively, after which the “witch hunt” began everywhere.

True, then quite unexpectedly, the head of the US Fed Ben Bernanke came out as a renegade, seeing the future in cryptocurrencies, with the result that the Bitcoin exchange rate in one day rose to $ 900. Other well-known financiers and entrepreneurs expressed their support (German Gref, Bill Gates), and the famous IT investor Mark Andriessen considers bitcoins to be the biggest innovation of the last decade, invest in CoinBase, and look after other objects in this field for investments.



However, the latest news from the fronts of kriptowny do not inspire much optimism and directly concern Russia - the Ministry of Finance prepared a bill according to which cryptocurrency, although not prohibited, but imposes serious fines for its use - up to 50 thousand rubles for individuals and up to 1 million rubles for commercial organizations. And then there is the media in all ways savor the story of how an unknown "bitcoin whale" at once sold 31,000 coins, brought down the market, collected $ 9.3 million and sailed in an unknown direction.

- Can you comment on this news somehow?

Regarding the draft law of the Ministry of Finance - we are ready for such things and laid them at the start. The cautious attitude of the state became apparent even in winter, and the development and adoption of a legislative framework is only a matter of time. For my part, I can say that we are ready for both restrictions and a total ban. In the latter case, we will provide services in other markets.

And about the massive sale of bitcoins - the information in the media is somewhat distorted. In this case, the seller just did not manage to greatly influence the price, even despite such a huge order. After the initial fall, the market immediately responded and added demand, and the seller took off the order without achieving its goal. After that, everything returned to previous positions. In my opinion, such market manipulations were possible in the past. Currently, with an increased mass of bitcoins, this is practically not feasible. The price is influenced by more global factors, and short-term artificial fluctuations are quickly smoothed out.

How do you assess the prospects for the development of the cryptocurrency market?

Unfortunately, I do not own the gift of foresight, but I think that now we are at the very beginning of the formation of an absolutely new settlement system. Cryptocurrencies are a kind of evolutionary leap, almost like the transition from a barter to a cash settlement system at one time. This is a difficult and long way, because at the moment more than 90% of users of the global network, in principle, do not understand what cryptocurrency is and where it came from, and what to do with it and why it is needed, even more so. Therefore, the further spread, and especially the repression of the usual money - it is only a matter of time. At every step I came across a similar one in 2006-2007, when car dealers had to literally explain on their fingers what advertising on the Internet is and why it also has a right to exist, along with its usual printed newspapers and magazines.

That is, in fact, in those days we were engaged in increasing the level of computer and Internet literacy of clients. And already in 2011, the revenues of individual online media exceeded the revenues of their printed colleagues, and now advertising on the Internet has firmly taken the leading position, even overtaking television in some segments. With cryptocurrencies, we observe a similar situation - it takes time and effort to bring their idea to a critical mass of people, but when this happens, then I hope we will see an explosive growth in this direction.

- Thank you, Roman. On this optimistic note, we, perhaps, and finish. Successes to you in the assault of the heights of this difficult market, quick investments and profits. And may the cryptocurrency be with us)))

More information about the project can be on our collective investment platform VCStart .