The Liquidity series of Salons arrived in San Francisco with a panel breakfast at Bloomberg West focused on digital assets.  Joining the panel discussion were Avish Bhama of Mirror, Grant Fondo of Goodwin Procter, Jordan Lampe of Dwolla and Divya Kaveria of Capco, with Ven currency founder Stan Stalnaker moderating.

The panel covered the recent Ripple Labs settlement with FinCEN and the upcoming BitLicense rules, which come into affect for digital currencies operating in New York on August 8, 2015. The settlement opens the way for Ripple to expand its service operation with the blessing of regulators, amid a promise to comply with AML and KYC guidelines set out in existing regulation.

Lampe shared Dwolla’s experience in creating a new hyper-efficient settlement network designed to compete with Visa and MasterCard in the US market. Dwolla currently is geared only toward USD settlement, but has plans to offer additional assets and currencies on their platform in the future.

Bhama outlined Mirror’s plans to dominate in smart contracts, an area receiving a lot of attention from companies that include Digital Asset Holdings, the major banks and even NASDAQ.   Kaveria outlined plans for Capco’s new consumer venture project called Sprinkle, a mobile app that will allow consumers to import corporate and loyalty reward points to a single interface, then to convert the points into Sprinkles.  Ven has partnered with the project and will be a major exit point for Sprinkles to other forms of liquidity for members.

 

Hub Culture’s new racing division is gathering speed, with an expanding set of activities focused around speed in the world of sport. Established in February 2015, the division is focused on establishing virtual currency involvement with Ven in four sporting categories: sailing, cycling, rally and ski. A calendar of events and activities involving these sports is in development, focused on utilising Ven as a tool to expand and enhance the success of each programme.

Sailing is the centrepiece project, with a three year programme now in development around the 2017 America’s Cup, to be held in Bermuda for the first time in June 2017.  Hub Culture is using Ven as a mechanism to grow local support for the Cup and to create a suite of activities for Hub Culture members and partners in the context of the cup.  Currently there are six teams slated to compete for the America’s Cup in Bermuda.

In the world of cycling, Ven is actively supporting local cycling clubs in Australia. Invert building racing is a cycling team of 8 guys based in Melbourne, Australia. They race locally, nationally and offshore.

On the rally front, street rally and race projects are in development in the American west, with support for Local Motors and their 3D printed automobiles in the drivers seat.   In skiing, activities in Verbier take a more casual turn, with limited, friendly competition at heart.

Learn more about Ven Racing here.

From Bloomberg’s daily update:

“Hub Culture and Bloomberg just teamed up to present Liquidity ~ The Summit on New Finance, drawing over $2 billion of investable capital, 100+ participating companies and over 30 panelists to talk about the evolution of finance and digital currency. We heard from Man GLG, Blockchain, Qoin, Mirror, DATA, Bitnet, LMAX, CAPCO, Hogan Lovells, Goodwin Procter, Midpoint, Ethereum, Qualcomm Ventures, Balderton, Ariadne Capital, Entropia Universe and others:

Read full highlights from Hub Culture.

During the morning Hub Culture provided forward guidance on Ven, outlining that their target trading volume is 2 billion for 2015, and hope to add two more Ven Authorities to their stable of trading partners. They announced the first digital currency debit / prepaid cards for Visa and Mastercard, now in development with Pyxpay, a payments company based out of New York.

Company announced they are setting aside 1,000,000 Ven for humanitarian projects related to micro-payments, with the first programme for Syrian refugees to begin soon in Turkey, followed by programmes in Rwanda and South Africa. They also announced VEN LOOP – a new club for institutional settlement, allowing big banks and hedge funds direct clearance on funds with a daily sweep into core currencies. Their goal is to avoid end-to-end market makers with Ven Loop, but are still working on how to achieve that feat.

For now, Ven settlement will remain with exchange partners like LMAX, MTF exchange which announced they are now processing $10 Billion daily, and launching services in New York and Tokyo.

Other notable facts from the day – the leading Bitcoin companies Bitnet, Blockchain, Elliptic and Mirror advocated for an increase in the block size of Bitcoin, which should lead to faster transactions, and Entropia Universe revealed they are doing over 1 billion mirco-transactions a month on their virtual world platform. Qoin announced European grant funding for community currencies, setting up a Euro precedent for localised Euro alternatives (a Grexit solution?) and SDKA International, a Dubai based commodities trader, predicted $100 Million in Ven denominated commodity trades by 2018.”

Hub Culture, the platform the manages Ven, is teaming up with Bloomberg for the 3rd Liquidity ~ The Summit on New Finance, taking place in London on April 17, 2015. The day features leaders in the new world of finance from a wide range of digital currency and community currency companies, including Bitcoin oriented companies like Blockchain, Mirror, Bitnet, Qoin, and Ethereum.

New forex services and exchanges like Earthport, LMAX, Midpoint, and LMEclear will also explore the rapidly changing world of financial settlement and clearance. A special panel will focus on projects related to Ven Authorities, including Alternet Systems on forex, SDKA International on commodities, and CAPCO on financial services.

Industry organisations including the World Economic Forum, the Digital Asset Transfer Authority, the Bitcoin Foundation and the UK Digital Currency Association will also be participating, leading discussions across these topics. In legal and regulatory areas, speakers from Hogan Lovells and Goodwin Procter will weigh in on legal implications of the new finance boom, while Ariadne Capital, Balderton Capital and Qualcomm Ventures take to the stage to discuss funding at all levels of the pyramid.

In the room, Bloomberg and Hub Culture have invited over $2 Billion of investable capital – the London financial firms, hedge funds, banks and VCs that run aspects of today’s financial world – to participate in an intimate setting of panel discussions, feedback and participation.

Attendance to the event is by invitation, but interested parties can register an application to join at LiquiditySummit.com

Goodwin Procter LLP, a leading international law firm with primary offices in Silicon Valley, New York and London, sat down with Hub Culture founder Stan Stalnaker to talk about Ven for their new digital currency oriented blog, Digital Currency Perspectives. The discussion covered the history and unique approach behind Ven, with a particular look at capabilities to adapt to emerging regulatory rules proposed by New York and California.

Read the full interview here, and bookmark the blog for regular updates on legal and regulatory considerations in the digital currency space.

Following a series of meetings in February 2015 in Istanbul, Hub Culture and a group of local knowledge brokerage partners are preparing the first humanitarian aid deployment of Ven.

Project Adana is being developed to target 500 Syrian and Kurdish refugees in the Adana region of southern Turkey, just over the border from conflict-torn Syria, and an area that is reeling from the arrival of over 2 million refugees across Turkey’s border in recent months.

A crowd-funding campaign within the Hub community and matching grant programme is developing initial deployment liquidity, which will be assigned to a local grouping of refugees working as migrant labour on area farms.  Along with Ven, the refugees will receive a HubID digital identity and access to products and services to be made available in Ven with local partners.

Results from the initial trial will be used to develop stronger mobile applications for the very poor, as well as tracking capabilities to measure the flow and use of Ven in these circumstances.

Ven finished 2014 with over 480 million units exchanged since its inception in 2007.  Volumes increased by 100% following the beginning of the year when the London based forex exchange LMAX listed Ven, making history with the first ever trades of digital currency in high frequency financial markets.

Today, institutional clients on the LMAX platform and digital currency enthusiasts using digital asset exchange Kraken can both trade Ven balances relative to other currencies and assets in real time.

In addition to trading on these exchanges, members of the Hub Culture network, including both individuals and Fortune 500 companies, continue to use Ven within the context of the Hub economy.  These transactions focus around goods and services attached to the global network of Pavilions, with millions of Ven exchanging annually in these retail sectors.

This information resource is a new way for the Ven community to share ideas and best practices in the digital currency space. As the sector continues to grow and expand, the Hub Culture team is finding more and more opportunities to develop the currency in new ways.

Find out what the fuss is all about by starting with a this quick video overview:

An overview of Ven, the virtual reserve currency