Dear Telcoin community,
I speak for everyone at Telcoin when I say we are absolutely thrilled to be releasing the application layer of V3 of the Telcoin Platform today. With anticipation reaching a fever pitch as the greater digital asset market reaches new heights, we’re so excited to offer an update that we believe will serve as the backbone of a global movement in mobile financial services — a perfect marriage between traditional fintech and blockchain that puts users at the heart of a global ecosystem designed for their benefit. We truly appreciate your patience over the previous days, weeks, and months, and hope you understand that this has been a major upgrade with many moving parts, all the while keeping security of users funds an absolute priority.
I’d also like to point out that, while tech more recently has been the bottleneck, we see the light at the end of the tunnel now, and are preparing for global expansion by rapidly maturing our global operations and compliance teams and systems. From January 2022 forward (eg, V3.2+), we expect to have a version of the product that will be primed and ready for greatly increased marketing and deeper global scalability. We have put our pre-series A fundraise to work in preparation for this rapid expansion.
Telcoin’s next phase will be heavily focused on revenue generation, and from V3.2 forward we expect to begin generating serious revenue and will be focused on optimization as we engage new partners and enter additional geographies. We’re also keen to finally put the flywheel in motion whereby positive user conversion metrics can be fueled by token issuance incentives to drive the overall value and growth cycle of the entire Telcoin ecosystem.
On this important occasion for our company, I’d finally like to reiterate that we are deeply and truly appreciative of everyone’s continued support and patience. This has been a long and challenging road for all of us, but we have endured and with this release we feel we are finally entering a very rewarding phase of the Telcoin journey. Thank you for joining on this epic ride.
Respectfully,
Paul Neuner
CEO Telcoin
Telcoin V3.0 and beyond
From a product perspective, and thanks in large part to the hard work and dedication of our developers and product lead, we’ve made great progress as we continue to move toward our goal of bringing Telcoin to the world. We couldn’t be more excited with our current release and our upcoming schedule as this functionality will form the backbone of all future Telcoin experiences.
First, in this iteration of the V3 platform, a few major upgrades that we have touched on previously, will be in production. Most notably, we are upgrading our wallets and migrating users to the Polygon Network. This allows users to consume extremely low fees and experience much faster transaction times. Adhering to our philosophy of frequent smaller release cadences, it will also allow for many new transactional capabilities in terms of cashing in fiat, acquiring assets, and swapping positions into other supported assets soon thereafter.
Additionally, a newly redesigned Telcoin Application is available to all customers, with those in the United States now being able to conduct fiat remittance transactions. As mentioned, in conjunction with V3.0, we will be launching other exciting features in the near future. Initially, our US customers will be first in line with the ability to cash in fiat into USDC, with other global bases to follow. In the next iteration, Telcoin app users will be able to swap various assets via aggregated decentralized finance platforms, utilizing user owned liquidity pools from the TELx network. Keeping all this in mind, this is still just the beginning in a long journey to provide a first in class, unmatched global experience that will provide decentralized financial freedom to billions around the world. Stay tuned for more updates as our platform evolves!
Nebraska update
The Nebraska Financial Innovation Act that was passed and signed by Governor Ricketts in May and is active as of October 1st, 2021. The Nebraska Department of Banking and Finance have appropriated the necessary funds, but have not yet allocated the funds to create the application, provide the staff, and begin operational support to regulate the digital asset depository institutions allowed by the Act. We remain vigilant in this process and are in regular communication with the department.
Needless to say, operationalizing this legislation as quickly and responsibly as possible remains a top priority for both Telcoin and the department. That said, we do not plan to announce anything until it is fully approved by all relevant regulators and fully operational. This is a long-term play for Telcoin, but one that we continue to achieve steady progress toward.
Telcoin was proud to attend and be a major sponsor of Bitcoin Day Omaha on September 10. Members of the Telcoin team in attendance had an opportunity to learn more about what others are doing in the crypto space and meet a few members of the extended Telcoin family. Telcoin also sponsored and participated in this week’s “Demystifying Cryptocurrency” workshop hosted by Nebraska Bankers Association. Finally, Telcoin continues to expand in Norfolk with the addition of three new employees, as mentioned below, to help support our operations and also the recent opening of our Norfolk office in October.
Market expansion
As Telcoin grows and the product offerings increase, we are also expanding our operational and compliance departments, policies, and procedures to be able to replicate our services in new geographies as efficiently as possible. Following V3.0 launch and the opening of the US market, we are already in various stages of release in the previously announced markets of Singapore, Australia, Mexico, and of course the Philippines. An important milestone that we are targeting is to have our “full stack” offering — including both fiat and crypto rails — in the US and Canada on the sending side, with Mexico and Philippines on the receiving side. This will enable us to fully demonstrate the power of decentralized crypto markets underneath two massive remittance corridors. From there, we will gradually upgrade additional sending-side and receiving-side markets, both for fiat and digital assets.
An important part of that equation is our global operations team, which we are anchoring in London. We have proceeded with the establishment of a UK entity (Telcoin Ltd.) and started the process to be able to operate in the UK and eventually the EU as well. We’re also preparing to officially enter the Japanese market, which brings us full circle back to where everything began for Telcoin.
TELx
The formalization of TELx as a core architectural component of the Telcoin Platform was in many ways a “Hello World” moment in the platform’s evolution towards global adoption, self-sustainability, and user-ownership. TELx enables anyone with an internet connection to provision and align with the success of a global suite of decentralized products without giving up control of their assets.
Encompassing roughly US$40M worth of liquidity across 17 markets on Quickswap, Balancer, and DFX, TELx is rapidly scaling to enable fast and affordable, user-owned remittances and swaps for every mobile phone user in the world.
Stay tuned for future releases as from V3.1 forward, TELx markets will be accessible from the Telcoin Application to form a suite of incentive-aligned, decentralized financial products — including TELxchange swaps and Send Money Smarter remittances.
Take control of your assets and pay yourself with TELx.
The Telcoin team continues to grow
David Stuart, joins Telcoin as VP Operations, based in London and tasked with managing our ongoing country-based operations and new market entry. David joins us from the telecom industry, where he has primarily been responsible for the second line of defense within some of the world’s largest multinational telecom groups. Most recently he worked for Veon Group, where his responsibilities included the delivery of AML compliance solutions and operations across a portfolio of 90-plus financial services products in 10 operating companies. David’s career has seen him leading functions in over 70 countries, and it’s this invaluable international experience — along with his in-depth knowledge of the Mobile Financial Services (MFS) industry — that will see Telcoin expand successfully into new markets globally.
Natsumi Bolton, based in Tokyo, joins Telcoin as Japan Country Manager and Asia Regional Operations Manager. She was previously Vice President/Executive Director at Goldman Sachs, where she worked in Sales and Trading roles in Equities, in London and Tokyo. She then helped with the Japan launch of Revolut, a digital banking app that subsequently received US$800M in series E funding from SoftBank’s Vision Fund. She has a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Durham University.
Sara Chia joins Telcoin as Head of Compliance in Singapore. Starting with PwC, she then traveled around the world joining Bank of New York Mellon (UK), Rabobank (Australia and New Zealand), and more recently undertook compliance leadership positions with Standard Chartered and Scotiabank in Singapore. She specializes in assurance, regulatory compliance, financial crime, and risk management. Sara’s experience is well positioned to provide regional APAC compliance coverage for Telcoin.
Steve Kallestad, based in Los Angeles, joins Telcoin as Cloud/Devops Engineer. He is a former Production Engineer for Ads at Facebook. As a lead software engineer, he helped to build out the team at Stanford University to manage the telecommunications infrastructure for the University, and for Stanford hospitals and clinics. He was the lead engineer for modernizing the infrastructure for 9–1–1 emergency services, and part of the engineering team that built Axtel, Mexico’s first privately held telecommunications company. He was also part of the team at MediaOne, which eventually transformed into AT&T Digital Phone and Comcast MO Group.
Ben Temple, a Norfolk native, has returned home to join Telcoin after spending the past several years as a Senior Analyst with Enova, a NYSE-traded fintech company based in Chicago. While at Enova, he worked in the finance and corporate development office, where he spearheaded a number of internal consulting projects. As a Finance Manager with Telcoin, Ben will help the company expand into new corridors and track customer conversion.
Ziggy Nunez, based in Norfolk, joins Telcoin as Director of Compliance and Risk Management for the US and Latin America. He brings over a decade of banking and compliance experience to the team. Recent roles include managing regulatory affairs for industrial banks in both Utah and Delaware (combined US$20B in assets) and establishing an enterprise risk management program for a bank’s credit department. His knowledge and experience will help with Telcoin’s strategic initiatives in Nebraska as well as international efforts with risk management.
John Hobbs joins our new Telcoin office in Norfolk, serving as global HR manager. John is managing recruiting and HR functions both locally for the US market as well as globally, coordinating with regional and country operations managers. Previously, John worked in law enforcement for nearly 20 years. He is excited to be a part of Telcoin and looks forward to its future growth.
Renalyn Dario joins Telcoin as Compliance Officer in the Philippines. Renalyn has extensive experience in compliance, having worked for the Philippines’ government bank, a fintech company, and other financial institutions over the course of her career. Renalyn has vast expertise on AML, KYC, and risk management. She is a top graduate in BS Accountancy of a reputable university in the Philippines.
Rizza Mae Ordonio, based in the Philippines, joins Telcoin as Finance Operations Manager. Rizza Mae is a certified public accountant (CPA) with expertise in accounting and auditing of financial services entities. As a Senior Associate with PwC, Rizza Mae had conducted audits of many prestigious financial and non-financial companies in the Philippines and abroad. With her end-to-end local and international accounting and audit exposure, she will be supporting the Group in the consolidation of global accounts. Rizza Mae is a Magna Cum Laude graduate in BS Accountancy.
Migrating our community to Discord
Over the last few years, the Telcoin community has grown exponentially, sprouting from a small group of supporters to what is regarded today as one of the most dedicated and active communities in the crypto space. While scaling our services is essential to us, we must not neglect our precious community, and therefore must look into improving this part of our operations as well. As alluded to in recent communications on Telegram, we’ve come to the conclusion that Telegram simply does not meet our requirements.
In order to align our support system and community engagement, we’ve decided to migrate our community platform over to Discord. Through doing this, we can further tailor information to make it more accessible, updated, and relevant. Discord also provides us with better functionality to detect and prevent the frauds and scams prevalent on Telegram.
The official Telcoin Discord community is now open, and you can find it by tapping the “Join our Community” link in the Telcoin App’s menu screen (just tap the ≡ icon to get there). Please note that this new venue will be focused on support and relevant, product-focused questions — not small talk. We will consider opening additional channels within the Telcoin Discord that serve specific purposes as we roll out new features and initiatives, so be sure to join so you can stay up to date.
We hope you enjoy the next step in Telcoin’s journey toward becoming a household name in the world of remittances, blockchain, and beyond.
Respectfully yours,
The Telcoin Team
