February 29th, 2020 was the day of the Future of Money conference in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. This was where many blockchain experts, enthusiasts, investors, and tech fans from all over Ukraine and elsewhere attended, rubbed shoulders and networked.

For those who do not know, the IT industry in Ukraine is absolutely booming with so many talented developers, online marketers, computer scientists and more. This was a great opportunity for the Sapien Wallet team to attend.

At the event, held in the afternoon of that Saturday and ended in the evening, the Sapien Wallet team was able to gather some great information, contacts as well as meet some of the leading minds and teams within the blockchain space. It was great to see that there were so many like-minded individuals even within Ukraine that cared about the future of crypto as well as the importance of decentralized applications and solutions.

Not only was it a meet and greet event, but there were talks that were lead by leading blockchain experts and other blockchain-based companies in Ukraine. Enlightening information ranging from user experience and user security to the emergence of new crypto-coins and exchanges were discussed. This was especially interesting to the members of the Sapien Wallet team, as it showed us new horizons and ideas that we could explore to improve our product.

Overall, our trip to Vinnytsia was fruitful, interesting and fantastic. We are glad to see blockchain is popular even in smaller cities such as Vinnytsia. We look forward to attending many more blockchain events in the near future.

Sapien Wallet is proud to announce that we will be launching our Equity Token Offering (ETO) on April 27th, 2020. This will allow for the first time the public to buy Sapein Wallet’s equity token, which will represent a share in our business. Tokens can also be traded to other individuals at a later date or kept by the user for him/herself.

We, at Sapien Wallet, chose to do an ETO because trust is paramount to our company, we are a company that is looking to close the bridge of distrust among. An ETO is the safest to guarantee that investors and supporters of our company can invest in Sapien Wallet, knowing that there is a legal framework to hold up their rights and protect their investment. This means that trust between us and potential investors and supporters of the company can be preserved.

Details of Sapien Wallet’s ETO:

The money raised in our ETO is to ensure that Sapien Wallet can continue to further develop our decentralized lightwallet, expand the current team, hire new talent and market our product to the world. This is a massive undertaking and we, at Sapien Wallet, appreciate any support that comes our way. We believe that this ETO is mutually beneficial for all parties involved, we’d like to see everyone grow and prosper from this relationship.

For more details about how you can invest in our ETO, click here.

Cryptocurrency, blockchain and crypto payments have been at the forefront of talks for the ‘next big thing’ in technology for the past few years. With the Bitcoin boom experienced in late 2017 and the unprecedented amount of money spent and invested in countless blockchain development projects, it is safe to say that more attention has been given to cryptocurrencies than ever before.

More books have come out in recent years regarding blockchain and crypto have the word ‘revolution’ in their titles than you could even count. If this technology is so revolutionary, money-saving, time saving and as game-changing as so many experts and pundits seem to think, how come it has not become mainstream? How come crypto payments are not accepted everywhere the way fiat money is and why is it that no one is spending their cryptocurrencies in day-to-day payments? This article will explore some of the reasons why cryptocurrencies aren’t used in everyday life.

Scalability

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is by far the largest cryptocurrency by market cap ($130 billion), and with millions of people holding Bitcoin, why aren’t more people spending it in their day-to-day activities? One reason experts assert is that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that operate on a proof-of-work consensus algorithm has a scalability problem. In essence, the scalability issue comes down to the number of transactions a particular blockchain can process in an amount of time — for Bitcoin and Ethereum it 7 transactions per second and 15 transactions per second respectively. This number is low and is nowhere near the number of transactions they would have to operate to support mass use by people around the world. To put it into perspective, Visa the financial services giant processes on average 1700 transactions per second (150 million per day).

Other so-called cryptocurrencies that exist today claim they can process thousands of transactions per second, such as with EOS who claim a whopping 4,000 tx/s. But dig a little deeper and you see that most, if not all, of these blockchains, are incredibly centralized, much like a bank and offer nothing more than being an intermediary for verifying your transactions. We argue that this centralized aspect of these ‘cryptocurrencies’ should disqualify them from being a cryptocurrency in the first place.

To become a truly mass used cryptocurrency, we believe that a cryptocurrency should possess three aspects: scalability, security, and decentralization. This is what’s called the ‘blockchain trilemma’ coined by Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, who asserts that there is no blockchain network that possesses the three aforementioned aspects simultaneously. We also believe that if such a blockchain were to exist, the criteria for a cryptocurrency to become mass adopted and used in everyday life would be met.

Volatility

If you are reading this article you are probably aware of the blockchain boom in late 2017. The price of Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $19.5k and other cryptocurrencies experienced a similar spike in price. If you paid close attention to Bitcoin prices this year, you can see the price started off at $3.8k in mid-January, reaching an all-year high in June at $12.9k and at the time of writing is worth $7.1k.

What does this tell us? This tells us that the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that have similar patterns in prices are extremely volatile, this is especially true when compared to world currencies or value storing commodities such as gold. When this level of volatility exists, many regular people become wary of investing or holding such assets. Furthermore, vendors and users alike would rather trade in a more stable currency rather than one that fluctuates on the way many cryptocurrencies do. It makes perfect logical sense for most people to deal and trade in something they are more familiar with, as humans are mostly averse to change, and something that will (probably) retain its current value for many years to come, e.g. US dollar.

Unless cryptocurrencies can prove that their prices can remain relatively stable or inflationary at a steady rate, the way many world currencies are, it will be difficult for most people to place their confidence in it.

Government Intervention

Since cryptocurrency is still a very new technology, many of the world’s governments are still grappling and debating with the idea of cryptocurrencies and crypto-assets. And because of this, many governments have yet to pass comprehensive legislation regarding crypto-assets. Some countries, such as China have prohibited cryptocurrencies from being used as a method of payment or transaction and have outright banned crypto exchanges, thus placing heavy restrictions on the freedom to use cryptocurrencies. Even countries such as Vietnam and Bolivia have declared that crypto payments are not a legitimate method of payment and made the use of them illegal.

Even countries where cryptocurrencies are legal, such as in the US and Canada, there are Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) policies legislators levy over crypto exchanges. This defeats one main purpose of cryptocurrency, which is anonymity, to be able to exchange value in a peer-to-peer manner without any intermediary knowing who you are or what assets you hold.

Of course, when governments around the world have such attitudes towards cryptocurrencies and even more have such flimsy legislation protecting/outlining the legal uses of it, people’s confidence in cryptocurrencies dwindle.

Difficult to understand and use

Blockchain technology and by extension cryptocurrency is not the easiest thing in the world to understand, in fact, it is quite the opposite. Being such a new technology in its infancy, many people around the world have yet to grasp the concept of a distributed ledger which is broadcasted on a decentralized network connected via cryptography. Even the great American investor Warren Buffett has refused to invest in Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency saying,

“Never invest in something you don’t understand.”

People often avoid the unknown and as mentioned above are very averse to change. Educating people on what cryptocurrency is and how blockchain technology protects their digital assets is far more difficult than just convincing them to trust an institution, such as a bank, in which everyone understands how it works to protect their assets and become a verifying intermediary for their transactions.

At the moment, an ecosystem does not exist for regular people to buy cryptocurrencies and spend it in a manner just as easily for everyday goods. According to icomaking, only 8% of American adults own crypto money in 2019, meaning the vast majority are not having access to it. Also, simply owning Bitcoin or some other crypto does not mean you can go to any coffee shop close to you and buy a cup of coffee or go to your local convenience store to buy some groceries. This is the simplicity and ease that is lacking in crypto payments, unless people are able to spend their cryptocurrency without any hassle, in a similar fashion to tapping your card/device on a PoS machine to pay for your purchase everywhere, people will not migrate to this technology. The point being, such an ecosystem must exist before people start using crypto payments en-masse.

Reputation is one of the most important factors in decision making for many people, even for trivial decisions such as where to eat, what new phone to buy or what movie to watch. Before committing to spending their money, people often consult review sites and platforms for information on their potential purchases. This demand resulted in the emergence and success of rating and review platforms such as Google Reviews, Yelp, TripAdvisor, RottenTomatoes and countless others. It is clear that people value such data, and in many cases base their entire decision-making process solely on how good or bad the rating/review is.

However, there doesn’t appear to be an intuitive rating system for individual humans. What if there was a platform that allowed people to rate other people based on their interaction with one another? And to counter spam, bias, random ratings, and arbitrary ratings, people could only give a rating AFTER they have concluded a transaction with said person, which would then be stored in a decentralized network and become immutable.

If such a platform existed for a ‘human rating’ it would provide invaluably TRUSTED data that people can refer to when making decisions on whether to trust someone, to do business with someone or simply to ‘size-up’ someone.

Here are some reasons why there needs to be a human rating.

It improves your ability to achieve trust

Having a human rating allows people to make decisions with the rating as a basis. In a similar fashion to how someone chooses where to eat from Yelp reviews or what movies to watch on RottenTomatoes review, people will refer to this human rating when making decisions regarding an individual person. With it, people can gauge human behavior and make a more informed and accurate prediction of the person they intend to interact with. This can prove to be invaluable in making business decisions, as the trust you have in someone is key in any fruitful business relationship. Also, the time you need to be able to fully trust someone can be significantly reduced if such a human rating were to exist, which is extremely beneficial to anyone from all walks of life.

General Behavior Improvement

With a higher human rating comes with it a better reputation. Having a better reputation in society means you will enjoy societal perks and very possibly the ability to attract the attention of parties that you would want to be associated with. It would be in your interest to keep your human rating as high as possible to maintain these perks. So, in an effort to keep your rating high, you are more inclined to behave and conduct yourself in a way that you believe would result in favorable ratings from people.

People will be less likely to scam or cheat

As mentioned above, with a human rating people are more likely to behave in a positive manner to improve or maintain their rating. This also means that people will also be discouraged to scam or cheat the counterparty because this would result in a negative rating. Sure, they may benefit in the very short term, but to continue this kind of behavior will result in a poor rating, leading to people having very low trust in you and therefore not want to conduct any kind of business with you. This means you will lose reputation and value in the long term. Most people understand the importance of reputation and any reasonable person would like to have a good standing in society, the human rating will prove to be a useful tool in deterring bad behavior.

Healthy Competition

Competition is one of the greatest motivators out there, it brings out the best in people and is very important for people to keep improving and innovating. Having a human rating will result in healthy competition. This is because the rating will be an indicator of a person’s caliber and can be a basis of which people use to compare each other — this means people can clearly see their standing/rating in society and gives them the motivation to improve themselves.
Furthermore, other people will be able to see your personal human rating, meaning there will be little question as to who is better or who is the best choice leading to more people choosing to interact with or do business with those with higher ratings. This is already evident on websites like Fiverr, a contracting platform where ratings are a large determining factor for the business a contractor receives. So, because of this, people will always be looking to provide the best service since they are now more accountable for their performance.

There is very little doubt that having a human rating will bring countless benefits to people, businesses in achieving fruitful relationships, and trust. Societies and communities all over the world are waiting for such a tool to present itself and accelerate the rate of which humans achieve trust and improve.