But what is Plutus? Aside from being the Greek god of wealth, it is a fresh approach to crypto-fiat gateways and building financial services on top of that. And much more – as per the whitepaper:
The Plutus Mobile Application enables a user to make contactless Bitcoin payments at any merchant with a Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled checkout terminal. This is the most practical way to pay with Bitcoin, because the payment process consists only of holding a mobile device above the merchants NFC reader. As a result, Bitcoin payments are effectively accepted by proxy at over 32 million brick and mortar merchants around the world. The primary purpose of Plutus is to provide incentive for, and enable, the practical day-to-day usage of Bitcoin; ultimately accelerating mass-consumer adoption. The competitive advantage of Plutus, within the mobile payments industry, is the effective utilization of the rapidly expanding Ethereum network. Through a transparent and decentralized network protocol, underwritten by distributed ledger technology (the blockchain), Ethereum allows Plutus to deploy smart contracts to enable secure, peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange of fiat currency and Bitcoin, with the
added benefit of automatic escrow. Using these methods, the Plutus Decentralized Exchange Network (PlutusDEX) of traders convert Bitcoin deposits into a prepaid debit balance that is valid at any contactless point-of-sale (POS) terminal. The philosophy of the application itself is open, inclusive and committed to the network health and widespread usage of Bitcoin. As such, a public trading API will be available, and 3rd party development is encouraged.
Pretty cool! And here’s a brief interview over at medium.com:
What made you join Plutus?
“I have chosen to join Plutus as I see an opportunity to be part of something extraordinary, it is one of the rare startups in the crypto sector that has gone from a white paper to a working product. The company is now well positioned to have a sustainable impact on enabling consumers to utilize their digital currencies for easy, everyday usage. Plutus products and their vision of the future in digital banking is truly innovative, achievable and exciting.”
What will your new role entail?
“My initial role at Plutus will be to help scale the current product, ensuring a smooth transition from beta into the growth stage. This is paramount in order to deliver on the founder’s [Danial Daychopan] vision of a crypto backed payments infrastructure that is used by customers across the world.”
What made you transition towards blockchain?
“Why blockchain? With the history of money and how fiat currencies are dominating the world’s economy in the 20th century, I want to support the use of cryptography to help deliver on Hayek’s dream of private money. I believe it will address many problems and fraud types that current monetary systems suffer from. But DLT is also proving an excellent choice for any system of record or durable medium of exchange, yielding good results compared to legacy applications. With the growing adoption of DLT as a competent technology amongst the C-suite talent base, we will see a rising use-case of DLT across various sectors.”
What is your biggest concern for Plutus?
“Security is always a massive challenge, especially for companies in fintech like Plutus; how such companies strive to deliver top-level security is of great interest to me. I was attracted to Plutus because of their unique offering, a non-custodial crypto-to-fiat exchange [PlutusDEX]; it connects the legacy payments infrastructure with the blockchain and removes the risk of financial losses due to hacks, a frequently occurring issue associated with centralised honeypots. This is a key feature that puts the company in a strong position to deliver the ultimate service in this field, and the project is backed by a very talented team of experts.”
Where do you position the crypto space in the next 5 years?
“With the market cap of cryptocurrencies and their related hype dropping, a better focus can be placed on the technologies behind them rather than the coin valuations themselves. I personally think it was hard for the industry to work on the challenges faced by the emerging technology given its astounding value and the high level of emotions attached at the time, a lot of the sector’s energy was directed towards speculation and profits rather than real solutions that would improve adoption.”
“I believe the recent market decline of crypto has brought the crypto-ecosystem back to its roots, developing truly innovative technologies that will change how consumers view payments and transactions in the long-term. I am pleased to now be well positioned to contribute to the future of this ecosystem.”