CEO of Vaultoro Joshua Scigala who with his brother Phillip runs the operation of the first real-time platform for trading physical gold and bitcoin shared a few thoughts with us as the company is fresh off January’s news of acceptance into TechStars Berlin 2017 accelerator program. Historically, Techstars companies go on to receive $1M to $2M raised in outside capital after the program.
Vaultoro is unique in that they allow for the ability to take physical possession of your bullion anytime or to sell for bitcoin instantly.
If you are looking to completely avoid holding fiat currency altogether, Vaultoro’s platform is something you need to check out. The company should be making a lot more news in the upcoming year as results and development from the Techstars ecosystem begin to have an impact on improving features of the exchange.
Joshua confirmed to us that one of the features already in the works is a debit card attached to a user’s Vaultoro account. It will be the only card in the world with the ability to spend gold in real-time without pre-loading.
Acceptance into the Techstar program will provide the following benefits to Vaultoro:
- A $100,000 convertible note is automatically offered to all Techstars companies upon acceptance, $20,000 in exchange for 6% common stock
- Access to Techstars resources for life
- Acceleration in a 90-day Techstars program with intense, hands-on mentorship from Techstars Mentors
- Connections to the Techstars Network of over 5,000 founders, alumni, and mentors globally
- 400 perks worth over $1M
- Office space for three months
- Demo Day and other investor connections
- Equity Back Guarantee, the only one of its kind in the industry
Mr. Scicigala shared the following comments…
“Our goal is to enable as many people to use assets as money instead of debt based fiat currencies. We are really proud to be chosen out of so many worthy startups into Techstars program.”
On Vaultoro’s API and capabilities it provides…
“Our API is absolutely free, there is a basic API for price feeds and then an advanced API for actually making trades. Some people have already programmed ping pong trading bots for Vaultoro. Companies like Milwaukee-based platform provider Coinigy have fully integrated Vaultoro into their platform so you can trade allocated gold and bitcoin using their professional trading analytics tools. Further, cryptocompare.com has also used our API so anyone can price their cryptocurrency portfolios in gold. This enables us to move even further away from debt based fiat and start pricing bitcoin against a tangible asset class.”
On the advantages of a gold-backed bitcoin exchange…
“We have a lot more traders coming across from fiat exchanges because allocated gold is the legal property of the trader and not Vaultoro. That means if something happens to Vaultoro we could not do a bail in and even liquidators could not touch our client’s property. This gives a huge peace of mind to many traders who have lost money on exchanges.”
On transparency…
“Our transparency protocol also makes Vaultoro.com the most transparent exchange in the world. We hope to inspire other exchanges to follow our lead and implement our level of transparency, because we as an industry need to regulate ourselves otherwise we will get huge government regulations being pushed which could crush the fledgling bitcoin startup world under a massive regulatory burden.”