Welcome back to our monthly report, the team is proud to announce that the Plutus platform now has paying customers enjoying our full-range feature set. This month’s report will highlight all the changes made leading up to the release and our current courses of action.

Pinned Announcements

- Our community has been granted Early-Bird access to our services.
- Submit your email address to the ‘waiting list’ section of our website and you’ll receive access within 24–48 hours.
- A complete public version of our services will be available in the coming weeks.

General Update

Early-Bird Onboarding
Last week, our Plutus services went live for our cherished community members to enjoy and the feedback has been exceptionally positive. This is a historic moment for Plutus and marks our entry into the growth stages of our company life cycle. The team will now be adapting all future product developments and marketing campaigns around the feedback and insights harnessed from our newly established customer base.

Development Update

Getting on the Android/iOS App Store
The marketing team wrote the copy for the Google PlayStore and Apple App Store descriptions and designed three images to breakdown our app features simply. The dev team has submitted and configured our mobile application so our Early-Bird users can enjoy our services on-the-go.

Feature Implementation
The development team is continuing to deploy several new features weekly. This includes implementation of our system emails, designed to provide helpful and insightful information to reduce any potential pain points; as well as several sub-pages that thoroughly breakdown our services.

Transitioning 1.0 to 2.0 Users
During our Plutus 1.0 release, we attracted a large number of users, and the team has been investigating the best ways of transferring these accounts over to our new and improved Plutus 2.0 applications. The team has identified the most practical approach and will proceed with actioning it.

Marketing Update

Over time, we have acquired a substantial user database through our website and mobile app, we will be utilising our mailing list to raise awareness within our community and organically grow our customer base.

Marketing efforts have been spent improving our multimedia content to raise awareness, as well as encouraging and helping new users with onboarding. Over the course of the next few weeks, the team will be releasing multiple videos and guides for using the Plutus platform. Now that both our Plutus Card and apps are live, the team can promote user-generated content to continue growing our brand awareness organically.

In this interim period, we intend to provide an easy-to-use service and focus on customer service and retention. Our growth strategy for acquiring customers in mass will kick in at a later stage, for now, we intend to look after our current community who has supported us since inception.


Fact: The world’s richest 26 people own as much as the poorest 50% of the population (3.8 Billion). In 2016, this figure was 61 which shows the widening discrepancy of wealth.

Plutus has developed features that provide a very efficient off-ramp into new-wave financial systems. Our app helps bring financial management into the hands of the consumer.


Join us on Discord and read the full update on our Medium page.

This week, our community received exclusive access to our new and improved services and the feedback has been incredibly positive! You can read more about our Early-Bird release from our blog linked below.

https://medium.com/plutus-it/early-bird-access-to-plutus-7bb4e4913fa1

Our CEO, Danial Daychopan, has revealed the first glimpse of our Plutus Card. https://twitter.com/DDhopn/status/1191781939000336384

Tomorrow, we'll be offering our loyal community early access to our Plutus features and shipping out free Plutus Cards to all participants. If you're looking to gain Early-Bird access to both our web and mobile applications, join our Discord.

Welcome back to our monthly report, Plutus has received some exciting results and the team are looking forward to releasing our high-quality finance app better than a challenger bank.

Pinned Announcements

- Access to features is available to team accounts and members of our Pilot Programme.
- The aim of the Pilot is to gather feedback from our community in order to provide an improved platform for the wider audience.
- Our site and a new app will be available to the wider public once the pilot ends, unveiling our new live features.

Development Update

Implementing Small Details
The team has implemented a number of small changes including download functionality of our T&C and Privacy Policies in PDF form as required by law; we have also changed our email workflow so users can update their email addresses and subsequently authenticate it with minimal effort. The team has polished up a number of small detailed tasks that needed to be resolved before public release.

Back Office
The team has upgraded user management features so our back-office can allow the Compliance team to monitor and suspend users when they are suspected of foul play or suspicious activity. As a highly compliance-oriented company, we are ensuring the team say vigilant about any potential malicious activity.
The developers have also strengthened our back-office dashboard which will greatly empower us to manage and monitor the business’s overall health and security.

Marketing Update

Notification Emails
The team has created an informative design for our automated emails to reduce any potential pain points for the end-user; this includes all system notifications, product notifications, and KYC related emails. The development team is currently implementing these to our back-end systems.

Website Design
We have developed new sub-pages with an interactive design for our corporate website; this includes the About, Accounts, Card and PlutusDEX pages. These will be implemented this month so newcomers can rapidly educate themselves on our product offerings and fees.

Video Progress
We are creating how-to videos and developed several informative videos to guide you through the user journey. These will become available periodically alongside the upcoming expansion of our Early-Bird user group.

General Update

Audit
The most important event of the month has been the final audit with our banking provider to take an in-depth analysis of our systems and processes; this ranged from the services we deliver to our customer support approach, and most importantly the vigorous testing of our platform's security.

We have now successfully reached a historic milestone for the company which marks the beginning of our journey. Plutus can now release our web and mobile platforms to the public and issue slick Plutus Debit Cards.

Clarifying Fees & Limits
We have ensured our costs are more competitive than alternative crypto finance apps on the market in order to increase our appeal to the wider community.

The team will be offering two different account types:

1) A basic version for less committed customers — this comes with tighter limits and a very modest exchange fee.
2) A premium version for higher usage customers — for a small subscription fee, users can gain access to unlimited and fee-less conversions whilst experiencing a wealth of other ‘members’ benefits.

Plan of Action
Rather than open the floodgates all at once, we have implemented hard limits on the number of users who can use our app which will increase incrementally. This is to help manage demand, guarantee our servers can handle the load, and help learn from our Early-Bird users the next courses of action.

Anyone who downloads the app after we have reached our temporary user-threshold will be placed in a queuing system and receive full access very shortly after. Keep an eye on our social channels to secure your place.


Fact: The world’s fastest supercomputer, Summit, costs $200M, and the high-tech machine is capable of making 200 million billion calculations every second. Despite this, media reports have shown Bitcoin to be more powerful than the top 500 supercomputers combined.

Although the Bitcoin network is incredibly secure, many cryptocurrency companies aren’t, and this results in countless thefts and attacks. We have designed our systems to be as decentralised as possible so users can enjoy the wealth of benefits cryptocurrencies offer without the associated security concerns.


Join us on Discord and read the full update on our Medium page.

Welcome back to our bi-monthly report, Plutus is on the edge of rolling out our new and improved products and services to the wider community and the team are incredibly excited to have achieved what they have. Over the last fortnight, we have been working on finalising the details of this landmark chapter.

Pinned Announcements

- Access to features is available to team accounts and members of our Pilot Programme.
- The aim of the Pilot is to gather feedback from our community in order to provide an improved platform for the wider audience.
- Our site and a new app will be available to the wider public once the pilot ends, unveiling our new live features.

Development Update

PlutusDEX Feedback
Last week the team successfully released the new and improved PlutusDEX to the pilot programme users for further stress testing. The peer-to-peer trading platform works smoothly, and the team received little to no bug reports from our community members.
With both the PlutusDEX and mobile app working proficiently, we can open up the doors to more users after a final audit from our banking provider. The gold-foiled VISA debit cards are sitting in the warehouse awaiting personalisation with your name, expiry dates and a unique 16-digit card number.

Finer Details
The development team has made numerous small but necessary additions to the platform. This includes completing download functionality of our T&C’s, privacy and cookie policies; improvements to DEX admin search functionality; and analysis of a feedback survey from our test users.

Marketing Update

Website Design
The team has been progressively working through a number of sub-pages over the last few weeks and the design for our new ‘About’ page is complete, this will provide new users with information on our available custom-built features and corporate values.

Illustrated Video Script
The team are in motion to create a 1-minute illustrated video that will easily and professionally break down the Plutus features visually. We have prepared a first-draft script ready for production.

Announcements
The team is preparing a press release in conjunction with our award-winning banking partner to announce the landmark partnership. It will be coupled with other exciting news related to the product release.

Emails Design & Research
Although the platform is currently limited to community members only, we have a huge mailing list of people who signed up to join Plutus during the 2.0 release; we’ll be using a targeted email campaign to convert these into subscribers and accompanying this with a referral programme to help grow the Plutus ecosystem.
The team has also undergone a deep dive into the analytics provided by our highly reputable emailing platform so we can make more informed decisions based on the preferences of our audience.

General Update

Going Monthly
With our MVP nearly public, we will be transitioning from a bi-monthly report to a monthly report. Plutus is dedicated to delivering consistent and transparent reports and we will continue to do so in a more in-depth but less frequent manner; the next report will be available in October.

Contis Audit
We have received a final audit date from our banking provider in early September and we expect to see the results imminently after. From here we can kick-start Plutus’ journey as a life-changing finance app and ship out official Plutus Debit Cards to our cherished community. We thank everyone for their involvement in reaching this momentous milestone.


Fact: A private key is actually just a random number between 1 and 115792089237316195423570985008687907852837564279074904382605163141518161494337, but we usually see it in a hexadecimal format which includes both letters and numbers.

The sheer volume of possibilities makes a private key incredibly difficult to crack, however, stealing the private keys is a much easier task and centralised exchanges who store vast amounts of pooled assets are the prime targets.

Plutus has integrated a decentralised exchange (PlutusDEX) so that we never have to store our users’ cryptocurrencies, this removes the possibility of Plutus experiencing a cryptocurrency hack.


Join us on Discord and read the full update on our Medium page.

Welcome back to our bi-monthly report, the team has made some monumental progress over the last few weeks and this will be one of the last reports we release before entering the go-live window.

Pinned Announcements

- Access to features is available to team accounts and members of our Pilot Programme.
- The aim of the Pilot is to gather feedback from our community in order to provide an improved platform for the wider audience.
- Our site and a new app will be available to the wider public once the pilot ends, unveiling our new live features.

Development Update

DEX Version 2.0
Over the last fortnight, the team has successfully deployed DEX Version 2.0 to production, tested it internally, and released it to our pilot programme users. We are currently taking live feedback from our dedicated test users to smoothen out any remaining minor bugs.

The update includes ETH and PLU trading pairs using MetaMask for an incredibly simple user experience. The tech team has also encompassed crypto transaction monitoring so users can track both their fiat and crypto transaction history on the web application.

Both Plutus web and mobile is almost ready for public rollout. Over the next few weeks, we will be going through our final compliance audits with our banking partner to assess if our product meets all the necessary compliance and feature requirements. Plutus is fully ready and the devs hard work is soon to be appreciated by the wider crypto community.

Mobile App
To help integrate the Plutus Debit Card into more users’ payment flows, we are pleased to let you know that our card will be available on two popular mobile payment platforms (i.e. Google Pay and Samsung Pay). This will empower users to unleash their cryptocurrencies true potential and make everyday purchases on watches, tablets, and more tech devices.

Marketing Update

Website Design
The design team has created the first drafts of two sub-pages for our corporate website. This includes an ‘About us’ page which summarises our services and values for new visitors, and a ‘Card’ page which goes into detail on what is unique about our debit cards.

Card Arrival
The first batch of slick Plutus Debit Cards arrived at the warehouse and the team got to see the physical cards in the flesh for the first time. This marks a monumental milestone in the development of Plutus; from concept, to design, to a fully functioning Plutus Debit Card tied to a seamless backend banking system.

Zage Blockchain Report
Plutus and our Head of Marketing, Peter Panayi, featured in Zage Blockchain Report last week, sharing his thoughts on Real World Applications of Blockchain Technology. You can read more on his educated insights here.


Fact: In 2017, ICO’s raised a little more than $10Bn. 2018 saw a slight increase totalling $11.4Bn. According to the website DeadCoins, more than 1735 coins have been reported as deceased, hacked, parodies, or scams.

Plutus remains one of the few startups who were funded via a token sale with a very conservative budget of circa. $1M. Unlike alternatives start-ups, Plutus strives for longevity by vigilantly monitoring burn rate and budget allocation.


Join us on Discord and read the full update on our Medium page.

Welcome back to our bi-monthly report, over the last fortnight we have seen huge improvements to both our mobile app, and the weather. Having tackled several obstacles, the team’s sentiment is high.

Pinned Announcements

- Access to features is available to team accounts and members of our Pilot Programme.
- The aim of the Pilot is to gather feedback from our community in order to provide an improved platform for the wider audience.
- Our site and a new app will be available to the wider public once the pilot ends, unveiling our new live features.

Development Update

Mobile — Fiat Withdrawal
The tech team has successfully completed ‘fiat withdrawal’ functionality which will be rolled out to the pilot programme users prior to public release. This function enables users to withdraw funds from the platform to any external bank account in the UK and EU, as long as that account is owned by the user.
Cryptocurrency can be notoriously difficult to exit from, frequently involving multiple transaction fees and wait times. We have streamlined this process and greatly increased the liquidity of our users’ personal funds.

Mobile — Transitions
Having gathered feedback from our pilot users, the team are now exploring alternative state transitions that offer a more user-friendly experience. The task has been listed but we are prioritising other functional requirements before working towards this objective.

Marketing Update

12-Week Social Timeline
The marketing team has mapped out the next three months of social activity, placing extra attention on Twitter and Instagram. Social posts will be centred around relevant dates on our calendar.

Website Script
The team are continuing work on the content and design of our website, specifically the sub-pages that are yet to be updated to our new royal blue palette. We recently completed the copy for the ‘About Us’ section which details what we do, our values, and customer testimonials; this is currently in the design phase.

Card
Our card packaging, and mailers, are both in the warehouse awaiting the completion of our Plutus Debit Cards. We have been reliably informed that card delivery is imminent, and we will update you upon their arrival. We have also received some additional bonus items to include in the post.

General Update

Compliance Training
There is still a great deal of uncertainty as to how regulation will unfold within the cryptocurrency sector and we plan to be ahead of the curve in every possible area to guarantee our longevity in the market. The Plutus team has embarked on training modules surrounding AML, Risk-Assessment, Anti-Corruption, Anti-Fraud, and more. Our team of professionals will be vigilantly trained as part of our dedication to regulation and compliance.

Compliance AML
Continuing on with our mission, we are planning to integrate a renowned Crypto AML provider who will increase our enhanced due diligence and evidence-based compliance procedures to ensure we are compliant when dealing with cryptocurrencies.

Rewards Phase 2
Over the last month, the team has been researching a vast number of potential reward partners for phase 2 of our programme. We have narrowed down the selection, and Plutus is now in further discussions with a small handful of suppliers; the team are happy with the options and their rewards. More will be revealed once we have confirmed a supplier and developed a concrete understanding of implementation.


Fact: There are 2²⁵⁶ different Bitcoin private keys, that is more than a 10 followed by 77 zeroes. If you could process one trillion private keys every second, it would still take more than one million times the age of the universe to count them all. Just enumerating that many keys would consume more than the total energy output of the sun for 32 years.

Although cracking a wallet is incredibly difficult, stealing the private keys is not as challenging. Centralised exchanges hold huge sums of user crypto-assets on hot wallets, which makes them very appealing to hackers. We use a decentralised exchange which means there is no central wallet to target.


Join us on Discord and read the full update on our Medium page.

Welcome back to our bi-monthly report, the team has received some great feedback on our alpha app, and we can now work towards improvements and additional features.

Pinned Announcements

- Access to features is available to team accounts and members of our Pilot Programme.
- The aim of the Pilot is to gather feedback from our community in order to provide an improved platform for the wider audience.
- Our site and a new app will be available to the wider public once the pilot ends, unveiling our new live features.

Development Update

Mobile App Fixes
Plutus recently rolled out the Plutus alpha app to our pilot programme users in order to identify any potential bugs before public rollout. The pilot release was successful, and the team received a wealth of constructive feedback from which we can work upon. The tech team has fixed two bugs relating to the monthly statements tab and the display issue for the card settings page.

Web Progress
The team has been testing functionality of fiat withdrawals for the web application in a dev environment. We have simultaneously been progressing with the functionality of our DEX and its handling of various edge cases. After stress testing internally, we can open the new and improved web features to our pilot users for further iteration.

Rewards Phase 1
Plutus has identified our first rewards partner and we will be implementing this into the mobile app pre-release. The tech team has scoped out the implementation requirements for an upcoming sprint which will commence upon completion of our current web testing.

Marketing Update

Rewards Phase 2
In order to guarantee our rewards programme is superior to competitors, Plutus aims to integrate a second rewards partner at a later stage. The marketing team has entered further discussions with a number of leading rewards providers that can offer real incentives to our user base. We are now narrowing down the selection based on several requirements including their offerings, ease of implementation, and the end user experience.

Website Script
Whilst our homepage has been updated to the new royal blue design, our sub-pages remain in the old format. We are currently writing fresh content and re-designing the sub-pages so consumers can easily digest information on our products and services. Working through the website will be an ongoing task — last week we drafted the ‘Card’ page which will detail all the unique features that showcase our superior Plutus Debit Card.

Exploring Innovative Acquisition Strategies
Plutus has also been exploring some out-of-the-box marketing strategies that could provide the best possible cost per acquisition; these vary from viral campaign ideas to innovative ad targeting software’s. Improving margins in areas that aren’t detrimental to the product or user experience will greatly improve the longevity of Plutus.

Social Posts
The team has also prepared a timeline of relevant dates to centre our social posts around. The marketing team will be increasing all social activity over the coming weeks in preparation for our next release.

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Fact: Global debt has reached $246.5 trillion. Cryptocurrencies make it harder to operate in a credit and debt based system due to the limited supply, and the restrictive protocol that prevents participants from lending more than their wallet contains.

Plutus aims to support financial independence by providing a user-friendly mobile app that encompasses both fiat and crypto. Users can effortlessly exchange between fiat and crypto, and utilise alternative payment methods.

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Join us on Discord and read the full update on our Medium page.

Welcome back to our bi-monthly report, the market has been a rollercoaster over the last fortnight and the team are excited to be a part of the ever-changing industry.

Pinned Announcements

- Access to features is available to team accounts and members of our Pilot Programme.
- The aim of the Pilot is to gather feedback from our community in order to provide an improved platform for the wider audience.
- Our site and a new app will be available to the wider public once the pilot ends, unveiling our new live features.

Development Update

Alpha App Rollout
Having tested the mobile app internally, the team has rolled out the minimum viable product (MVP) to a small sub-group of the Plutus community. Members of our Pilot Programme across both the UK and EU have downloaded the alpha app and they are currently supplying feedback to the tech team for further improvements.

The early responses have been overwhelmingly positive so far and we thank everyone for their continued support. The team are streamlining some transition states when navigating from one feature to another and a ‘change password’ bug, however, the rest of the features have proven robust. There is at least one round of iteration left before we go live publicly.

Current features included:

- Access balance
- Deposit funds to current account
- Transfer funds between accounts
- View transactions
- Edit personal details

Additional features will be rolled out consistently and incrementally until we have delivered a well-rounded and superior crypto finance application.

If you are part of the Pilot Programme and you are yet to download the alpha app, please reach out to our resident Community Manager, David, on Discord for details on how to participate.

Database Migration
The team has completed our transition to a new and improved database management platform which proved a challenging and time-consuming task. As we approach public release, scalability and high availability become a greater priority, and our previous database software did not meet the required standards.

The server move will cut costs by up to 40% and improve logging, metrics, HA, autoscaling, and more. The tech team were able to implement the changeover safely with minimal downtime.

Marketing Update

Received Full Samples
The team has reached an exciting point where physical samples of all our hard work are coming through the post. The team received mock-up cards alongside the complete packaging (card-holder and mailer) and we are pleased with the aesthetic quality.

Stickers
The marketing team has sourced a high-quality and cost-effective sticker manufacturer and created several potential sticker designs. After both an internal and community vote, we have narrowed down the decision to just two designs which we plan to mail to our users alongside the Plutus Debit Cards.

User Acquisition
The team is currently building a detailed customer acquisition plan and then breaking it down into actionable chunks. This contains a heavy load of information including our target audience, key geographical locations, messaging, design, optimal marketing channels, budget allocation, ROI and more.

General Update

Compliance
In order to be compliant with our payment provider, we are implementing a Transaction Monitoring system which allows us to more efficiently screen transactions. We have carefully selected a compliance partner after some cautious considerations, and they will assist in reducing the costs of investigating and reacting to unnecessary alerts through automatic transaction monitoring.

Back Office Admin
We have just completed Phase 1 of our back-office re-design and we are now entering Phase 2 which will support the customer service team in providing helpful responses to our users.

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Fact: Bitcoin recently hit an all-time high (ATH) of 69 quintillion hashes per second — a figure equal to 10x the number of sand grains on Earth. The hash rate is a measure of the computational power used to secure the network.

Whilst the Bitcoin network itself is incredibly secure, centralised exchanges who pool user assets are often riddled with vulnerabilities. We are integrating a decentralised exchange known as the PlutusDEX into our finance application so users can safely trade their assets without security woes.

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Join us on Discord and read the full update on our Medium page.

Welcome back to our bi-monthly report, progress at Plutus is coming along nicely and the team are keen to unveil all their hard work.

Pinned Announcements

- Access to features is available to team accounts and members of our Pilot Programme.
- The aim of the Pilot is to gather feedback from our community in order to provide an improved platform for the wider audience.
- Our site and a new app will be available to the wider public once the pilot ends, unveiling our new live features.

Development Update

Mobile App Progress
The core features of our mobile app are operational, and we will be sharing the minimum viable product (MVP) with our test card users for feedback and functional testing very soon. We are currently awaiting some high-end micro-animations for the mobile app to heighten the user experience. We are using Lottie by Airbnb, a well-known animation tool that exports files in JSON format and renders them natively on various device types.

Approaching Pilot Rollout
With the MVP — users will be able to log in, view their balances, transfer fiat, view transactions, perform all card activities (freeze, unfreeze, etc.), and log out. Other features will be rolled out incrementally in line with our sprint schedule. We will also be releasing our crypto DEX to pilot users shortly for rigorous testing. Please keep an eye out on our Discord channel for further updates regarding release windows.

Marketing Update

Card Mailer
With the Plutus Debit Cards and packaging in production, the team has been sourcing a luxury mailer to send our product in. The team has been looking at various high-quality padded parcels that protect our product whilst meeting our strict brand requirements (dimensions, texture, colour, etc.). We have identified a slick mailer that houses the packaging snuggly and we are finalising a bulk purchase. A great deal of thought has been placed on every imaginable element to make your unboxing experience a pleasure.

Infographics
The marketing team has begun creating a series of interesting infographics to educate our user base and highlight some of the benefits of using Plutus. The mini-series will include a number of topical facts for all types of enthusiasts (from the newbies to the veterans).

Pluton Rewards
The team has established a potential rewards partner and we are well into discussions with them over the possible rewards to offer our users. However, in order to ensure the greatest benefits to our valued community, we are continuing to research alternative 3rd party reward partners that can provide you with the best possible incentives.

General Update

Card Production
Our physical Plutus Debit Cards are in production right now and we expect a final delivery date from the manufacturers anytime now. We can then phase out our pilot programme test cards with the real thing — shipping to both UK and EEA users in planned stages.

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Fact: Mining machines used to validate cryptocurrency transactions consume an incredible amount of energy. According to Digiconomist, Bitcoin consumes more electricity than Switzerland, and a single transaction uses enough electricity to power 17.2 U.S. households for a day.

*Figures are an aggregate of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash*

Despite these shocking statistics, a study from CoinShare released this month estimates that 74.1% of Bitcoin mining is powered by renewable energy; helping to ensure the long-term sustainability of the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency.

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Join us on Discord and read the full update on our Medium page.

Welcome back to our bi-monthly report, the team has made some great progress in recent weeks and hit several internal milestones.

Pinned Announcements

- Access to features is available to team accounts and members of our Pilot Programme.
- The aim of the Pilot is to gather feedback from our community in order to provide an improved platform for the wider audience.
- Our site and a new app will be available to the wider public once the pilot ends, unveiling our new live features.

Development Update

Crypto Buy/Sell
The tech team demonstrated the new and improved PlutusDEX internally last week and it received overwhelmingly positive responses. We have designed an incredibly intuitive trading platform with a slick frontend interface that even technical newbies will be able to use.

We are currently testing the crypto buy/sell feature internally and we will shortly be rolling it out to our pilot programme users. The team are excited to reveal the progress that’s been made.

Marketing Update

Award Nominations
Plutus has received two nominations for the PayTech Awards 2019, which strengthens our position as a truly innovative brand within the finance sector. Nominations include ‘Best Consumer Payments Initiative’ and ‘Top Paytech Innovation’. You can view the rest of the categories and nominations here. The results will be announced on July 5th.

Press Announcement Schedule
The marketing team has put together a schedule of potential press announcements to release over the coming weeks and first drafts of several announcements have already been written up. With the product quickly coming together, the team can begin to unveil partnerships, new features, marketing and more.

USP’s
The marketing team has been evaluating our messaging in order to clarify our unique selling proposition (USP). We have identified several features that are yet to be achieved by anyone else and we aim to engrain these in the minds of consumers. Most prominently, that Plutus is the most secure crypto finance app in the world.

Discord Rewards
Our Discord channel has quickly become the central hub for all Plutus related discussions. We have ordered and received several Plutus-branded prizes to give away to active members of our Discord community at the end of each month. Our first winner was announced this week, join us here and engage in conversations for a chance to win.

General Update

Card Production & Packaging
The Plutus Debit Cards are officially in production! All elements have been confirmed (design, layout, weight, etc.) and we are now awaiting the manufacturers to deliver. The card packaging and mailer have also been finalised and the team are now negotiating prices before entering development.

PLU Rewards
The team has been discussing ways to add further utility to PLU so users can get the most out of their earned rewards. After considering all eventualities including costs, longevity, PLU price, scalability and more, the team identified an appropriate solution. The team are in discussions with a 3rd party rewards partner and we are preparing for front-end integration; the backend functionality of our Rebate Programme is ready.

Enhanced Due Diligence
Plutus is in the planning phase of implementing an enhanced due diligence process where applicable, such as dealing with Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs). Our long-term plan is to automate the process as much as possible and ensure its user-friendly as well as highly secure. We have the procedures in place but upgrading the system to combine automated processes and manual oversight will offer the best user experience from a compliance perspective.

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Fact: Less than 3% of Bitcoin addresses contain one Bitcoin or more — the percentage of Bitcoin users may be slightly higher as the figure doesn’t take into account those who leave their crypto-assets on centralised exchanges. The richest Bitcoin address in the world is owned by Bittrex exchange and contains 120,000+ BTC. You can find out more on the distribution of Bitcoin here.

Centralised exchanges are prone to hacks as they pool user funds and act as a honeypot for cyber-attackers. We have integrated a decentralised exchange into our finance app to avoid the possibility of malicious activity.

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Join us on Discord and read the full update on our Medium page.

Welcome back to our bi-monthly report, the market has seen some exciting growth over the last month but the team remain focused on building an exceptional finance application.

Pinned Announcements

- Access to features is available to team accounts and members of our Pilot Programme.
- The aim of the Pilot is to gather feedback from our community in order to provide an improved platform for the wider audience.
- Our site and a new app will be available to the wider public once the pilot ends, unveiling our new live features.

Development Update

Crypto Buy/Sell
A large section of the development resources has been dedicated to refining the crypto buy/sell and crypto-to-card top-up features to make available for our Pilot users — we have included expandable trading graphs according to time frame and integrated our 3rd party wallets into the web application also. Some components are currently undergoing rigorous regression testing so it’s as robust as possible upon public rollout.

Mobile App
The tech team is currently in the second round of testing our sign-up, KYC, and financial features to deliver in the next update of our mobile app. We have resolved some validation bugs on the input email field and auto-focus on ‘view pin’ functionality.

We’re also adding some CSS micro-animations into our application to strengthen the user experience. We strongly believe that design is more than a point of aesthetic, but an attribute that greatly elevates usability and customer satisfaction.

Marketing Update

Award Applications
The marketing team has been scheduling meetings and interviews with web media and relevant FinTech awards that would highlight Plutus’ stance as an innovative FinTech company whilst generating helpful press coverage of our services. The ongoing discussions with event organisers have been promising and we look forward to inviting you to our busy calendar of events planned for this summer and beyond.

Coverage
This week, Plutus featured in an article on Hacked.com called “The Rise of Cryptocurrency Mobile Banking” linked here. Having released our Plutus 2.0 Web Pilot in March and now approaching the release of our latest mobile app version — the community can expect plenty more reputable press coverage.

Discord Competition
Our new Discord channel has quickly become the centre of all Plutus related discussions and we are keen to grow this. At the beginning of June, our monthly Discord competition will commence and members of the channel who actively engage in conversations will be in with a chance of winning various high-quality Plutus branded prizes — the first prize being a premium VR headset. Join us on Discord here.

Plutus Card Packaging and Mailer
The card design and how it’s packaged/delivered to you is very important to us as this is where the experience changes from digital to physical; it is important to us that we ensure convenience and a pleasant memory. The final concept is approved and it is now in the production pipeline to be delivered along with our cards to you in time.

Warning

Please remember to check the URL for phishing scams. We have recently been notified of a domain using the Plutus brand name to steal funds. We will never ask our users to send funds to any wallet or account, this is the only domain registered to our name — https://plutus.it

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Fact: Miners are rewarded in Bitcoin for verifying transactions. Every four years the Bitcoin reward they receive is cut by 50% — an event known as ‘the halvening’. This is Satoshi’s way of introducing new Bitcoin to the ecosystem whilst tackling inflation. The next halvening is almost exactly one year away (May 2020), Bitcoin rewards will drop from 12.5 BTC per block to 6.25 BTC. Here is a great website to track the process — here

The Plutus team is passionate about cryptocurrencies and we are keen to deliver an exceptional product that offers genuine unique value to the crypto ecosystem. We have worked off a lean budget and remain fully regulatory compliant to ensure our longevity in a highly volatile market.

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Join us on Discord and read the full update on our Medium page.

Welcome back to our bi-monthly report, we hope everyone enjoyed the Easter break and overindulged in their favourite foods. The Plutus team relished the lengthy weekend and have now rapidly returned to work mode to deliver on the next stages of Plutus.

Pinned Announcements

- Access to features is available to team accounts and members of our Pilot Programme.
- The aim of the Pilot is to gather feedback from our community in order to provide an improved platform for the wider audience.
- Our site and a new app will be available to the wider public once the pilot ends, unveiling our new live features.

Development Update

Bug Fixes & Improvements
As always, the tech team has been fixing multiple bugs for an improved user experience, especially relating to the synchronisation of data between us and our banking partners. Alongside this, the team has made additional improvements on session management and general user-interface fixes.

Wallet Integration
The tech team has also been upgrading the crypto flows of our application. This includes the cryptocurrency dashboard and integration of a well-known 3rd party decentralised wallet provider. The aim is to integrate them into a familiar mobile-banking style user interface with incredibly simple functionality to encourage everyday shoppers into the crypto ecosystem.

Marketing Update

Investigating Additional Perks
Pluton will be redeemable for additional services offered by Plutus and exchangeable for regular fiat. The marketing team has been investigating potential partners that can add additional value to our loyalty programme. We are proud to be introducing one of the best loyalty rewards systems on the market and we will continue to identify perks that improve your shopping experience.

Discord
We have implemented our new Discord levels system, AmariBot. By engaging in conversations and actively participating in our Discord channel, you can earn experience points (XP), level up, and rise through the ranks. We hope this encourages more discussions and a stronger Plutus community. In the future, we will be rewarding active members with cool Plutus swag. If you are yet to join our new Discord channel then take a look here and join in.

Influencers
The marketing team has conducted a cost-benefit analysis of potential influencers and we are now reaching out to a select few YouTubers to review our project. After trialling a video we will determine the best course of action with our YouTube influencer campaign.

Networking
The marketing department has started attending cryptocurrency meet-ups once a week in order to meet reputable members of the crypto ecosystem, improve our presence, and build a network of enthusiasts for our very own Plutus meet-ups planned this Summer.

Card Design
The designers have been finalising the Pantone colour of our Plutus Debit Card — finding a true match to our custom new electric blue colour palette has been challenging due to the different print materials available but we look forward to sharing the final outcome.

General Update

Validation System
The team are building system validation to ensure only one account can be permitted per user (as dictated by financial rules and compliance). The back-end team is building sensible identity and validation checks.

Test Cards
All of the designated test cards have been successfully activated and trialled. The majority of the bugs have been found and resolved leading to a much more polished user experience. The banking dashboard is functional and we are now focusing on crypto top-ups and the crypto buy/sell user experience, optimising for speed of trade execution whilst minimising spread.

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Fact: Our company name, Plutus, originated from the god of wealth. In Greek mythology, Plutus was blinded from an early age so he would give his gifts to people without any prejudices.

We have removed our exchange fees to break down barriers between crypto and fiat, and to encourage the free movement of money. Our upcoming release will offer a tiered subscription model with a free version available so anyone can enjoy our services.

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Join us on Discord and read the full update on our Medium page.

Welcome back to our bi-monthly report, our tech team has been working with pilot testers to make further improvements to our new Plutus 2.0 website. We have made great progress since our last update and we look forward to unveiling the complete functionality set in the coming weeks.

Pinned Announcements

- Currently, our system is in pilot testing mode, site and app access is limited to pilot test users for the coming weeks.
- Our site and a new app will be available to the wider public once the pilot ends, unveiling our new live features.

Development Update

Tool Upgrades
The development team has updated our tool for container orchestration to a new version, this empowers our team with numerous new functionalities resulting in a more stable and maintained environment. On top of this, the team has built and tested a bespoke backup procedure.

We’ve upgraded our CI/CD tool which now allows us to implement required builds using a built-in scheduler. This will allow us to deploy changes at times of low activity which are less disruptive to our customers.

Squashing Bugs
The tech team has spent a large portion of their time handling and prioritising bugs reported through our pilot programme for both our web app and our microservices; these have been segregated into level 1 or level 2 tickets and fixed according to their impact and severity on our users. The bugs are flaws that cause the web app to behave in unintended ways and some were present after both unit and functional testing. Circa 80% of the bugs have now been resolved, new versions of the code have been updated and tested.

Marketing Update

Digital Campaigns
The marketing team has been working on new digital campaigns to be displayed across key marketing channels once our pilot ends, the new designs are aligned with our Plutus 2.0 overhaul and updated with our current feature set. The aim is to showcase our wide array of financial services in a simple and easily digestible manner whilst remaining slick and minimalist.

PR Coverage
The team are continually working on securing tier 1 press coverage for our product announcements, we are currently in talks with numerous media outlets and discussing various campaigns to help spread awareness of Plutus to a wider audience.

Community Competitions
The team is planning for numerous community competitions to be hosted over the coming weeks. This is a sign of our gratitude for the communities endless support and encouragement, stay tuned for further announcements and an opportunity to win cool Plutus swag.

Evergreen Content
The team has written multiple evergreen articles centred around interesting and applicable topics to be released at optimal times across various platforms to help boost our exposure amongst the crypto community.

Social Influencer Campaigns
The marketing team has continued with the planning of our influencer campaign. We previously reached out to potential influencers and performed background checks on their channels. We are now conducting a cost-benefit analysis to determine who will prove the most beneficial to Plutus. We are considering demographic, geographical location, price, presentation style, audience type (e.g. traders, miners, investors) and more.

Press Kit
The marketing team has put together a press kit to give to media outlets and influencers so they can rapidly accustom themselves with our products and services. This includes our updated Plutus imagery, a breakdown of our USP’s and feature sets, and a brief overview of the company’s history.

General Update

Data Processing
We’re gradually building our data science discipline at the product level. We have selected tools and begun building data pipelines for processing information in near real time so we can make informed data-driven product decisions.

Currently, we are optimising for low-event latency which means we can query recent user events within minutes of it happening and react accordingly. Other requirements, such as interactive querying, monitoring or scalability, will be optimised at a later stage.

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Fact: In 1990, the first web page was served on the open internet. Over the last 30 years, the internet has gone on to impact nearly every aspect of our lives (communication, e-commerce, work, etc.).

Cryptocurrencies are more complex than the internet and may take more time to develop, but they also have the potential to drastically disrupt important areas of our lives (e.g. money, economics, government). Plutus will support the industry’s growth and provide real-life use-cases that are currently lacking.

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Join us on Telegram and read the full update on our Medium page.

Here is an article by our CEO, Danial Daychopan, on whether centralised stablecoins are a necessary evil for widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies. The article shares his personal thoughts, opinions and educated insights into how the industry is unfolding. Give it a read here.

Welcome back to our bi-monthly report, the team has been working incredibly hard and delivered on Plutus 2.0.

Pinned Announcements

- Access to features is available to team accounts and members of our Pilot Programme.
- Our site and a new app will be available to the wider public once the pilot ends, unveiling our new live features.

Plutus 2.0
For the official statement on our Plutus 2.0 website, please visit our Medium blog and read the brief release from our CEO here.
   
Development Update

Plutus 2.0 Unveiled
The tech team has been working tirelessly over the last fortnight and delivered on Plutus 2.0! The frontend and backend are connected, and the development team has squashed countless bugs to ensure the system functions properly.

The aim is to streamline as many processes as possible on the user’s end for a quick and easy user experience. Account set-up takes as little as two minutes and the KYC verification process is incredibly efficient.

Our feature set is available to staff accounts and members of our community who are part of the Pilot Programme to assess the robustness of our system. Once we have rigorously tested the platform, we will roll it out to the rest of the community and the wider public.

Database Upgrades
The tech team has also made further upgrades to our database management system in a production environment.

Marketing Update

Website Revealed
As part of Plutus 2.0, we are pleased to unveil our new and improved corporate website. The site breaks down some of our newer features and navigation is laid out simply. As mentioned earlier, full access is available to selected members of the community who are testing our services.

Brand Identity
The marketing team has updated all imagery across our social media platforms to match the Plutus 2.0 design overhaul. Consistency is a core element of strengthening a brand’s identity and one we aim to deliver on.

Events
The marketing team has made contact with the organisers of fintech events to demo our Plutus 2.0 platform and applied for award nominations to boost our presence within the industry. We have also collated a list of relevant events, podcasts, awards, etc. occurring throughout the year that will help in identifying potential marketing opportunities.

Delta Direct
We recently announced we are active on Blockfolio Signal, and we can now confirm our arrival to Delta Direct; a platform that connects us with existing and future community members. This is part of our continued effort to improve communications with our valued customers. Join us here.

General Update

Card Pilot Programme
The Plutus Test Cards preloaded with £25/€25 have been shipped to selected members of our community within the UK and Europe to test their functionality and robustness. A handful of early supporters have already received their test cards and are now providing us with valued feedback.

The feedback from these users has been overwhelmingly positive so far and the tech team are working efficiently to reconcile any errors found on the front end. We are rigorously testing all our partner’s card services endpoints and ensuring we map the responses to a state in our microservices so we have the appropriate, user-friendly and helpful error messages in place.

Errors are frustrating for any consumer, and they can be a make or break situation for any customer relationship. We are thoughtfully approaching our error messages to deliver useful and practical solutions when you experience such issues — user experience is incredibly important to us.

Test Card Scenarios
We are testing our cards in the real world across six major test categories…

ATM withdrawal
Contactless
Chip & Pin
POS
E-commerce
Card Settings (Freeze, Unblock, Suspend Card, etc.)

We can proudly report that most use cases have passed exceptionally smoothly with the exception of some minor reports in ‘Transaction Table’ and ‘Card Setting’ responses — the team is already working on fixing this.

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Fact: The total money supply M2 in the UK alone is almost £2.5T, and it is down to the government and our banking institutions to control this supply.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin replace the possibility of erroneous human decision making with maths, preventing the circulating supply from ever topping 21M coins. Plutus has built a crypto-fiat gateway known as the PlutusDEX that enables free movement of money between these two assets in a secure fashion.

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Join us on Telegram and read the full update on our Medium page.

We recently unveiled our new and improved Plutus 2.0 website! The new site showcases some of our latest finance features and a complete design overhaul.

Please read the official statement from our CEO here.

Visit our new corporate website here.

Our website is currently undergoing some scheduled upgrades in preparation for Plutus 2.0. We apologise for the downtime and we look forward to revealing our new and improved platform on March 29th.

Plutus is now on Discord! This is part of our continued effort to improve communications with our community. We have split the channel into useful categories and sub-channels so you can easily find exactly what you’re looking for. Join us here.

https://discord.gg/JRzs7YQ

We are selecting cherished members of our community to join our Card Pilot Programme, selected users will receive a Plutus Test Card preloaded with £25/€25 to spend as they wish. Join our Telegram here for more information.