bump for update

Thank you!

I will be in touch.

Cheers

It is already active and ongoing, and we do apologize for not getting the communication out here before hand. That was a mistake on my part, and is why we have extended the +15% token bonus until December 18th and depending on feedback from the community we might do a fire sale at the end of of the contract. However if we do a last 48 hours sale, we will double the bonus for all existing deposits, i.e. if you buy in now and we do run a sale of +15% again, your bonus would double to +30% if you buy in before the 18th of December. This is the big reason to NOT send directly from an exchange hot wallet, we can and will fix it for people that end up doing it by mistake, it just makes life a lot easier if you do it from a private key you directly control.

Something else I am realizing we haven't communicated well is that you can secure the +15% bonus with a deposit of any amount of Ethereum right now, and then any time during before the contract closes if you make deposits using *the same ethereum address* ALL your deposits from that deposit get the bonus.

You have sometime to review us, lock-in the bonus with 1 eth deposit and then take some time to research us before committing to a larger deposit. We are very committed to running a Fair ICO and our contract is designed with this in mind.

Also the 600,000 tokens were an estimate based on reaching the ICO cap of 250,000 ETH when it was at $15USD, the formula for token generation is here, https://keepingstock.net/the-branche-ico-token-sale-is-live-c2dc38ada595#.2tudboq0p

( [ETH/USD] / [BLT/USD] * [DEPOSIT]) * [BONUS] = TOTAL BLTs CREATED

ie. ($8.35/$5 * 1) = 1.67 BLT for each ETH exchange rate
Plus the 15% bonus, 1.67 * 15% = 2.088335 BLT per ETH

This also makes your Ethereum deposits safe with us, that if the value goes up or down you will not be penalized for it.

I'll update the main post with more details on lock-in the bonus and caveat to use the same Ethereum wallet address each time to increase your position and get the bonus for your total deposits.

To go into more detail:

There has been some confusing around our escrow process of the ICO funds and I wanted to expand on the process we are using, and our reasoning behind it.

We are using a traditional accounting company, Welch LLP(founded in 1918), and has a wealth of experience with providing these types of financial services.

The process we mutually decided on with Welch to manage the funds, at this stage, is to leverage the security provided by a hardware wallet (Ledger Nano S) and secure the device and backups at separate locations, with the requirement of a representative of Welch to access them and process transactions.

The monthly draw down of the ICO funds will then be transferred to Branche companies wallet(s) (i.e. hot wallets and cold wallets) and allocated by David Ewart our CFO and sent primarily to our company’s Shake Visa cards, using the Branche app as the feature sets come online throughout the development process.

Branche as a company embraces the concept of ‘eating your own dogfood’, which was original popularized by an accidental private conversation being posted publicly (Steve Yegge original post, worth reading: https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX). The concept when broken down is a very simple test of your value prop, i.e. if I won’t use my own product, why would anyone else?

That is what I have done, since Shake launched their alpha, I have been using the funds transfer in the same manner our user base will, by storing value in crypto-assets for short time periods and then transfer the bulk of the value to Shake, then using the Shake Visa card to pay for my daily living, as well as the company expenses.

This takes us back to Welch and during this time period we will be helping them update their internal processes to support Blockchain based companies that are working mostly with digital assets. One of the big reason we selected Welch LLP and Welch Group for our accounting and CFO needs, is they were incredibly enthusiastic towards our value proposition and already had in house expertise with one of their employees that worked out the taxes on his own crypto-assets.

While our setup is different than most [Suspicious link removed]panies, it is a reflection of our own belief on helping to bridge the gap between the traditional financial, and legal, professionals with the optimization potential of Blockchain technologies to their industries.

Welch LLP is a company that has, and continues, to step boldly into the future while at the same time staying true to their own core value of bringing insightful analysis and expert opinions to businesses big and small.

I hope that clarifies the process we are engaging in, and in the long term regardless of the ICO we need a top-tier accounting firm to make sure we are getting the best value for our customers.
Welch LLP are absolutely in that category and it has been a pleasure working with them.

Cheers!

Thank you, and please sign up for the newsletter if you haven't already. We will be using it to reach out and involve the community in the development process.

Cheers!

Thanks!

There will be lots of opportunity with Branche to invest later on down the road and as I mentioned in a previous post, the ICO is not about raising a ton of money as we have traditional funding sources. It is partially about raising awareness of the company and learning how to do that as a company

What we want is *you* as an individual involved in the project. The heart and soul of this network will be the people that provide and consume the services and Branche is the infrastructure that links them together, while curating the network of bad actors and covering the bad debt.

Please sign up for the newsletter if you haven't already, we will be reaching out to for early testing and feedback as we move forward.

Cheers and have a wonderful holiday yourself!

I'll get a blog post out tomorrow morning to get into more detail about it and get the website updated. It is in the Whitepaper but at the very end and I didn't go into enough detail on it, my apologies on that.


100%, we are using a traditional accounting firm to provide the escrow services. We will be consulting with Welch to get their internal processes updated to support cryto-assets, the future is going to be all about that and they recognized that right away. We could not be happier with them as a company, both the accounting (Welch LLP) and the consulting (Welch Group) where our vCFO David Ewart comes from.

Branche is a micro-credit platform service, we are focusing on payday loans and cheque cashing first and then later B2B invoice factoring as they are the micro-credit financial instruments most common in North America.

What we do is similar to Uber and AirBnB in that the platform service brings a massive savings to operating costs by optimizing the business processes. So we can offer a faster, easier, and contextually appropriate services in ways the existing industry is unable to. The smart contract side opens up the entire platform and lets everyone share in the revenue and Branche can insure the liquidity providers and curate the network of bad actors.

The Branche Loyalty Token, and we are selling the initial supply of the tokens, get their value from 10% of the micro-credit fees on all transactions. The 10% of Branches revenue that is dedicated to the BLTs will be held in a smart contract, and you can send the tokens to it to cash out. You will get a premium over market value if you become a Vendor or Lender on the network, they are designed to give the best value to the active user base.

Totally fair, my account is actually from 2014 if you check my profile and I've been a lurker on the boards before that, I just never post here and wish I did as I didn't know about the newbie posting rules (makes sense in hindsight).

The pre-announcement on Bitcointalk is my fault, we have been engaging with the community through Reddit, Twitter and Facebook and I was trying to find help with posting after I realized the problem was my newbie account. I'm mostly active on reddit under the same username JohnnyCryptocoin, but for the most part I am a lurker and don't really have a ton of experience with managing forums. At this stage we just went ahead to get awareness of our project out there and start talking with the community here as it was clear we are not getting the eyeballs on the project.

We understand the short notice and to reassure everyone, the ICO is not our only funding source. We are also have traditional startup funding and investment coming in and have always been planning for it. The reason for us to run an ICO, and specifically the Branche Loyalty Token, is to raise awareness of the project and get some early feedback. We are not looking to raise a ton of money here either, we are really just looking for about $100K of investment into the ICO and that is to start getting individuals directly involved in the company as customers.

https://www.smithandcrown.com/event/branche-ico-crowdsale-payday-lending-platform/

The Smith and Crown review and listing is worth it just for that, it has already been a tremendous help in the last 24 hours with our negotiations with some local Angel investors, we are working to lock in investors that will also be Lenders and provide liquidity during the alpha and beta testing phases.

The escrow bit is the one complaint I don't really understand, our accounting firm Welch LLP, http://www.welchllp.com/about/, are providing the financial oversight for the company. They will be providing the monthly financial statements and are responsible for holding the ledger nano S in escrow.

We will not have direct access to the funds and while Welch LLP has an crypto-tax expert in house, that is for the accounting side and are not comfortable with PKI disaster recovery and access control policies at this time. The company will not have direct access to the funds, it will require a representative of Welch to be present to access the bank storage of the key. I will write up a more detailed blog article and get it posted tomorrow to clarify that.

While I recognized they are not from the crypto-community, they are a well established account firm that goes back to 1918 and have tons of experience with holding funds in escrow. This process is just slightly different for them in that we are securing a physical key instead of the physical assets themselves.

The Branche Loyalty Token is the rewards program, the tokens are linked to 10% of Branche's revenue stream from fees on micro-credit.

We have two tokens we are using, but only the Branche Loyalty token is suitable for a crowdsale. We have designed it with the idea to encourage active participation on the network by giving you the ability to capture that additional revenue.

At the simplest, we will be creating a Smart Contract to hold the Branche Loyalty token 10% revenue stream. You will be able to send the BLTs to the contract, where they will be consumed (removed from supply) and the Ethereum value of the tokens will be sent back to you.

The supply and demand of the tokens is relatively simple, the max supply is a percentage of overall sales volume and we are estimating that by year 2-3 there should be $8m USD in the BLT escrow contract. Depending on how many BLTs are created through the crowdsale, and our sales volume, will determine when new supply will start being generated.

As for the markets we will be operating in directly, we are targeting Canada first and then licensing the infrastructure to local companies and individuals that already have the regulatory access in their environment.

Each country has their own rules and culture around micro-credit and it is much easier to partner will local actors than to attempt to secure regulatory access. We are creating infrastructure and Branche, the micro-credit company, is an example of how to use the infrastructure.

We compete against Kiva just as much as we do Money Mart in North America.

It's not an open source project...yet. Elements of it will be, all of the smart contract code will be published for review, however the technology we have created does have a patent in for it. We are a defensive patent company and are dedicated to be transparent, as possible, with our business model and technology.

The Fair ICO contract code, and some other packages, we are using is here: https://github.com/DES-simeon , anything that is public will be open source.

Let me know if you have any further questions, the ICO has started already and we extended the +15% bonus for another week to make up for our lack of experience when it comes to direct marketing.

Cheers,

John

Yes! thank you, I've sent an email over.

Logan is going to be mortified on that, we all missed it in review. Fixed image will be out soon.

thanks!

ICO is on sale now, our accountants Welch LLP will be in charge of holding and issuing funds on a monthly basis.

The entire financial side is with them, wonderful company to work with. They have been around since the late 1800's and are extremely knowledgeable with cryptocurrenies.

Thank you, we have put a lot of time and effort into the project and I firmly believe it is an excellent early use case for blockchain technology.

We are happy to answer any questions and I'll be getting more videos out this week with the different people in Ottawa that have helped make this happen.

I'm hoping to get Megan Cornell of Momentum Law on the YouTube channel this week, she has the best legal team I have ever worked with. They has a completely different approach to delivering legal services and has been a major asset to getting this company off the ground.

 

haha, Logan gets that all the time, although Simeon usually gets mistaken for an extra from Vikings.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-from
https://www.linkedin.com/in/loganschinbeckler
https://www.linkedin.com/in/simeon-gordon-7530a598

I'm John From and I'll be staying on top of the thread, please don't hesitate to ask any question you have.

@Odd Thomas: Thanks, I don't post here much. Long time lurker

Smith and Crown review is up as well:

https://www.smithandcrown.com/event/branche-ico-crowdsale-payday-lending-platform/

Cheers

http://opensourceecology.org/

Seems like projects like this would be inline with the goals of the coin and bring great exposure.

Start small and fund a build of a Power Cube or a loose earth brick layer.

The publicity would be great, the builds are open source and already proven.

It's for these types of projects that I've invested in the coin. I think they will pair up nicely.