As the year winds down and the new year approaches, we’d like to acknowledge the progress made by our team over the past year, none of which would have been possible without our community of Blockport users and supporters!
At Blockport, we make sure to provide our community with regular, weekly updates on our team’s progress, and on the progress of our cryptocurrency trading platform (Sign up for our weekly update here).
Now, we’d like to zoom out for a change and provide you with a view of the bigger picture:
What have we achieved in 2018, and what’s coming next?Cryptocurrency listingsWhen our platform first launched, we humbly began with the listings of a few leading cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ripple.
Over the past few months, we’re happy to have added EOS, IOTA, NEO, Aelf, Tron, BPT and Zcash to our platform, which resulted from the integration with three leading exchanges.
Many of the teams from these currencies have been greatly supportive, and we’ve engaged in marketing partnerships, announcement collaborations and cross-community AMAs that have helped to grow our own ecosystem and community.
With 12 cryptocurrencies now live on the platform, we’re looking forward to continuously grow this list over the upcoming months.
If there are any specific currencies you’d like to see on our platform, be sure to let us know in Telegram!
The Blockport TokenOur very own Blockport Token, BPT, has recently also been listed on our trading platform. Users can buy and hold BPT in order to qualify for a discount on trading fees. Find out more.
Blockport’s Referral ProgramOur Referral Program is live! Users can now earn 10 Euros for inviting friends and family to use Blockport. The Rewards Program is two-sided, meaning both the existing user (referrer) and the new user (referee) will receive a 10 Euro bonus in BPT. Find out more about the Referral Program.
FIAT Gateway WithdrawalsThe current Blockport version allows users to make direct trades with Euro and other leading trading pairs.
This includes instant iDeal payments for Dutch users, SOFORT payments for other European citizens as well as bank wire transfers and Revolut payments for UK users. These different payment gateways enable fast access to the platform and immense ease of use.
Following this feature, it took time to ensure the converse functionality: Euro withdrawals. With security as a primary focus, we’ve been able to ensure that users can safely and smoothly withdraw the Euros in their Blockport accounts directly into their bank account.
This feature has now been finalised and activated, meaning users can now deposit and withdraw Euros in and out of their Blockport accounts.
Euro withdrawals also go hand in hand with the upcoming feature of BTC deposits, as it allows users to sell their crypto holdings in exchange for Euros directly on the Blockport platform.
Knowing our CustomersFrom the start, our team has been committed to building KYC and AML processes that not only adhere to the regulatory frameworks around cryptocurrencies, but that also provide our users with a frictionless and hassle-free signup experience.
Despite this making our product more complex (both for users and for our development team), we’re happy to have taken it upon ourselves. The outcome of this approach reflects in the ratio of users that go from signing up to actually trading - a metric which we’re pleased with.
The Blockport AcademyWith the goal of facilitating a wider-spread understanding of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, the Blockport Academy is our own user-learning platform.
The Academy explores the history of cryptocurrencies, the meaning of ‘distributed ledger technology’, and a broad range of other interesting and informative learning materials about the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. It’s an ideal introductory platform for anyone looking to broaden their knowledge about blockchain and cryptocurrencies, or for someone looking to impress their friends at an upcoming dinner party.
The Blockport teamAcknowledging product development only makes sense if we also acknowledge the people development that goes along with it.
At Blockport, we’ve grown from a core team of 5 to a core team of over 25. All in all (freelancers and remote team members included) we’ve brought together a group of almost 40 talented developers, designers, data scientists, marketers, cryptocurrency experts and platform specialists. We are proud to see how well the team has developed itself in such a short and turbulent time!
The Blockport CommunityAt Blockport, we treat you, our community, as an extension of our team - including you where possible in product development, and making sure to always keep you updated with our latest news.
With an active Telegram channel and a dedicated team of community managers, we’re proud to be continuously sparking meaningful discussions amongst our growing community, despite the the market conditions - and we’re grateful for the role that our community plays in Blockport!
What can you expect from Blockport in 2019?With the new year at our doorstep, we are preparing ourselves to further expand the Blockport platform with both small and large upcoming features that allow our users to take part in the new digital economy with even greater ease and safety.
In the short term, think of cryptocurrency deposits, additional fiat currency (USD, GBP) deposit methods and trading pairs, additional listings of crypto assets, social trading features and developing our own internal matching engine.
In the long-term, think ‘decentralising’ specific components of our trading platform to combine the best of both worlds - realising a hybrid-decentralised platform.
As part of our 2019 growth trajectory, we’ll be opening up the platform to users outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
This will mean that users from around the globe (apart from certain countries) will be able to use Blockport and join our community of users.
Just like with our current users, we’ll continue to make our product roadmap as inclusive as possible - letting our users help determine which features they’d like to have built, or which currencies they’d like to have listed.
Having integrated our platform with multiple traditional banking partners since our inception, we’ve experienced first hand the many barriers that still exist between everyday people, the traditional world of finance and the new digital economy of cryptocurrencies. Therefore, our 2019 roadmap includes building additional solutions to better facilitate the move to cryptocurrencies across the board, starting with fiat-to-crypto transfers. More on this will be shared in the new year.
Next to our product roadmap, we are also in the process of raising our first round of equity investment to fuel our growth in the coming years. Expect an update on this in January.
All in all, Q1 of 2019 will be a very exciting time for Blockport, with many upcoming milestones in the pipeline to look out for.
To find out what else we’ll be getting up to, have a look at our live roadmap.
Product Hunt launchOur full platform release is coming up, and we’ll be running a launch campaign on ProductHunt - a leading platform to discover new tech projects and products.
For now, please create an account on ProductHunt and follow us to get notified directly when we launch officially. We’d greatly appreciate it if you could help upvote our launch on ProductHunt.
A final reflectionOverall, 2018 has been a year of immense growth for us. Without trying to seem one-sided however, we have to acknowledge that this growth has been met constantly by immense complexity, sometimes chaos, and always a challenge. For helping us overcome the hurdles we constantly face, we’re grateful to the incredibly supportive Blockport team, the Blockport community, and everyone else that’s helped to get us to where we are today.
Wishing everyone a happy holiday and a successful 2019!
Until next year,
Zowie, Sebastiaan & Kai
