[Private IPO] VertPay - Vertcoin Payment Gateway

[fluffypony]

Hi all - I'm involved in a Vertcoin payment gateway project called VertPay (if you're a regular on #bitcoin-assets and know me you will recognise that a deal has been struck and my payment gateway project has been rolled into this existing project). We're doing a private IPO, with a view to taking it to an exchange at a later stage (those exchanges I am comfortable will not implode will not look at a project like this at this stage). I'm doing the announcement here, as Peter Kuhn has just registered here and isn't in the OTC WoT, but he will be here to answer questions as well.

Visit the VertPay.com website!

They say that an idea is great, but execution is everything. With that in mind, seed funding for VertPay has been provided by Peter Kuhn and Riccardo Spagni. This has enabled a small team to be put together to not only architect, plan, and begin development of the VertPay system, but also to begin seeking key merchants. For our final phase of development, our launch, and all of our marketing we have decided to open the project up to investment by the VertCoin community - a VertCoin driven IPO!

What's been done

All of the ground work has been laid from a regulatory and legal perspective, including incorporation outside of the United States. The software architecture has been finalised, the initial bank of servers have been configured and are live. Work has been progressing on the core of the software for some time. Our rates API is live, for example, and updates every 10 seconds or so. You can use it right now to get the rates of all of the fiat currencies supported, or the rate for any specific currency such as USD, GBP, or EUR! Merchant acquisition has also been moving along, although that is more recent than the architecture and development, and we are aiming to launch with a few very well known and influential merchants.

What still needs doing

On the software side there is still some work to be done integrating with backend financial systems, completing the API core, and completing the Merchant Management interface. Ongoing code reviews by our Internet security partner have begun, but a more intense final code review and pentesting will happen closer to launch. There is much to be done on the merchant acquisition side, and a great deal of marketing that has to be completed and planned. This is where the investment opportunity comes in.

How the IPO is structured

The IPO is going to raise a total of 200 000 VTC. To do this, VertPay will authorise 1 million shares (1 000 000), and issue a block of 200 000 shares at a nominal value of 1 VTC per share. On Monday, May 12th, 2014, a Vertcoin deposit address will be made available on the VertPay.com website, and investors will be able to send a round number of Vertcoin to that address. A portion of the Vertcoin received will be converted to Bitcoin in order to be stored in a multi-signature wallet and thus prevent the misuse of invested funds by any person within the company. In the event of an oversubscription of issued shares, VertPay's management team will decide whether to issue new shares to meet the oversubscription, or whether to refund those that have invested too late.

Whilst VertPay shareholders do not have voting rights, from time to time the management team may seek advisory, non-binding votes from shareholders on issues that will have a significant impact on their shareholding. Dividends will be paid in Vertcoin to all investors on a monthly basis, although revenue will not exist to pay dividends until VertPay's launch. Dividends will be derived from profits made in that month, and will be paid fairly to all shareholders in proportion to the shares they hold. Dividend payments will be made to the Vertcoin address that was used to make the initial investment. For this reason, shareholders will need to control the address they send from.

About the share agreements

All share agreements will be Vertcoin-signed by the investment Vertcoin address, and the signed agreements will be published for all shareholders to have access to them. Investors will be able to submit a Vertcoin-signed message with their backup email address, which can be used to verify a change in their dividend payout address in the event of them losing control of their original Vertcoin address. Investors will not be barred from trading their shares privately or running a pass-through, and changes in an investor's Vertcoin address can be made by means of a Vertcoin-signed message from the previous address. In future Vertpay may choose to list on a crypto-denominated stock market, in which case investors will be able to register there and have their shares issued to them on the exchange. You can view a sample share agreement here.

Additional information can be found on the VertPay.com website

[fluffypony]

Reserved

[bengtåke]

I'm throwing paper wallets at the screen but they're not sticking

[fluffypony]

I'm throwing paper wallets at the screen but they're not sticking

"Apply with moderate force"

[fluffypony]

Lol another IPO ? Well, good luck finding investors.

This is the securities sub-forum...where securities post details about things like, you know, IPOs...

[superduh]

care to put out a real business plan?
jurisdiction?
expansion into supporting other cryptos?
fees?
long term plans etc

seems like a lot of words but needs more substance.

[xingqiaoyin]

Hi all - I'm involved in a Vertcoin payment gateway project called VertPay (if you're a regular on #bitcoin-assets and know me you will recognise that a deal has been struck and my payment gateway project has been rolled into this existing project). We're doing a private IPO, with a view to taking it to an exchange at a later stage (those exchanges I am comfortable will not implode will not look at a project like this at this stage). I'm doing the announcement here, as Peter Kuhn has just registered here and isn't in the OTC WoT, but he will be here to answer questions as well.

Visit the VertPay.com website!

They say that an idea is great, but execution is everything. With that in mind, seed funding for VertPay has been provided by Peter Kuhn and Riccardo Spagni. This has enabled a small team to be put together to not only architect, plan, and begin development of the VertPay system, but also to begin seeking key merchants. For our final phase of development, our launch, and all of our marketing we have decided to open the project up to investment by the VertCoin community - a VertCoin driven IPO!

What's been done

All of the ground work has been laid from a regulatory and legal perspective, including incorporation outside of the United States. The software architecture has been finalised, the initial bank of servers have been configured and are live. Work has been progressing on the core of the software for some time. Our rates API is live, for example, and updates every 10 seconds or so. You can use it right now to get the rates of all of the fiat currencies supported, or the rate for any specific currency such as USD, GBP, or EUR! Merchant acquisition has also been moving along, although that is more recent than the architecture and development, and we are aiming to launch with a few very well known and influential merchants.

What still needs doing

On the software side there is still some work to be done integrating with backend financial systems, completing the API core, and completing the Merchant Management interface. Ongoing code reviews by our Internet security partner have begun, but a more intense final code review and pentesting will happen closer to launch. There is much to be done on the merchant acquisition side, and a great deal of marketing that has to be completed and planned. This is where the investment opportunity comes in.

How the IPO is structured

The IPO is going to raise a total of 200 000 VTC. To do this, VertPay will authorise 1 million shares (1 000 000), and issue a block of 200 000 of them at a nominal value of 1 VTC each. On Monday, May 12th, 2014, a Vertcoin deposit address will be made available on the VertPay.com website, and investors will be able to send a round number of Vertcoin to that address. Vertcoin received will immediately be converted to Bitcoin in order to be stored in a multi-signature wallet in order to prevent the misuse of invested funds by any person within the company. In the event of an oversubscription of issued shares, VertPay's management team will decide whether to issue new shares to meet the oversubscription, or whether to refund those that have invested too late.

Whilst VertPay shareholders do not have voting rights, from time to time the management team may seek advisory, non-binding votes from shareholders on issues that will have a significant impact on their shareholding. Dividends will be paid in Vertcoin to all investors on a monthly basis, although revenue will not exist to pay dividends until VertPay's launch. Dividends will be derived from profits made in that month, and will be paid fairly to all shareholders in proportion to the shares they hold. Dividend payments will be made to the Vertcoin address that was used to make the initial investment. For this reason, shareholders will need to control the address they send from.

About the share agreements

All share agreements will be Vertcoin-signed by the investment Vertcoin address, and the signed agreements will be published for all shareholders to have access to them. Investors will be able to submit a Vertcoin-signed message with their backup email address, which can be used to verify a change in their dividend payout address in the event of them losing control of their original Vertcoin address. Investors will not be barred from trading their shares privately or running a pass-through, and changes in an investor's Vertcoin address can be made by means of a Vertcoin-signed message from the previous address. In future Vertpay may choose to list on a crypto-denominated stock market, in which case investors will be able to register there and have their shares issued to them on the exchange. You can view a sample share agreement here.

Additional information can be found on the VertPay.com website

What is vertcoin devs take on this ? I want to support this.

[peterkuhn]

care to put out a real business plan?
jurisdiction?
expansion into supporting other cryptos?
fees?
long term plans etc

seems like a lot of words but needs more substance.

Riccardo has brought the business plan up in the Bitcoin assets chat and it has been discussed there. Whilst I do not feel comfortable with the entirety of the plan being made publicly available, I will gladly distill it to answer any specific questions such as the ones you have raised.

Jurisdiction is covered in the agreement (point 6.10). Whilst most of us are in Germany, the company is legally registered in South Africa, which presents the least regulatory and compliance issues. Riccardo is better equipped to go into detail, but there were three areas where we are avoiding legal stumbling blocks:

• For the IPO the legislation allows us to offer shares without the need for shareholders to give us their identity or register with any local body
• Additionally, as Vertcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not recognised as currency, property, or anything else, we overcome regulatory hurdles with that
• Finally, in the event that there is any recognition given to cryptocurrencies, it will not be decidedly less complex to ensure compliance than if we were in the US or even here in much of Europe

Expansion is planned, but there is no point in presenting a mixed message to merchants. We're going to them with something fresh, something clean, something interesting. In our dealings we have found that merchants are afraid of Bitcoin because of the negative press, they view Litecoin as strange (it has the word "lite" in it!), and they will never take Dogecoin seriously. Vertcoin allows us to pitch a product to them devoid of negativity, which works in our favour. When we start adding to the offering later on they will already be in the ecosystem.

For merchants that don't want to commit to a monthly fee we will offer a sliding fee solution (from 2% down to 0.5%, dependent on the transaction size), unlimited transactions. We will also offer entry-level and mid-level fixed price packages (no transactional fees) for merchants that are more confident in their volume. Enterprise merchants will be costed on a case-by-case basis.

Two big long-term plans that I will mention are:

• We currently have completed plugins for Woocommerce, WHMCS, PrestaShop, X-Cart Gold, osCommerce, Übercart, Zencart, OpenCart, Magento, and VirtueMart. However, there are lots of ecommerce systems that don't have time to get to - little apps on CodeCanyon that only support PayPal payments, or all those PHP "clone" scripts. To incentivise developers to build support into the tools they're selling or the apps they're building, we will have a developer affiliate system where they can earn forever a percentage of the fees generated by anyone using their app.
• Smartphone driven POS systems, where merchants can have their managers run a merchant app and accept payments. The app will be locked to the merchant account and can not be switched to a different merchant account. If the manager deletes the app and reinstalls the system will alert the merchant that the device is unlinked and attempting a new merchant link (thus preventing the most obvious way of cheating the system). The app will take advantage of Multipeer Connectivity in iOS 7 and similar mesh networking technology in Android (possibly by licensing Open Garden's technology, although it is very early days to pursue that), thus negating the need for the devices to even be on the Internet.

[thecoinjournal]

Do you know what IPO stands for?

[fluffypony]

Do you know what IPO stands for?

It's private in the sense of it not being listed on an exchange. I think it carries the sense across; would you prefer I change the subject to "Unlisted IPO"?

[othe]

Hi all - I'm involved in a Vertcoin payment gateway project called VertPay (if you're a regular on #bitcoin-assets and know me you will recognise that a deal has been struck and my payment gateway project has been rolled into this existing project). We're doing a private IPO, with a view to taking it to an exchange at a later stage (those exchanges I am comfortable will not implode will not look at a project like this at this stage). I'm doing the announcement here, as Peter Kuhn has just registered here and isn't in the OTC WoT, but he will be here to answer questions as well.

Visit the VertPay.com website!

They say that an idea is great, but execution is everything. With that in mind, seed funding for VertPay has been provided by Peter Kuhn and Riccardo Spagni. This has enabled a small team to be put together to not only architect, plan, and begin development of the VertPay system, but also to begin seeking key merchants. For our final phase of development, our launch, and all of our marketing we have decided to open the project up to investment by the VertCoin community - a VertCoin driven IPO!

What's been done

All of the ground work has been laid from a regulatory and legal perspective, including incorporation outside of the United States. The software architecture has been finalised, the initial bank of servers have been configured and are live. Work has been progressing on the core of the software for some time. Our rates API is live, for example, and updates every 10 seconds or so. You can use it right now to get the rates of all of the fiat currencies supported, or the rate for any specific currency such as USD, GBP, or EUR! Merchant acquisition has also been moving along, although that is more recent than the architecture and development, and we are aiming to launch with a few very well known and influential merchants.

What still needs doing

On the software side there is still some work to be done integrating with backend financial systems, completing the API core, and completing the Merchant Management interface. Ongoing code reviews by our Internet security partner have begun, but a more intense final code review and pentesting will happen closer to launch. There is much to be done on the merchant acquisition side, and a great deal of marketing that has to be completed and planned. This is where the investment opportunity comes in.

How the IPO is structured

The IPO is going to raise a total of 200 000 VTC. To do this, VertPay will authorise 1 million shares (1 000 000), and issue a block of 200 000 of them at a nominal value of 1 VTC each. On Monday, May 12th, 2014, a Vertcoin deposit address will be made available on the VertPay.com website, and investors will be able to send a round number of Vertcoin to that address. Vertcoin received will immediately be converted to Bitcoin in order to be stored in a multi-signature wallet in order to prevent the misuse of invested funds by any person within the company. In the event of an oversubscription of issued shares, VertPay's management team will decide whether to issue new shares to meet the oversubscription, or whether to refund those that have invested too late.

Whilst VertPay shareholders do not have voting rights, from time to time the management team may seek advisory, non-binding votes from shareholders on issues that will have a significant impact on their shareholding. Dividends will be paid in Vertcoin to all investors on a monthly basis, although revenue will not exist to pay dividends until VertPay's launch. Dividends will be derived from profits made in that month, and will be paid fairly to all shareholders in proportion to the shares they hold. Dividend payments will be made to the Vertcoin address that was used to make the initial investment. For this reason, shareholders will need to control the address they send from.

About the share agreements

All share agreements will be Vertcoin-signed by the investment Vertcoin address, and the signed agreements will be published for all shareholders to have access to them. Investors will be able to submit a Vertcoin-signed message with their backup email address, which can be used to verify a change in their dividend payout address in the event of them losing control of their original Vertcoin address. Investors will not be barred from trading their shares privately or running a pass-through, and changes in an investor's Vertcoin address can be made by means of a Vertcoin-signed message from the previous address. In future Vertpay may choose to list on a crypto-denominated stock market, in which case investors will be able to register there and have their shares issued to them on the exchange. You can view a sample share agreement here.

Additional information can be found on the VertPay.com website

What is vertcoin devs take on this ? I want to support this.

I know Ricardo, Brad and Arthur, good guys and pretty sure it will be a good product.

[ymer]

So $200,000 USD at current rate for 20% of the company?

 


lel

[fluffypony]

So $200,000 USD at current rate for 20% of the company?

 


lel

So seeing as you've demonstrated a wealth of knowledge in the valuation of startups, how would you value the company for the purposes of the IPO?

[ymer]

So $200,000 USD at current rate for 20% of the company?

 


lel

So seeing as you've demonstrated a wealth of knowledge in the valuation of startups, how would you value the company for the purposes of the IPO?

$1 million dollars of course.

[tprogex]

Vertcoin received will immediately be converted to Bitcoin in order to be stored in a multi-signature wallet in order to prevent the misuse of invested funds by any person within the company

Hope to buy some cheap vtc from Your dumps and can You tell me which exchange You plan to use just to be aware of .

[fluffypony]

Vertcoin received will immediately be converted to Bitcoin in order to be stored in a multi-signature wallet in order to prevent the misuse of invested funds by any person within the company

Hope to buy some cheap vtc from Your dumps and can You tell me which exchange You plan to use just to be aware of .

Ah sorry - that was updated on the site but not in the post; only part of it will be converted and put into the BTC multisig wallet; we have a working prototype of a VTC multisig wallet we're going to be using for the bulk of it:)

[superduh]

Vertcoin received will immediately be converted to Bitcoin in order to be stored in a multi-signature wallet in order to prevent the misuse of invested funds by any person within the company

Hope to buy some cheap vtc from Your dumps and can You tell me which exchange You plan to use just to be aware of .

Ah sorry - that was updated on the site but not in the post; only part of it will be converted and put into the BTC multisig wallet; we have a working prototype of a VTC multisig wallet we're going to be using for the bulk of it:)

any plans on answering my valid questions?

[fluffypony]

Vertcoin received will immediately be converted to Bitcoin in order to be stored in a multi-signature wallet in order to prevent the misuse of invested funds by any person within the company

Hope to buy some cheap vtc from Your dumps and can You tell me which exchange You plan to use just to be aware of .

Ah sorry - that was updated on the site but not in the post; only part of it will be converted and put into the BTC multisig wallet; we have a working prototype of a VTC multisig wallet we're going to be using for the bulk of it:)

any plans on answering my valid questions?

They were answered by Peter ages ago:)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=595754.msg6551032#msg6551032

[peterkuhn]

An interview with Riccardo is on today's Zero Fiat's Vertcoin Update, which provides a little bit more insight into our thinking and reasoning.

Here is a link straight to where the interview starts in the podcast: https://soundcloud.com/zerofiat/zero_fiats-vertcoin-update-05-06-2014#t=11:40

@superduh: did you see my answers to your questions above? Please do ask if you have anything further!

[superduh]

An interview with Riccardo is on today's Zero Fiat's Vertcoin Update, which provides a little bit more insight into our thinking and reasoning.

Here is a link straight to where the interview starts in the podcast: https://soundcloud.com/zerofiat/zero_fiats-vertcoin-update-05-06-2014#t=11:40

@superduh: did you see my answers to your questions above? Please do ask if you have anything further!

my bad i was looking at fluffypony's posts for the answers