A day cannot pass when there is not some reference to the rise of the cryptocurrencies and what it is going to mean for the whole future of not just the financial system as we know it, but also for the world at large.
While there may be differing opinions on exactly how all of this will play out in the coming weeks, months and years, there can be no doubt that this has been the year when cryptocurrencies fully arrived and left a huge imprint on the collective consciousness. From editorials in the Financial Times to humorous memes, virtual currencies are here and they are not going anywhere anytime soon.
Unless you have been living in a cave for the last few years, you will probably already be familiar with the lead player in the whole cryptocurrency movement. Bitcoin, first created by a mysterious Japanese individual or group called Satoshi Nakamoto, has led the way in the rise of cryptocurrencies and was recently trading at record highs of around $11,000, having started 2017 at less than $1,000.
Bitcoin may be the name that most people are familiar with, but in the last year we have also seen the rapid rise of ethereum, litecoin, dash and the recently created bitcoin cash. All these virtual currencies have experienced dramatic increases in their value over the course of the last 12 months, showing and potentially convincing previously sceptical investors that this is a serious game, which is certainly not restricted to the fortunes of bitcoin.
With the huge amount of attention that has been given to bitcoin recently, as well as the incredible rise in size and cultural importance of companies, such as Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon over the last couple of years, the interest of a wider audience in exactly how the financial markets work has definitely been piqued. What before may have seen like an old-fashioned and boring arena has suddenly become one that an increasingly tech-savvy wave of people wants to get involved in. Not only do they want to know more about how this world works, but they also want to get in on the action.
By creating an intuitive platform that appeals to the millennial demographic, we have brought the traditionally closed-off world of financial trading to a whole new generation
SwipeStox was launched by the NAGA Group in June 2016 as a way of offering a solution to this new surge of interest. The driving idea behind SwipeStox was to open up the financial markets to those who had previously felt excluded or unable to take part. By creating an intuitive platform that appeals to the millennial demographic, we have brought the traditionally closed-off world of financial trading to a whole new generation.
As you would expect, the SwipeStox team has been paying great attention to the ongoing rise of the cryptocurrency world. And as we see in its genesis the very future of the way the whole world will soon come to interact with their finances, we decided to get in on the action too. We have done this through our strong support for the NAGA coin (NGC), a recently launched cryptocurrency by NAGA. A move like this cements our strongly held belief that the traditional norms of the financial world are primed for change and we want to take a front seat in this exciting movement as it unfolds.
Unlike many other companies that launch a virtual token through an initial coin offering (ICO) simply as a means to raise funds for a future project, NAGA issued the token so it can become the centre piece of the already fully functioning NAGA ecosystem. The NGCs issued have value not only in themselves, through their strong potential for appreciation, but they are also going to become the primary unit of account across all the existing and future NAGA projects, including the highly successful social-trading app SwipeStox and the soon-to-be-introduced world’s first independent virtual goods market Switex.
While Switex and the soon-to-be-realised NAGA Academy are two of the projects that we have big hopes for in 2018, it is SwipeStox that has driven much of NAGA’s growth over the last 12 months. SwipeStox really has revolutionised the way trading works for its tens of thousands of active users, as is evidenced by the fact that it currently processes thousands of transactions and billions of euros in traded volume each month.
Despite having had great success with SwipeStox since its launch, the NAGA team was determined not to rest on our laurels, and it was for this reason that we listened to our community and added a cryptocurrency market section to our trading options this summer. Not only can SwipeStox users now buy and sell bitcoin, bitcoin cash, dash, litecoin and ethereum, but with the introduction of the NAGA Wallet, users can also fund their trading accounts with the cryptocurrency of their choice.
We are the only trading platform that allows this option and in early-2018 we plan to introduce fully integrated cryptocurrency trading accounts that can be used without any need to convert funds to fiat.
With NAGA coin holders also being able to fund and trade with their tokens on both SwipeStox and Switex, we’re very excited and optimistic about the direction the blockchain-based NAGA ecosystem is going to take the company and its loyal user-base and investors over the coming years.
In moving our product-base over to the blockchain world, we believe we are positioning ourselves for a future that will increasingly rely on this technology for many of our daily tasks. Blockchain technology promotes transparency and is a push towards taking away the traditional power held by banks and corporations, and putting it in the hands of the people. This ethos is very much in line with NAGA’s own disruptive, empowering ideology, and we are proud to be playing an active and pioneering role in this movement as it begins to gain more and more steam
There is little doubt in our minds that virtual currencies are only going to go from strength to strength in the coming years, thanks in large part to the blockchain technology which will not only disrupt and impact the financial world, but also much wider social norms. We feel that with SwipeStox, Switex, the NAGA Academy and a number of other exciting projects we have up our sleeves, we are more than ready to play a leading role in the exciting further developments ahead. The blockchain-based future we envisage is empowering and full of opportunity for everyone.
