Over the weekend of the 28th and 29th of June, fifty software developers, finance professionals and entrepreneurs came together for Hackcoin, the UK’s first digital currency hackathon.
Lending Bits
One of the teams developed a prototype for a start-up called Lending Bits, which is a platform that enables SME’s to raise funding by issuing bonds via the Counterparty protocol. By opening up cryptocurrencies as a source of funding, Lending Bits aims to help address the enormous £50 billion financing gap that small to midsize businesses are expected to face in the coming years.
The system leverages the low cost asset issuance and peer-to-peer trading features of Counterparty, and plans to use Vennd.io and automated parsing of blockchain history to create a gateway that will only dispense value to pre-authorised Bitcoin addresses.
A key innovation is that the system aims to provide proof that a bond has not been traded outside of a closed circle of KYC authorized buyers and sellers. The business aims to make money by taking a small percentage of every coupon payment and by providing a range of ancillary services.
No official winner of the hackathon was named, but the Counterparty founders issued a prize of 250 XCP (about $500 at current prices) which was split between the five team members.
The team is ready to commence talks with VCs to acquire seed funding.
Team “Lending Bits” consists of Stewart Douglas, Max Steele, Jeremy Hannon, Mikhail Dubov and Anton Semenov.