Guest AMA with Daniel Gouldman and Ian Kane of Ternio

Daniel and Ian: There are so many. One of the first was doing our initial AMA where we had the opportunity to introduce Ternio to the world and answer everyone’s questions live. From there it was getting audited at 1M TPS and demonstrating our tech to clients. Then it was getting BlockCard live, Amazon AWS designation, etc. Every little win is special because it's a "first" for Ternio. Overall, it’s been a roller coaster of wins and some losses. Ultimately, we’re continuing to make progress and every new milestone is special to us. This 2018 Year In Review highlights some of our highlights last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=l26tuVVIp08 I look forward to doing another video for 2019!

Daniel: The TERN token is well suited for payments first of all—being a Stellar token—TERN transactions are much faster and cheaper (1/1000 of a penny for a transaction). This helps minimize costs for consumers and allows us to not charge transaction fees.

We have some ideas about how Brave and Ternio can work together which we highlighted below. I think our companies are perfectly symbiotic in many ways. We're a big fan of Brave and we think they've done a great job with their ad platform and solution. Cryptocurrency has so many advantages and will continue to evolve; so yes—we feel cryptocurrencies ultimately will lead to cheaper costs, more convenience for consumers.

Best project other than Ternio? Brave! We've filed a Reg-D exemption with the SEC and are compliant with SEC expectations/rules as far as we can say. I became homeless because I'm a very stubborn person and have been since I was much younger than 17. Homeless life taught me that no matter what I go through ... it's all going to be ok.

We're very proud of Ternio because we have a great team, a great community and we feel we're one of the few companies to demonstrate we are able to deliver real products for customers. My biggest expectation is to see us innovate and change the world in ways that others presently aren't.

Daniel and Ian: We are very excited that BlockCard is now live for all US users. Register at https://getblockcard.com/ if you haven't already!

We're going to be sending physical cards soon and adding many features that will completely change and dominate the way card programs operate and how people interact with digital assets. Outside of some really cool features—we also are going to be looking to expand outside of US borders.

Daniel and Ian: We partnered with not only VISA, but also a card issuance partner (with 20+ years in the space), payment processor, and domestic bank. Each one plays a role in the overall BlockCard experience and we tend not to share how our proprietary process works (no need to educate potential competitors 👀). As we expand internationally, we will continue to onboard more banks and partners that have expertise in specific geographic areas. Deploying a card program is a very intense process and doing it the right way takes time. We want to partner with the leaders, because that ultimately delivers the best customer experience.

Daniel and Ian: Great question and one I have fielded a few months back. You can listen to my response here: https://youtu.be/tlucq8LGRCc?t=1081 The tax laws in the US are evolving and being evaluated by a lot of smart people. At Ternio, we don’t know where they will end up. Ultimately, we want to make the accounting process as easy as we can for BlockCard users which is why we have the “transactions” page in the account dashboard. This way users are able to accurately track their spending and any tax implications. We will continue to improve on this as new regulations and guidelines come out. We want to give our customers the best experience possible.

In my opinion, it would be great to see all cryptocurrencies treated as currency, however this is a very complex issue. I think Switzerland has done a good job in trying to classify and understand the difference between payment tokens, utility tokens, and asset tokens. More details on that here: https://www.finma.ch/en/news/2018/02/20180216-mm-ico-wegleitung/20180216-mm-ico-wegleitung/

Ian: There are already FIAT options, including the debit card you have your wallet now. One of the value props of BlockCard is that users get all the upward or downward price pressure of crypto. We found that most crypto users want to stay in crypto, not FIAT. The user is not converting to FIAT until they “swipe” their card - which is what the merchant receives. To help protect Ternio from any significant swings in price and mitigate the risk, we require the user to keep an added $100 in their account. So if you deposit $250, then you have $150 worth of spending power. The BlockCard user can always withdraw the full $250 from their account. The $100 just acts as a safety net.

Daniel and Ian: Thank you for the kind words. BlockCard is now open to anyone in the United States. Anyone who hasn't registered can do so at https://getblockcard.com/ Virtual cards are provided instantly (after passing KYC) and physical cards will be made available in the coming weeks. I always like to remind people that Ternio is still a small startup and we’re moving as fast as we can.

We are already engaged with partners in Europe, APAC, GCC, and HK. We envision BlockCard as being a global solution, but doing things correctly takes time. Ideally, we want to have another 1-2 countries live before the end of this year (which may be ambitious). However, large companies move at their own pace and often times we are beholden to speed at which our larger partners move. Ultimately, we are working to make the BlockCard rollout in other countries as smooth as it was for our US customers! Also, physical cards vs international roll out is not an either/or scenario. Both are happening in parallel.

Daniel and Ian: HLF & Stellar were an ideal foundation to start with for Ternio’s product suite (both BlockCard and Lexicon). HLF is great because it enables blockchain to be deployed in a permissioned environment—enabling organizations to fully “decentralize” without fully “democratizing”. Companies have concerns about blockchain becoming a competitive intelligence tool, so HLF gives them the benefits of blockchain without opening up sensitive company data. Stellar is designed for low cost microtransactions and made it an ideal choice for not only Lexicon, but also BlockCard. Other blockchain options were either too expensive in terms of transaction verification or were not setup to be permissioned based.

Daniel and Ian: Being an Amazon AWS Advanced Tech Partner is a great validator for what Ternio has built with Lexicon. It required a thorough review process by the Amazon team to verify how Ternio scales our blockchain and how it would benefit the AWS ecosystem. If AWS clients are interested in using blockchain, then Amazon can direct them to Ternio or a handful of other approved blockchain tech partners. Ternio’s profile is here: https://aws.amazon.com/partners/find/partnerdetails/?n=Ternio&id=0010L00001v27t2QAA&t=psf-overview

Daniel and Ian: Precisely! Blockchain is not a zero-sum game much like (in my opinion) there will not be a single cryptocurrency to rule them all. What makes this space so exciting is that there are a ton of smart people solving real problems in niche areas.

Daniel and Ian: Dennis and Natasha are actually advanced AI bots that Ternio developed. We have given them very human centric mannerisms so most people can't tell they’re just advanced artificial intelligence..... 🙂 🤖🖥

Daniel and Ian: Keep spreading the word about Ternio (TERN) and the cool products we’re building. Community support is so important. We’re grateful that the Brave team gave us this opportunity and platform to take your questions and help educate those that may be unfamiliar with what Ternio is doing.