Five Blockchain Companies to Watch in 2018

NetworkNewsWire Editorial Coverage: Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency unarguably have the potential to alter the future of money, finance, transportation and national security. While an increasing number of blockchain plays wind their way through the investment community, Victory Square Technologies Inc. (CSE: VST) (OTC: VSQTF) (FRANKFURT: 6F6) (WKN: A2AKL8) (VSQTF Profile) is demonstrating a particular measure of blockchain innovation potential in a wide range of industries, including payment processing, mobile gaming, and more.  Other companies seizing territory in the blockchain technology space include tech-giant IBM (NYSE: IBM), Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Visa (NYSE: V) and Hive BlockChain Technologies (TSX:HIVE.V) (OTC: HVBTF).

Why Victory Square Technologies is One to Watch

Experienced in backing new ventures, Victory Square Technologies Inc. (CSE: VST) (OTC: VSQTF) (FRANKFURT: 6F6) (WKN: A2AKL8) finances and engages entrepreneurs, bringing them into a fold of education programs, global mentor networks, and effective distribution partnerships.

The company has corporate history in entertainment, sports, finance, energy infrastructure, healthcare and gaming, and thus can intelligently ease pathways for blockchain technologies and companies into those sectors and others.

Victory Square’s impending CAD $1.9 million investment in emerging merchant processor PayVida Solutions Inc. is just one of the company’s anchors in the blockchain space (http://nnw.fm/jVxk5).

While the acquisition of a stake in PayVida enables Victory Square to invest in payment processing, the company’s most recent investment enables a unique position in one of the highest grossing segments of the entertainment industry.

Recognizing the opportunity to leverage blockchain with in the burgeoning global gaming market, Victory Square in mid-February disclosed an agreement to acquire 100 percent of Vancouver-based V2 Games Inc. for $2 million CAD (US$1.6 million) (http://nnw.fm/mD40h).

Founded as a game development and publishing studio, V2 Games now boasts an operating history of licensing large IPs, and was the first Canadian company to license the PAC-MAN IP for a mobile game. The company’s licensing portfolio also includes Hello Kitty, the NFL and the NBA. Leveraging its success in mobile gaming, V2 Games invests its returns into other gaming companies, providing them with seed capital and expertise needed to growth their business. Recent investments include Flow, an equity crowdfunding platform for blockchain-powered games; and AR blockchain company, Shape Immersive.

The virtual nature of modern gaming is pushing the global gaming industry into overdrive. Analysts forecast that the industry will reach nearly $109 billion by 2017 (http://nnw.fm/DW28q), with the mobile gaming segment gobbling up 42 percent of the market.

The integration of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies into this burgeoning industry will likely push gaming to unprecedented heights by providing gamers with even more options, rewards and upgrades.

V2 Games’ strategy is to leverage this growth, along with Victory’s Square’s expertise in blockchain and the public markets, to offer top-tier opportunities to retail investors while facilitating new financing opportunities in the gaming industry.

Establishing Industry Roots

For Victory Square, exponential success in blockchain means embedding in and pursuing opportunities in the broader ecosystem.

In December 2017, Victory Square Technologies joined the Blockchain Investors Consortium (“BIC”), an influential group with more than $2 billion of digital assets. BIC pools member experience and expertise in shared due diligence efforts to identify investment opportunities in the most promising and disruptive blockchain-enabled companies.

The membership enabled a pathway for Victory Square Technologies to take an early-mover position in the Initial Coin Offering (“ICO”) rush via participation in Bluzelle’s (“BLZ”) early contributor round token sale (http://nnw.fm/8kxfC). With the purchase of a $250,000 allocation of BLZ tokens, Victory Square also received 25 percent more tokens for its contribution.

Victory Square also retained Bluzelle CEO Pavel Bains as a strategic advisor to help advance Victory Square’s Blockchain Assembly portfolio company, leveraging his expertise in blockchain and fintech, including ICOs and tokens.

History of Blockchain Investments

As an early investor in blockchain technologies, Victory Square has a deep background and insights to share with affiliated companies. More than three years ago, Victory Square incubated and invested in BTL Group Ltd. (TSX:BTL), the first publicly traded blockchain company (http://nnw.fm/aUcJ3) with a current market cap of over US$220 million. It has also enabled the integration of blockchain technology into the betting website FansUnite, creating a blockchain FAN token to place wagers and building a more-easily verifiable and transparent betting platform.

At FansUnite, the success of blockchain’s technology is such that Darius Eghdami, co-founder and CEO of FansUnite, said, “We are confident it will become the gold standard among sports betting sites around the world.”

Aside from sports betting, Victory Square has diversified its portfolio into VR/AR gaming, personalized health and film.

Victory Square’s track record of strategic investments not only expands its portfolio of disruptive technology investments, but builds its momentum and pace in the broader blockchain industry.

Other Notable Companies in the Blockchain Space

IBM (NYSE: IBM) has already taken a big lead in blockchain tech for supply chain management, aiming to reduce cash cycle time, increase transaction visibility, and reduce the overhead and number of cost intermediates (http://nnw.fm/ct4LZ). Customs declarations are seen as a growth market for the technology (http://nnw.fm/5cxPP), due in large part to blockchain’s ability to ensure asset transfer integrity across a company’s entire supply chain via distributed ledger authentication, a network-driven capacity hailed as the answer to the difficult, costly, time-consuming and risk-inviting practice of maintaining such records via antiquated, sole-source in-house methods.

Walmart (NYSE:WMT), in collaboration with IBM, Chinese retailer JD.com (NASDAQ:JD) and Tsinghua University National Engineering Laboratory,  recently reported the creation of a Blockchain Food Safety Alliance to improve food tracking and safety in China (http://nnw.fm/5Ip1c). In a test program, Walmart showed that the application of blockchain technology reduced the time it took to trace a grocery store’s mango supply chain back to its farm origins to two seconds from what had taken several days. While mangoes are rarely if ever lethal, each year one in 10 people fall ill globally as a result of food-borne diseases; of those, about 420,000 die. The blockchain-enabled ability to rapidly trace bad food to the source and eliminate it from the food chain will mark an important advance in food safety.

Visa (NYSE:V) began testing a new cross-border payments solution dubbed B2B Connect in late January, tying in with financial institutions such as UnionBank, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (NYSE:MTU), and Korea-based Shinhan Financial Group. Visa said B2B Connect eliminates friction for cross-border transactions by using distributed ledger (blockchain) technology to enhance the speed, security and reliability of transactions. Other companies involved in the Visa BTB payment effort include blockchain firm Blocko, the Japan Bank Consortium and Woori Bank.

Hive BlockChain Technologies (HIVE.V, HVBTF), which listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange last September, plans to build bridges from the blockchain sector to traditional capital markets. HIVE has partnered with Genesis Mining Ltd., touted as the world’s largest cloud-based blockchain and cryptocurrency mining company, to build the next generation of blockchain infrastructure. HIVE owns state-of-the-art GPU-based digital currency mining facilities in Iceland that produce newly minted virgin digital currency like Ethereum around the clock, and is in the midst of a major expansion of operations into Sweden.

The Next Act

The rapid emergence of blockchain technology and its acceptance in multiple marketplaces present a possibility of a once-in-a-generation investment opportunities in a transformational technology, somewhat akin to the early dot-com days.  The words “creative destruction” or “disruptive technology” hardly do credit to the beneficial upheavals pending in finance, payment processing, transportation and other industries as blockchain platforms become pervasive.

Especially well-positioned will be those tested investor-practitioners, such as Victory Square Technologies, who have the added perspective of industry experience outside of software to anticipate in which sectors blockchain platforms will be especially accepted, useful or profitable.

One thing is certain, there will be plenty of room for winners in the blockchain space. The market for blockchain-related products and services is expected to reach $7.7 billion in 2022, up from $242 million in 2017, an astonishing 32-fold increase, reports researcher Markets & Markets.

That huge increase in blockchain-related enterprise is expected in the next five years. But, as with the Internet, the real growth and shape of blockchain applications will likely be decades in the making.

For more information on Victory Square Technologies Inc. please visit: Victory Square Technologies Inc. (CSE: VST) (OTC: VSQTF) or please read: Blockchain Revolution Triggers Massive Profit Opportunity

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