A Shariah Advisory Council chairman in Malaysia has praised the “great potential” of cryptocurrency
Two thieves have destroyed the front wall of a deli in Canada after a failed attempt to steal a Bitcoin ATM.
The NFT is “a symbolic expression of Satoshi’s vision, forged out of the very code that lies at the genesis of it all.”
The seven transactions involved in the movement of these funds on Wednesday were flagged by Twitter-based blockchain tracker bot Whale Alert.
Read more Following news of yesterday’s partnership with Block.one, Google Cloud says it is not getting into EOS for the tokens.
Read more Mobile and desktop Bitcoin and Lightning wallet BlueWallet has added support for BIP 78 with its PayJoin feature.
Read more Bitcoin’s price is rebounding from a sell-off Tuesday while large ether holders are making moves.
Read more The popularity of decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges had backed up the Ethereum blockchain, raising questions about its ability to scale.
Read more Running a small to medium-sized business means a small staff needs to juggle a plethora of tasks, like bookkeeping, tax records and regulatory filings. Singaporean startup Lanturn streamlines their workload with a combination of corporate services and an internal platform that helps automate administrative work. Lanturn announced today that it has raised a $3 million seed round led by East Ventures and CoCoon Ignite Ventures.
Spun out from Zave, a Singaporean management app (and another startup in East Ventures’ portfolio), two years ago, Lanturn now has almost 400 clients. It focuses on startups and SMEs, acting as a “one-stop online corporate services” solution, and uses its internal tech platform to differentiate from other corporate service providers.
Lanturn’s services include helping companies incorporate in Singapore and handling visa applications for new hires. It is led by chief executive officer Velisarios Kattoulas.
Kattoulas told TechCrunch that Lanturn’s seed funding will be used for hiring and to develop its technology.
In a statement about the investment, East Ventures managing partner and co-founder Batara Eto said, “We are pleased to support solutions that enable agility and adaptability among businesses, especially in the wake of the pandemic, and Lanturn provides that by leveraging technology to streamline corporate services and empower businesses to make more informed data-driven decisions.”
Other participants in the round included individual investors Alex Turnbull; RVP Equity managing partner Saki Georgiadis; Meiyen Tan, the head of Oon & Bazul’s restructuring and insolvency practice; White & Case Asia-Pacific partner Chris Kelly; and Next Billion Ventures venture partner Tiang Foo Lim.
Lanturn’s clients range in size from very early-stage startups with only one person, to small and mid-sized asset managers, SMEs and tech firms that have more than 100 employees spread across several countries.
The COVID-19 pandemic meant there was less demand for Lanturn’s services this year than the company had expected, but on the other hand, “the pandemic has highlighted to clients that because Lanturn has its own cloud-based corporate services platform, we can serve them as well today as we could before the pandemic,” Kattoulas said. “That’s helped us maintain momentum, and it’s one reason we’ll grow more this year than almost any cloud-based or traditional corporate services firm.”
When you look at maps of micromobility across the world, it appears there’s not a ton of activity throughout Africa. Well, that’s because there’s not, Gura Ride founder and CEO Tony Adesina said at TC Sessions: Mobility.
In Africa, there are “very few” micromobility operators, Adesina said. “Almost non-existent.”
That’s why launching bike and scooter share in Africa, and specifically Rwanda was strategic, he said. In Kigali, there are many bike lanes and cycling is quite popular in Rwanda, Adesina said. But bikeshare and scooters are “completely new to them.”
Gura Ride has been in operation for the last couple of years and says people are generally receptive to the idea. Still, it hasn’t attracted the same type of market activity as other places.
“Africa is quite unique,” Adesina said. “I don’t think it’s somewhere where you can bring an existing model, maybe that worked in the States or the UK and just dump in a country like South Africa or Rwanda. You have to understand the culture and the people you’re dealing with. It takes quite some time. You have to study the terrain and make sure the model you run in the U.S. or the U.K. can actually fit. Another thing is price. The buying power is not as heavy as you have in the States. So the numbers have to make sense and you have to make sure that the market you’re going into can meet your projected goals.”
That’s partly why Voi, which has gained a stronghold across Europe, has yet to launch in Africa. Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm noted how the cost of supply and operations is pretty much the same wherever it operates, so in markets where there is less willingness among riders to pay higher costs, it makes it “very, very difficult to operate profitably,” he said.
Once Voi can bring down the costs of operations, it will be easier to launch in more markets and operate profitably there, Hjelm said.
“So there is definitely a time where we will be able to make markets with lower willingness to pay, such as Africa, profitable, when we go there,” he said.
What’s key to micromobility becoming more mainstream in Africa is infrastructure, Adesina said.
“I think the biggest issue [in Kigali] is that the roads are quite narrow, so how do you share the road so you don’t have a lot of hit and runs,” he said.
On the other hand, micromobility is thriving so much in Europe because of the infrastructure, Hjelm said. So, infrastructure can really make or break the industry.
“The infrastructure is better than anywhere else,” Hjlem said. “Culturally also, we’re much more used to bikes to mopeds to vespas to scooters — to all kinds of alternatives to cars. So I think that fundamentally, Europe is the world’s most attractive market.”