It's great to see the momentum of HERo's growth lately. Scrolling before I saw well over 200 members, many of which appear to be experts in their field. There is also a significant rise in questions and posting of content within the site. These are great objective metrics. The goal is to get engagement to rise there enough so that there is a core community with a self-sustaining level of engagement, which can then be used to snowball into growth of new members. It's a great model.

It's also beginning to look a little better for the crypto industry overall, with a little more sustainable growth in markets. There are many ways to reach to success for DNotes, and I firmly believe that the multi-pronged approach to take the future into our own hands by creating a successful business unit to bootstrap success from & point investors towards as evidence of prudential business management while we wait for market conditions is a wise move.

Wow, Frank Shankwitz sounds like a truly remarkable man Alan. It sounds like it would have been a true honor to meet him, and to sit alongside him watching a movie about his life adventures.

I'm looking forward to reading more of these about individuals who have done what they can to make the world a better place, whether that be through business, non-profits, or developing new technologies and scientific discoveries.

Great to see that the conference went well. I know that there were some very important and well-connected attendees. It is also great to see some really good educational articles being published to the Hero site, and looking forward to reading more, and contributing more myself.

What kind of topics would you like to read about for tech, business, crypto and finance?

It is great to see Hero now in live beta. Currently we are building content for the members site, and releasing a few articles for our various web properties, and we will be pushing very hard to bring in paying members after a couple of weeks of operating in live beta to ensure no issues with the functionality of the site (which is looking great).

The resources will be very helpful for women (and anyone) who wants to learn more about business, upskill in areas needed to succeed in business, and people who want to mentor one another, or purchase services from those whose skills they require.

I see Binance have figured a solution that works much better for companies, without threatening government fiat money hegemony. If they make a few further tweaks to their model, they might have a paper that looks like the one I gave to the New Zealand Reserve Bank Governor more than a year ago. My current understanding is that it requires a lot of multi-agency collaboration to get anything over the line for such approvals -- reserve banks will want control over all money in an economy, meanwhile they will also deflect the creation of stablecoins (or any attempt to raise money using them) as falling under the purview of other agencies. That said, Binance have the brand recognition to get it over the line.

Hey Amadeus82,

Currently the website members section is in a live alpha stage. We are currently testing all of the features and looking towards any final changes we want to send to the developer before the official launch, which shouldn't be much longer. We are also looking at some of the initial content for the discussion boards and other information we would like the site to launch with -- because HERo takes features from a combination of Quora, Reddit, and Yelp.  It's been a work in progress and we're really pleased to have it all just about ready to launch.

That's a great response MrBum805, and a fair reflection of the current state of things, but also where we plan to go. As in all things, you don't get to control everything that happens to you, but you do get to control how you respond. We came up with new strategies to bring in revenues so that we could fund development and also attract investment to the company, which will both get us closer to where we need to get to. Instead of a very direct path from A to B, we have had to add an extra step in between that will improve the overall company position.

We are preparing to get everything ready for the HERo membership launch, and to support it once the platform goes live. There will be demand for content, and we will have paying members that we will be looking to cater for and support.

Yeah, it's not looking like it is going to take much longer for the initial release. I know that Alan has been talking to many people who plan to contribute to HERo when it launches -- and then some! As the first steady revenue generating business property within DNotes Global, HERo will give us some much needed breathing room and allow us to to compound that revenue growth to reach all of our next targets.

That is true to a degree. Many of the larger banks are investing heavily in financial technology businesses and more niche banks to try and capture the emergent market share under their business umbrella. A PWC report I read estimated that the banks only have about five years until Silicon Valley firms begin to eat into their market share. The banks will need to do something soon.

Alan had this to share with one of the members in our community via LinkedIn, which was shared to telegram. I thought I'd cross post it over here.

The question the member asked was: "How are things going with HERo and Dnotes? You haven't been active in the Telegram channel for quite a while and things seem to have gone very quiet recently! I understand that the membership version of HERo is close to launching. Is there a lot of interest from external parties?"


Alan's reply is as follows:


"Good to hear from you. My summer schedule is usually overwhelming but far more so this year.

I used to respond to every message within 24 hours. It is no longer possible – including yours, though always given top priority. For reference, as of this morning I have 1,400 emails unopened, and 100+ Linked messages yet to be responded to. Yes, it is overwhelming, and I must pick and choose for the best use of my time.

I just did a quick read of Telegram after weeks of absence. It is difficult to justify allocating precious time to engage in some of the discussions. Tim is representing us well and I will continue to stay out of it. Tim will continue to support Telegram, and Joe will support the DNotes Forum. My focus is on HERo. I am also involved in other private projects, as I always have.

HERo is doing extremely well. We have been investing very heavily in developing our membership platform. We are at the final stages of coding and expect to start testing soon. An official launch in 60 days is expected.

HERo is opening many new doors for us. This is turning out to be a more amazing initiative for us than we ever anticipated. I can target anyone in our industry; women or men or outside of our industry – in technology, finance and entrepreneurship, and get a 10% positive response. I have never seen anything remotely close to this level of success rate.

HERo is our best pathway to the corporate world to become the truly inclusive trusted global digital currency.

Success in business is a process, often more complicated and challenging than initially anticipated. Our vision has been clearly defined with a road-map. Like most business ventures, it has taken longer, cost more, and challenged with more problems than anticipated. However, what we are going through is nothing unusual in the real business world.

The best use of my time is a total focus on HERo and convert it to become our first revenue generating business unit with a substantial global network. That will lead to the success of other projects as laid out on our road-map.
A very detailed response from Alan with some fantastic information for everyone to digest. The interest in HERo seems to be significant and keeping Alan busy making new connections. A rough time estimate of 2 months has been provided for the membership platform and with the significant levels of external interest may help to drive things forward!"

Well, to be fair, Nano will be funded from when it had a market cap of 4 billion dollars ($31 per coin) and a liquid market within which to liquidate coins -- the founders would have certainly used some of the gains to fund continued expansion. Instead of selling coins onto the market, we are looking to generate external revenue with which we can continue funding DNotes. We do not know the circumstances or arrangement of Nano's inclusion on Binance, but comparing us to a coin that once pump and dumped up to a 4 billion dollar market cap is not a reasonable comparison.

We haven't been trying to get anything for free, we have made applications and offers at all the exchanges that we want to be listed on. We are well aware that getting onto larger exchanges will boost liquidity / trading volumes and likely result in a boost for the coin (and this will likely happen whenever we list). We are also aware that we need to build revenue structures into DNotes Global which will make it a more attractive investment to traditional investors who include revenue and traction as one of their investment metrics. If you build an ecosystem of profitable business units that earn the company seeking investment money, while also working to grow its exposure to various groups (business groups, crypto news followers, women's tech groups etc) then it is looked at favorably by such investors. 

It's turning out to be an interesting day for Bitcoin -- many were very apprehensive over which way the likely sharp movement would be based on the charts, and I think many will be happy to see that the price has made a fairly big jump upwards of around 13% at the time I wrote this. I still expect the markets to go sideways for some time yet, but this is a welcome movement for general market sentiment.

This is a very concerning report that will surprise nobody. There are many exchanges that trade on their own exchanges or fake the reported volumes to coinmarketcap so that they can trick people into thinking there is lots of trading going on, which has let them get away in many instances in selling listing to crypto projects for 10-20 times what the price should have been. This has been one of the issues DNotes has faced, with many 30-200k offers to list on cryptocurrency exchanges that are probably only doing a few million dollars a day in volume. The objective is to get onto one of the larger and more reputable exchanges that can be trusted, and thus deliver value for the community. 

Well done on interviewing such a credible and high-profile person Alan. It is clear from Shellie's bio that she's seen everything unfold and knows the story of empowerment better than most as a top motivational / inspirational speaker. Shellie is one of the many top experts who could end up offering services through the HERo platform, and the services listed in the post will make for a highly-connected community.

That was a really cool answer from a highly accomplished investor. The third factor is that he likes to see strong insights around how the product will grow -- especially organically rather than paid growth. This usually comes down to relationships one has with companies that could help the business grow (say a sports app knowing the owners of the NFL and NBA), and particularly relationships with potential consumers who have the ability to influence masses of others to use your brand or product.

The DNotes family of businesses have been designed to expand out to reach new groups of people, and garner their support. More strategic partners can be vital when it comes to raising significant sums of investment from the best and our current approach is conducive to that end.

 

Hopefully the changes will have the desired effects -- and increase liquidity across many markets, including those that are smaller. I'm given more confidence by Bitcoin's relative stability in the last few months, and of course we're all looking forward for a more stable climb that will have widespread positive effects on the whole industry.

There are multiple beneficial scenarios that I can see going forward:

One is that some of the regulatory agencies make decisions that would see the financial system opened up to cryptocurrencies. This would allow them to be networked properly with the traditional financial system. Regulatory oversight of many players could be beneficial, but I believe this would best be within the capacity of forced transparency and adherence to best practices -- as opposed to expensive licencing and costly regulatory requirements that can cost hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions to comply with.

The other would be what some agents in the space are doing, whereby they actively publish daily data, proof of funds, solvency and other materials that prove the health of the project or business. There is also the possibility that independent agencies can give 'approval stamps' or other such things in a much more cost-efficient manner than otherwise. However, there would need to be checks to ensure that these independent agencies are not as prone to corruption -- for example two audits could be conducted by two separate appraisers that do not know one another and do not work in the same division (one is out of city). Each company would be appraised twice per year (once by each appraiser). I'm sure they could think of some fancy way to use blockchain to mitigate potential corruption -- though I think there will be better strategies than the above going forward that can promote transparency in the medium term.

Either way, it's good to see people moving along in the space -- though most of that effort has been to turn cryptocurrency into a wing of traditional finance. The Winkelevoss twins want to be an additional intermediary to take a clip off the ticket when you make payments. The opportunities and cost reductions that cryptocurrencies offer make them comparably more profitable than existing systems, and could make it much easier to bank those in developing nations.
 

I think the twins make a fair point, that we need to fix the trust issue within the industry -- and I think a lot of that regulation is the government opening up the existing system to cryptocurrency so that professionals can come in and work towards that improved reputation. Though the fact cannot be discounted that they are pushing for regulations that would add costs and stifle competition for Gemini, and thus, industry innovation would be limited to existing club.

My understanding is that Cryptopia have now opened their read-only site so that people can check their balances. I read too that they're finalizing what they're doing for customers affected in the hack.

This is regrettable, but consumer options will slowly but surely force the larger banks to play ball.