TIDMBLU
Blue Star Capital plc
07 June 2021
7June 2021
Blue Star Capital plc
("Blue Star" or the "Company")
Blue Star Capital's investee SatoshiPay receives R&D grant
from Stellar Development Foundation for Pendulum blockchain
Blue Star Capital plc (AIM: BLU), the investing company with a
focus on esports, payments, technology and its applications within
media and gaming, notes the announcement by SatoshiPay, one of its
investee companies, this it has received an R&D grant from
Stellar Development Foundation.
SatoshiPay is a fintech company supplying payment and money
transfer infrastructure based on blockchain technology to digital
industries and globally operating SMEs.
In its blog, SatoshiPay advises that the Stellar Foundation
grant will be used to kickstart the development of the Pendulum
network project and develop a proof-of-concept implementation of
Pendulum. After completing the initial proof of concept, it is
expected that Pendulum will be further developed into a
full-fledged decentralised layer 2 blockchain that will be
accessible for everyone.
The Pendulum network is a new second-layer blockchain that
connects Stellar to the wider Deconstructed Finance (DeFi)
ecosystem by adding smart contract support and bridges to Ethereum
and Polkadot.
In order to bring more complex features to the Stellar network
without sacrificing the network's efficiency, SatoshiPay is
planning to build Pendulum, a suite of open, decentralised
protocols on which smart contracts can be developed and executed.
The Pendulum chain acts as a second layer on top of Stellar, with
additional bridges to two of the most popular smart contract
platforms, Ethereum and Polkadot.
The latest news further strengthens SatoshiPay's position as a
leading player in Decentralised Finance (DeFi) which has emerged in
the past year and is positioned to profoundly disrupt traditional
financial services like trading, credit/lending and
yield-generating accounts. The industry has grown over twentyfold
in 2020 alone, and reached more than USD 60 billion in Total Value
Locked in smart contracts as of May 2021.
Blue Star looks forward to following the developments of
Pendulum and to better understanding the impact this may have, if
any, on Blue Star.
Derek Lew, Blue Star executive chairman, commented :
"The Stellar Foundation grant is yet another positive
endorsement for Meinhard and the team at SatoshiPay as they
continue to make inroads into this huge market."
Meinhard Benn, CEO SatoshiPay, commented:
"SatoshiPay is entering the protocol space, allowing us to drive
forward permissionless innovation and to increase our impact on the
blockchain ecosystem. With Pendulum, we aim to bring together the
best of two worlds - combining DeFi applications as we know them
from Ethereum with Stellar's compliant fiat tokens. It will also be
exciting to see liquidity enclosed in Stellar's $9 billion market
cap and the $7 trillion foreign exchange market interact with the
booming DeFi economy."
Justin Rice, VP of Ecosystem at Stellar Development Foundation
says:
"SatoshiPay has a proven track record as a key Stellar network
and ecosystem participant, and we couldn't be more excited that
they are exploring an opportunity to connect Stellar to the
thriving DeFi ecosystem. With its unique tools for compliant
connections to traditional banking networks, the Stellar network is
well positioned to connect traditional finance with the innovative
DeFi space. Pendulum has the potential to build bridges that
increase Stellar's interoperability with other networks, which
could enable new use cases and help unlock the world's economic
potential by making moneymore fluid, markets more open, and people
more empowered."
For further information please contact:
Blue Star Capital plc +44 (0) 20 3608 3019
Derek Lew
About Blue Star Capital
Blue Star is an investing company with a focus on new
technologies. Blue Star's investments include a 27.7% holding in
SatoshiPay, a payments business using blockchain technology;
investments in 6 early stage esports companies with shareholdings
ranging from 6% to 13.6% and a 0.9% investment in Sthaler, an
identity and payments technology business which enables a consumer
to identify themselves and pay using just their finger.
About SatoshiPay
SatoshiPay is a fintech company supplying payment and money
transfer infrastructure based on blockchain technology to digital
industries and globally operating SMEs. Having initially focussed
on building a micropayment infrastructure and platform the decision
was taken just over a year ago to use the same technology and
experience to move into B2B cross border payments service for
businesses.
SatoshiPay announced the launch of its B2B payments platform
DTransfer in September 2020 to facilitate cross-border payments for
businesses by integrating currency exchange into each
transaction.
In December 2020, SatoshiPay announced it had signed an
agreement with German Bankhaus von der Heydt to become the first
user of the bank's fully compliant Euro-backed stablecoin ("EURB")
which it is integrating with DTransfer.
This agreement provides SatoshiPay with a stable on and off-ramp
for EURB transactions with instant EUR-based bank transfers within
the Single Euro Payments Area (which comprises 36 European
member-states) allowing users with an easy solution to instantly
send and receive euro-based payments.
To date, the Company has invested approximately GBP1.9 million
in SatoshiPay. Based on the value of SatoshiPay's last fund raise,
Blue Star's investment is valued at approximately GBP4.9
million.
About Stellar Foundation
Stellar is an open-source network for currencies and payments,
which makes it possible
to easily create, send and trade digital representations of all
forms of crypto and fiat currencies. Launched in 2015, the Stellar
network now processes over 6 million operations daily and is widely
used in the payments space and for asset tokenisation. On the
Stellar network, businesses and developers benefit from
near-instant settlement within 5 seconds and transaction fees that
are fractions of a cent.
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