Berlin based blockchain company, the MXC Foundation — created by Brisbane entrepreneur Aaron Wagener – has scored a clutch of new venture capital investors that are backing its plan to use a cryptocurrency to enable the secure and authenticated trading of data from IoT sensors over LoRaWAN.
The new backers are Fenbushi Capital, BlockAsset Ventures, Longhash, the VeChain Foundation and Node Capital (details at the end). Their participation follows MXC raising $35m in May and announcing in June plans to raise a further $6 million through a public initial coin offering (ICO) for its Machine eXchange Coin.
The foundation has developed software that can be incorporated into LoRaWAN IoT devices and gateways that enables the data generated from sensors to encrypted, authenticated and bought and sold in exchange for tokens of its cryptocurrency.
So, for example, one organisation or individual could set up a network of sensors to gather air pollution data, and use a LoRaWAN gateway operated by another organisation or individual to collect that data. Then, a third party wanting air pollution data could gain access to it by paying the owner of the sensors and the owner of the gateway in MXC tokens.
A new sharing economy
Wagener envisages the emergence of a new sharing economy: the widespread sharing of data and IoT network resources supported by trading in cryptocurrency tokens. He toldIoTAustralia: “One of our advisors and investors is Jeffrey Wernick who was an adviser to Uber and AirBnB in the early days and he will be helping us roll out the shared network.”
According to Wagener: “MXC differentiates itself from other IoT/ data tokens by focusing on the use of LPWAN infrastructure, turning it into the world’s largest device data sharing economy. With LPWAN technology, MXC enables fast, end-to-end encrypted data transmissions over long distances. We’re linking hardware to the blockchain, allowing us to provide real-life use cases for this ground-breaking technology.”
He added: “We are putting sensors and gateways on the blockchain and making sure they are the allocated source of the data. This is really important to make sure you get quality out of the data and know who it is coming from. It is about putting hardware on the blockchain and giving accountability to the source of the data.”
Initial coin offering
Wagener said MXC was now in the throes of its initial coin offering having raised sufficient funds. “We’ve pretty much finished and we have a valuation of about $40m,” he said. We will use that to get going, especially what is really crucial: getting the LoRaWAN network rolled out and rewarding people for that.”
Wagener suggested anyone putting in a gateway could raise awareness of it using the website ttnmapper.org. “There you can see thousands of LoRaWAN networks that have been built up around cities.”
And he suggested there would be uptake for a wide range of use cases. “There are a lot of different parties. It could be people wanting to check on security or energy in their home. It could be health companies, insurance companies, smart cities etc. We are working with the Copenhagen Government to set up some smart city solutions using LPWAN. “
However he acknowledged that raising awareness and understanding of the system would be challenging.
“It is definitely a slow burner. There are a number of different elements to what we are doing and it is extremely difficult for the general public to grasp. So I think we need to focus on the sharing economy and how people can profit from it. People generally respond quite well to those things.
“We want to promote that to the general community and we believe there are a number of different stakeholders: big business, small to medium enterprises and people on the street.”
Wagener said he expected that, as usage of MXC increased and hence the frequency of coin trading increased the value of the coin would increase.
“The more a coin gets traded the higher the value is and we see MXC getting traded quite regularly — a significant number of times per day as a result of it being part of IoT.”
However this would increase the cost of any organisation using the system to gather data and Wagener said MXC had built in safeguards to prevent this.
MXC’s latest investors
Fenbushi Capital is the first Chinese venture capital firm that exclusively invests in blockchain-enabled companies. Their mission is to accelerate the inevitable future of blockchain economy by supporting as many organizations as possible. Fenbushi’s experience in the blockchain space will play an important role in bringing much more transparency, efficiency, and robustness into the global economy.
BlockAsset Ventures is an Asian blockchain technology fund that invests in promising blockchain startups. The fund leverages its years of experience in the digital asset space and strong industry relationships to invest in a portfolio of prominent digital assets.
Longhash is a platform for accelerating the development and understanding of blockchain technology. Its platform offers independent data analysis and media commentary, as well as a full range of support for blockchain start-ups including but not limited to professional services, modularized knowledge sharing, mentoring services, and investor outreach.
The VeChain Foundation is the world’s leading public blockchain platform offering Blockchain-as-a-Service to enterprises. By leveraging on blockchain technology, the VeChain Foundation continuously aims at optimizing and adding value to the scope and development of their VeChainThor platform. To create a platform with holistic capabilities, the VeChain Foundation’s approach is to include the world’s best service providers, reputable enterprises and global experts into their platform’s ecosystem to ensure the integration of as much business activities as possible.
Node Capital is led by Du Jun, the founder and former CEO of Huobi, the digital currency trading platform and exchange. Node Capital specializes in Blockchain layout, ultimately aiming to connect every node of Blockchain industry together to build a solid foundational ecosystem supporting projects in Blockchain such as news information, digital asset transactions, storage, technology development and applications Node Capital brings together a wealth of experience in emerging Blockchain projects, crypto payments, and community collaboration.
