Woe betide traditional banking because Dimitry Voloshinskiy and his team are on the prowl. Voloshinskiy is the founder of the NextBank Project, an attempt to create a truly bitcoin-based bank. The team has raised $950,000 so far using personal money and angels, and they hope to attract more. What is a BTC bank? First, they’re looking to attract the bitcoin crowd. “We are a 100% online bank. There is emote account opening in majority cases and we are thinking about the bitcoin community. We are happy to welcome bitcoin companies, traders and forward-looking entrepreneurs. NextBank is the first bitcoin friendly bank,” Voloshinskiy said. They are building the company to work unlike any bank before it. The company is also led by Celine Neves, a former CEO at a Vanuatu-registered bank. Vanuatu is an “Oceanian island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean” that offers a number of benefits to banking partners including “rational financial authorities,” as well as general worldwide acceptance. This places the organization outside of the traditional roadblocks put up against bitcoin businesses, a problem that strangles many crypto-fintech plays in the cradle. “It’s not black-listed as [an] offshore centre. According to our research in 40 jurisdictions, Vanuatu is ideal for the bank of tomorrow,” he said. The company aims to make it easy to make accounts remotely, accept customers and work fully with international debit cards. It also will allow bitcoin businesses to work without the regulatory hurdles associated with current jurisdictions. “I hate banks as they are at the moment. I believe they [are] going to die soon,” said Voloshinskiy. He wants to support bitcoin-based fintech business and forward thinking bitcoin fans, a move that should make a lot of wallet-holders quite happy. Expect to see more out of the bank in 2016 when the team launches their first products. UPDATE – There is some concern that this is a scam. It very well may be and I’ll do more digging but consider this from Dinbits: ￼Given all of the above, and as much as I personally wanted this to be true, it’s not. This is a scam! In addition to the above evidence, Simon the PR guy doesn’t exist either, and the CEO (who we did find, and likely unaware of the appointment) who was reported as the former head of Vanuatu Private Bank, certainly sounds impressive … until you realize that this bank does not exist either. Even if this guy was for real and sincerely wanted to open this bank, it would not work the way that he has presented it and in some of the countries he wants to open up in it’s not even possible at all. This was a better presentation than most scams, it had some very convincing things in place and it struck a nerve being something many in the industry would like to see. This idea could certainly be done, but not by a someone with no experience in doing anything like this, not for 25 million, and at the moment, certainly not in Russia or China. Unfortunately this is a scam. Even if it wasn’t, it would be a piss-poor investment since it fails before it begins and will never exist. It is, however, a good way to make your money not exist. UPDATE – NextBank sent us their response on Reddit complete with legal threats.
The NextBank project, which has so far raised $950,000, and is aiming to become the first Bitcoin-based bank, will launch its first products in 2016. The bank, once operational, will aim to support Bitcoin and FinTech-based companies.