In our latest update from Kinesis CEO and Founder, Thomas Coughlin reviews the milestones of the Kinesis Monetary system in Q1 2022 and provides a glimpse into the developments to come for Q2 2022.
Snapshot
The Kinesis Card
The Kinesis Card will be released in Q2 and is in the final stages of assurance, with the program first to be rolled out in the United States, Europe, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Closely following this, the card will be made available to clients on a global scale, one month after its initial release.
Once signed up and verified, cardholders will have complete access to their own virtual Kinesis card, as an integrated part of the Kinesis mobile app, with the physical card option for users to follow shortly. The multi-currency and storage preference functionality will allow users to store up to five digital assets on their card for instant conversion at the point of sale – including gold, silver, crypto or fiat – with a competitively high daily spend limit of £15,000.
The oncoming card represents a crucial milestone for the Kinesis system, positioned as a major catalyst for the use of Kinesis gold and silver currencies outside the system. The strategic partner selected for the Kinesis Card launch is just one of several partnerships set to facilitate the use of gold and silver as spendable assets, with localised card programs tailored to specific regions coming soon. More program-specific details will be released closer to launch.
Silver Referral Rewards Program
We were proud to announce the Silver Referral Rewards program this quarter, as an exciting opportunity for Kinesis users, ambassadors and influencers to give and earn tangible rewards in precious metals for welcoming their community to the platform.
The Silver Rewards program means that Kinesis platform users can earn a share of 1oz of Kinesis silver – or 0.5 KAG between themselves and their invitee – by referring their friends and family to the platform. With no upper limit to the tangible silver rewards that can be earned through the program, the act of referring is awarded a highly valuable incentive.
The Referral Rewards program comes as an additional feature to the Referrer’s yield, which is paid out monthly to users who have onboarded and contributed to the exponential growth of the platform over the years.
Audits
With the easing of Covid restrictions across the globe, Kinesis is pleased to advise that the delayed audit is to be scheduled to occur in Q2 2022. We expect the independent audit to be completed and released to the community during this time, with regular scheduling to resume thereafter. We are working diligently to coordinate and lock in the audit date with all global vaulting providers and auditors within the coming two months ahead.
Indonesia Update
The march forward to implement the nationwide access and roll-out of KAU in Indonesia continues. As relayed previously, the standalone app PosGold Syariah is now PosPay Gold on the PT POS PosPay App. Both the legal transformation and the technical integration for this are now complete, giving the KAU product and application available to the already 1 million-plus accounts on PosPay. The JFX application, JFX GoldEx, incorporating KAU, has soft-launched.
Up to now, for both PosPay Gold and JFX GoldEx, the “soft launch”, by government regulation, has been limited to a small user sub-set of internal and non-retail account users. We are pleased to announce that recently, with the assistance of our local Kinesis Indonesia team and partners, the Government Regulator (Bappebti) has been given a full demo and end-to-end testing of the platforms resulting in the approval to move out of the soft launch phase and into the full launch sequence.
While the roll-out to their respective existing and future target markets is up to PT Pos and JFX, we have been working closely with them on this plan. We expect both products and applications to go full live launch in Q2 2022. As the marketing plans and outreach programs for these products get enacted and operational, we will keep the Kinesis community apprised of all the details.
5 New Fiat Currencies and increased deposit options
This quarter, Kinesis has significantly expanded its system offering with an additional 5 fiat currencies listed on the Kinesis Exchange, increasing the number of currency pairs available to trade to 87 in total.
As important inclusions to the Kinesis’ trading ecosystem, the Australian dollar (AUD), Canadian dollar (CAD), Singaporean dollar (SGD), Swiss franc (CHF) and the United Arab Emirates dirham (AED) were added for all Kinesis users to trade on the Kinesis Exchange.
Kinesis is reducing barriers to entry for its global client base, allowing an even greater number of users to trade and deposit their funds on the platform, this proceeds to the next phase of delivering better banking and deposit solutions for FIAT users.
Improved Onramping Solutions
We are developing improved on-ramping solutions for our global client base, designed to ease the process of onboarding funds into Kinesis accounts. At present, a series of banking and payment services relationships are being finalised that will strategically position a number of banking deposit locations across the globe.
Earlier this month, Kinesis launched an improved deposit interface on our web-based platform giving users the ability to choose between multiple banking options by location. As part of this update, Kinesis added ACH, SWIFT, and domestic wire transfer deposit options for all USD depositors. Additionally, Australian users have the ability to deposit their native currency (AUD) into a local bank account, via local BSB and account number or via SWIFT – ready to trade on the exchange.
As the year progresses, Kinesis will be bringing users more fiat on-ramping solutions, with enhanced deposit options for British Pound (GBP) and Euro (EUR) to follow shortly.
Business Accounts
In addition to the Individual account, Kinesis has now introduced the Kinesis Business Account option, as a highly scalable offering for professionals wanting to register and verify as Business, Trust Fund or Retirement Fund account holders.
Over the course of the year, the Business accounts offering will continue to expand, with multi-account options and bulk sending features already in the works. These functionalities will enable Business account owners to serve multiple clients and send debit payments in gold and silver to multiple recipients in a single action.
Velocity Yield
To start the second quarter of this year, we were pleased to launch the Velocity yield on the Kinesis platform. Kinesis users were rewarded with a yield in physical gold and silver as a result of their spending and trading of precious metals (KAU and KAG) currencies with Kinesis.
On the 19th of April 2022, eligible users received a total of $1.3 million dollars worth of fully allocated gold and silver based on their transactional activity on the platform to date. Going forward, the Velocity yield, reflecting a 10% allocation of the total Kinesis fee pool, will be delivered straight into Kinesis users’ accounts, every month.
As the fourth launch in the Kinesis yield engine, users can earn a significant and tangible reward for the active use of Kinesis currencies as spendable, tradable assets.
Kinesis Monetary System expansion & upgrades
All-New Referral Hub
In another important upgrade this quarter, the all-new Kinesis Referral Hub has been introduced to our platform users, making it even easier to invite friends, family and business partners to Kinesis.
The optimised functionality and interactive design of the Referral hub allow users to keep better track of their referral progress, as well as their monthly Referrer’s yield, earned through onboarding new users to Kinesis.
Kinesis Exchange upgrade and redevelopment
The Kinesis Exchange web interface has successfully undergone a full redesign, with the trading interface now aligned with the overall look and feel of the Kinesis Money platform. The upgrade brings a series of technical and design enhancements to the user experience of the Kinesis Exchange.
In order to finetune the trading experience for system users, Kinesis has optimised responsiveness across the exchange to better utilise mobiles, tablets and desktop devices. These updates deliver fully responsive charting, resulting in a smooth trading experience from analysis through to trade execution.
Looking ahead to Q2
Kinesis Pro Trader Platform
In another milestone expansion to the Kinesis monetary system, we are now entering the development stage of the all-new Kinesis-Pro cryptocurrency exchange platform.
The Kinesis Pro exchange will be offering a broad variety of cryptocurrency coins and trading pairs, providing a secure and convenient environment with high liquidity for hundreds of tradeable digital assets that will be made available to our users.
The official launch of the pro-trader crypto exchange is planned for later this year.
Kinesis API
We are pleased to announce that, after several weeks of beta field testing, we will move our Kinesis API to “General Available” this month. The Kinesis API provides account holders with programmatic access to their Kinesis account allowing them to securely get account balances, get up to date pricing and OHLCV data, get statements, place orders to buy and sell and leverage our send-to-friend and send-to-email functions.
To access the API, clients can request a set of developer API keys from the settings page, where we have included the API documentation and examples in many popular programming languages. We are really looking forward to seeing how developers use our API’s to create new and innovative solutions that we would like to highlight and potentially share in a marketplace.
Upgrading the Kinesis blockchain
In Q2, Kinesis will upgrade our underlying blockchain technology and migrate to the latest Stellar Foundation core and horizon that is in the final stages of development. With the technology underpinning the blockchain constantly evolving, it is important that Kinesis remains state of the art and leverages the best enhancements as they become available.
This was a major upgrade that facilitates faster and easier integrations with partner exchanges and various other blockchain partners. Additionally, the latest update opens up the doors of innovation by enabling the Kinesis blockchain team to explore the latest Stellar enhancements and technologies that are now available. This latest upgrade is the catalyst that has now kick-started exchange listings and subsequent CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko listings, which have been otherwise delayed.
Kinesis has made the Kinesis-core and Kinesis-horizon repos publicly available on Github to enable our partners and developers to integrate more rapidly.
Wallet upgrades
Starting in Q2, Kinesis is working to bring forward a complete insured custodial wallet solution to our client base, through a planned partnership with an institutional leader in the cryptocurrency and digital asset space.
Set to launch later this year, Kinesis has strategically selected a trusted partner to leverage users’ efficient management of their digital asset operation. Kinesis will continue to deliver the utmost value and security in digital portfolio management through this partnership, in order to serve Kinesis users with access to the latest in multi-layer security in the custody of their assets.
Kinesis Bullion Store
This quarter Kinesis will be launching the Kinesis Bullion store, showcasing original artwork on our physical coins and bars that have been minted in the newly formed Kinesis Mint, based out of our Istanbul facility.
We will be launching a new bullion store website accepting payments in FIAT, Crypto and of course, KAU and KAG, meaning the Kinesis Bullion store can also be used to facilitate physical redemption.
The addition of minted coins and bars allows Kinesis to expand into many new opportunities and partnerships within the physical space. Our coins and bullion will further expose Kinesis to the precious metals community, which is still, and will always remain, a core target market for Kinesis.
We are currently further looking to integrate the bullion store into the KMS, allowing instant redemption or purchase using your KMS balance. More details around the Bullion, pricing, certifications and partners will be released along with the launch.
In Summary
Although we remain restrained with our commercialisation to date while our core foundations are built, Kinesis continues firmly on its path to global expansion, with a growing client base that now totals over 97,000 individual clients across more than 150 countries.
We have balanced this heavy developmental period with continual stress testing and priming all aspects of our system and organisation for rapid scalability and mass adoption in the coming months and years. As the Decentralised Finance (DeFi) market grows and matures globally, trusted ecosystems have been forming at the institutional level. In many ways the Kinesis team has strategically secured primary roles in such ecosystems which have both government and private sector participation, to offer the true universal currencies (gold and silver) to the world.
Expansion through trusted digital asset ecosystems and strategic partnerships will continue to serve global users with a monetary solution that is efficient, fair and rewarding. By driving towards increased interoperability of our native gold (KAU) and silver (KAG) currencies, we are tapping into even more ecosystems designed to further the utility of precious metals as money.
With the global debit card alongside the continually expanding functionalities of the platform, Kinesis is delivering on its mission to serve all our clients, regardless of country or borders, with a means to operate and maintain full control of their financial lives.
With countless projects still yet to be fully realised, I know that Q2 and the year ahead will be a defining one, in which the historically stable value of gold and silver will become more visible – and intentionally disruptive – through their utility as sound money.
I’d like to take this opportunity to give thanks for your continued support on this journey.
Best regards,
Thomas Coughlin
