Here Comes The R/GA Ventures Incubator Nurturing Enterprise Blockchain Start-Ups 

R/GA Ventures And Blockchain Technology

Announcing plans to open a new studio in Portland devoted to encouraging start-ups working on enterprise blockchain projects is R/GA Ventures a company acting as the investment arm and Start-up incubator for R/GA corporate client work. With a three-pronged purpose, R/GA helps companies similar to Samsung, Google, and Verizon where it is in product concept and design phase. Sometimes it does build products that are conceived in the design phase for the same clients as an extension of the work, the company that is owned by the Interpublic Group coming as a group of marketing and advertising agencies opening the Ventures arm five years ago. Here the aim is to encourage start-ups to do some of the innovation work for them extending the company. 

With the latest piece, the blockchain project and the idea behind it come to be connected with these start-ups along with corporate clients interested in developing enterprise blockchain solutions in verticals such as insurance, healthcare, and sports whereas it is building up a blockchain development center in Portland intending to help the corporate clients whereas independent entities have their sales and marketing approaches as the company may also invest a modest amount of money in the companies. 

According to the global chief technology officer for R/GA Nick Coronges, they are looking at the real-world applications of blockchain as the understanding of it is still very early days for the distributed ledger and blockchain applications as they are looking for ways to explore the utility of it in business. As he explains they think that one of the assumptions made going into it was that blockchain as currently understood was probably going to go through a lot of iterations which may be bigger in the next few years talking about it as a kind of ecosystem or a set of adjacent technologies related to the blockchain with the idea of decentralised data processing systems. 

Adding to this he said that the main thing they were looking into is cases where they have multiple participants in some type of workflow requiring access and some kind of accountability, transparency, and control over data. Partnering with several institutions on this project the company includes those like Moda, Umpqua Bank, Portland State University, Oregon Health & Science University, Business Oregon, ConsenSys, and also the blockchain research firm Smith and Crown. In this regard, the first cohort of the blockchain start-ups is beginning to work shortly in an office space in Portland. 

eToro Now Acquires Smart Contract Start-up Firmo

Announcing that it has acquired Danish smart contract infrastructure provider Frimo for an undisclosed purchase price, is the social investing and trading platform eToro. Enabling exchanges to execute smart financial contracts Firmo’s platform comes across various assets including crypto derivatives that are across all major blockchains as the founder and CEO Dr.Omri Ross describes that the company’s mission is enabling users to trade any asset globally as the instant settlement by tokenizing assets as also executing all essential trade processes on the blockchain. According to the data from Pitchbook, Firmo’s only disclosed investment came in the form of a modest pre-seed round from the Copenhagen Fintech Lab accelerator.  

Aligning well with that of eToro is Firmo’s mission which is equal parts trading platform, social network as well as an educational resource for beginner investors as the company has long communicated hopes of making the capital markets more open, transparent and accessible to the users across all assets. eToro targets to accelerate the development of offerings for tokenized assets by gobbling up Firmo. 

Further on the acquisition represents to be the latest step in eToro’s broader growth plan as it has ramped up as of late and the company has launched a crypto-only version for the platform in the US as well as a multi-signature digital wallet as the users can store, send and receive cryptocurrencies. As it comes to be the Firmo deal and eToro’s other expansion activities are observed to be fitting squarely into the company’s belief in the tokenisation of the assets as also the immense sector defining opportunity that it has created. Hereby eToro has believed that asset tokenisation and the movement of financial services onto the blockchain which are all but inevitable as the company employed the long-tailed strategy of investing heavily in the related blockchain and the crypto technologies as it is despite the ongoing crypto winter. 

According to eToro co-founder and CEO, Yoni Assia playing a major role in the future of finance are the blockchain and the tokenisation of assets as they believe in time all the investible assets are to be tokenised as it will see the greatest transfer of wealth onto the blockchain where Assia expressed similar sentiment stating they think it is a bigger opportunity than the internet. 

Finally, The Parting Words

The fact that Firmo operates as an internal R&D arm within the eToro after the acquisition focused on developing blockchain oriented trade execution as also the infrastructure behind the digital representation of tokenised assets. As Assia says the Firmo team has now down groundbreaking work in developing practical applications for the blockchain technology facilitating friction-less global trading. 

Furthermore, according to her the adoption of smart contracts on the blockchain is thereafter increasing trust as well as transparency in financial services as they are incredibly proud and excited that Firmo is set to join the eToro family believing together they have a very bright future to look forward to pursuing their shared goal becoming the first truly global service provider for allowing people to trade, invest and then save.