The cryptocurrency space is nearly a decade old and, from its beginnings as a fragmented sector, it has grown to include hundreds of incredibly successful companies, many of which play a crucial role in the framework that underpins the industry in its current iteration.
Many of these companies were started and run by individuals now seeking to expand their influence in the space. Keeping track of what the success stories of the last five years are doing today, can be a great way to identify the potential for success of various companies going forward, which, in turn, can be a great way to identify promising ICOs.
One individual, we’ve been watching closely is Ryan Fugger, Ripple’s advisor, and he’s just revealed his cards as to what he’s working on next.
Before we get into what he’s doing, and for anyone that’s not yet familiar with him, let’s quickly introduce Fugger.
Ryan Fugger, as mentioned, is one of the early advisors for Ripple. Ripple is a payment protocol that is designed to allow banks to send real-time international payments across networks. Just like Bitcoin, it’s based on a decentralized ledger and the transaction process is similar in nature to that which underpins Bitcoin, but unlike Bitcoin, Ripple allows for inter-ledger transactions.
So, subsequent to the concept and creation of Ripple as a payment protocol, spearheaded by Fugger, Ripple the company was founded to serve as a sort of enterprise front for the protocol.
From concept to current state Ripple attracted considerable investment from some of the biggest names in tech – Andreessen Horowitz, Pantera, Google, IDG – and has recently attracted attention from the financial world (at which the concept is targeted), picking up funding from Santander, Accenture and Standard Chartered.
In June last year, the company was named as one of Fortune’s five Hottest Companies in Fintech.
So after all this success at Ripple, what’s Fugger doing now?
He’s now serving as an Advisor to a company called Clout. Clout is a blockchain and cryptocurrency-focussed media platform that’s set up in a similar fashion to a social media sharing platform like Reddit.
Users create and submit content, which is then consumed and – ultimately – assessed by other users. On the back of their assessment of the content being shared or submitted, the users that are doing the consuming can reward the content (and the users that created or shared it) with a token called CLC. CLC is issued on a one for one basis with another token called CLOUT, which is the company’s ICO token (the ICO is happening right now and you can take part here) and will also be tradable (post-ICO) over the various cryptocurrency exchanges that exist in the market today.
So what sets Clout apart from the above-mentioned platforms? In other words, what makes the team behind Clout, including Fugger, think that the company’s proprietary platform can outdo those that rely on a similar model and are established in the market today?
Well, we say the similar model for a reason. Clout differentiates itself from Reddit through the use of its CLC tokens as a voting tool, whereas Reddit uses the standard upvote system. This translates to direct monetary gain for content creators, incentivizing quality content production and sharing.
Further, Clout is crypto focused. The company bills it as follows:
“CLOUT will become the standard in quality for everything crypto: Users, Media, News, Social, ICOs, Investments, & Ratings – A ONE-STOP SHOP FOR EVERYTHING CRYPTO”
This sort of one-stop shop doesn’t exist right now. Media outlets and publishers are fragmented, often unreliable and – in some cases – biased based on ownership interests, that sort of thing. Clout is going to collect revenue from online advertising, sure, but the fact that users decide what content receives the most airtime (using the CLC payments) means that its coverage will remain independent.
So that’s what Fugger is working on? If he can get anywhere close to replicating the success he achieved at Ripple with Clout, the latter could be a real winner along with a Stellar management team including David A. Cohen as CEO, a Decentralized Software Pioneer and – by proxy – is for us on of the top ICOs to watch right now.
