Glidera – A Bitcoin Startup (Interview with David Ripley)

 Serge recently had the chance to conduct a written interview with David Ripley, the CEO of Glidera. Glidera is a Chicago-based Bitcoin startup , and we found it interesting to take a closer look at what the company is and does. 

Serge: Your Company was featured on the North American Chicago Bitcoin conference. Can you tell our readers a bit about Glidera (in your own words)?

David Ripley: Glidera is a new Bitcoin startup headquartered in Chicago, IL.  Our mission is to provide easy, secure products and services that maintain user control and provide transparency.

We feel that technology can democratize finance and bring tremendous efficiency and innovative new products. Throughout the history of money, we’ve always given our funds to custodial institutions. Tremendous friction has developed around the regulation required to protect consumers in this environment. The trustless distributed nature of Bitcoin can create huge, positive changes while delivering economic and social benefits.

·Serge: What makes Glidera unique from all the other products out there?

David Ripley: Glidera is focused on building products for consumers and businesses that leverage the decentralized nature of Bitcoin.  Through our multi-signature architecture, Glidera provides incredibly easy to use products, yet does not compromise user control.  Many other companies attempt to provide easy products (e.g. Bitcoin wallets), but they take control of customer Bitcoin and do not provide adequate transparency about their customers’ funds.

Glidera’s multi-signature architecture works by creating a three key system where two keys are necessary to access the Bitcoin at any point in time.  This means that Glidera cannot alone access the users’ Bitcoin.  Further, even in the unlikely event that Glidera’s servers are compromised, the users’ Bitcoin is still safe.  In fact, Glidera could disappear and the user would still have access to their Bitcoin.

In summary, by leveraging this multi-signature architecture, Glidera provides greater – a) user control b) security c) transparency.  We feel multi-signature is what is needed to take Bitcoin to the next level.

Serge: Some of our readers are small and medium business holders that are looking toward Bitcoin and other digital currencies as the next big innovation in the currency landscape. Can Glidera provide protection and how will that work?

David Ripley: Yes, Glidera does intend to offer products and services for small and medium businesses.  Initially, Glidera’s wallet will be available for businesses to securely store, manage, and spend their Bitcoin.  Moving forward, we’ll continue to build upon that offering and continue to bring out new products and services for businesses.

Serge: Will there be a different set of rules for small and medium sized businesses? For example lower fees and such?

David Ripley: This is an interesting topic.  In the legacy financial system, customers with substantial deposits at banks benefit from lower prices or even free services.  While, those customers with smaller deposits are subjected to onerous fees for the same services.  Furthermore, small businesses are often subjected to higher credit card payment processing fees than larger corporations.  Bitcoin’s decentralized network treats all users equally, so we’re seeing the fee structure evolve differently. Glidera will likewise seek to offer highly affordable services for small and medium size businesses.

Serge: On your site, it says people can send Bitcoin to other people’s email address and/or phone number. Some of our readers posed the question: Does this mean you are using an “aliasing” system of sorts in order to protect user privacy?

David Ripley: This simply refers to the ability for users to maintain their own “address book” of other Glidera users, which allows them to send Bitcoin in these situations without having to copy and paste Bitcoin addresses.

Separately, we do in fact take specific steps to protect privacy.  When sending Bitcoin, a new address is used to receive “change”.  Likewise, we’ll offer the ability to generate new addresses when requesting Bitcoin

Serge: Last week a couple of interesting developments happened in the digital currency world. The first was the creation of the Chamber of digital commerce. What do you think about all of this? A step in the right direction or is it a bit too soon?

David Ripley: We’re always excited to see the various parts of the Bitcoin ecosystem evolve.  Broader education is a critical component to fostering the Bitcoin ecosystem.  Often new technologies and concepts are met with resistance and in many cases the resistance arises before an adequate level of understanding is achieved by the opposing groups.  Optimally the Chamber of Digital Commerce moves us further down the path to educate others about the benefits of Bitcoin to ensure unnecessary obstacles do not arise.

Finance is a regulated industry, and having a voice in the creation of legislation and new regulation makes sense.  There is risk to the industry that new rules could cause difficulty for the industry and reduce innovation.   So any increase in the voice of the digital currency industry is a good thing.

Serge: The other “important” thing that happened last week is the announcement of a proposal by Benjamin M. Lawsky, Superintendent of Financial Services at NY state. In that proposal nearly everything crypto related activities will be limited, such as providing financial services. Do you think this “proposition” would ever get approved? If so what would that mean for Glidera?

David Ripley: The published proposal is in fact just that, a draft.  The expectation is that we’ll see some adjustments to this proposal based on the comments received from those interested in providing input.  At the same time, it’s also clear that the state of New York will in fact issue some specific direction on how they plan to regulate digital currency companies.  New York clearly has chosen not to take a wait and see approach.

Glidera website : http://www.glidera.com