Interview Joshua Scigala Co Founder & CEO Vaultoro
Joshua Scigala, he has always had a deep fascination in alternative economies. In 2002 he started with the first page called Swapstyle clothing exchange, was very popular and ended up selling. It was his first attempt to help people out of government-controlled money, however soon realised that the exchange of things directly is not very efficient without money in between.
What is Vaultoro?
The fact is there is a lack of currency, a lack of tokanised value that can move between people. Just like swapping had missed trade opportunities, if a currency is not available to use then trade opportunities are missed.
Governments around the world are trying to print more currency so there is more liquidity slashing about. But it’s just more debt digging us deeper and deeper into a whole while we head towards a potential hyper inflation.
With Vaultoro we are changing all that. We the people do not need to wait for a state or a superstate like the EU to decide what financial philosophy they will put our money into. We can peacefully exit by using a crypto currency and holding that value in allocated gold.
Vaultoro enables anyone to instantly convert any amount of bitcoin to allocated gold and back. This enables anyone in the world to accept bitcoin and instantly hold that value in gold. When they need to spend that value they can spend it through the blockchain as bitcoin down to 1 cent.
Vaultoro is a full market so we can not set the price. This is important because if you hold gold at a single broker they could change their buy back price and you would be forced to sell your gold at a bad price. On Vaultoro, if we as the market maker change our buy back price, someone else will see the opportunity and sell it closer to a fair market price.
All clients gold is secured in top tier vaulting facilities from Pro Aurum Swizerland. One of the largest bank independent vaulting facilities in the European region. The Vault is audited by one of the largest auditing firms in the world BDO international and fully insured.
Our philosophy is based on full reserve banking meaning clients own their gold as their legal property. We can not gamble with it like banks gamble with cash you deposit. The only person that can touch it is you. Even if we as a company went broke, liquidators can not touch the clients gold because it is not on our books.
We will soon be opening vaulting contracts in HongKong, Singapour and Germany with markets in each. This enables people to diversify their wealth in different geographical regions but still have instant access to be able to spend it as crypto currency. Clients can also get their gold delivered to their door if they want to secure it them selves.
Gold and Bitcoin, how the idea of combining both values came from?
Gold has 3000+ years as a store of value. There is no fiat currency that has lasted more than 200 years. But gold has problems too. I’ts heavy, hard to move around and hard to verify. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or etherum are very young and unstable, but they are extremely easy to move around, easy to verify, and open up a whole world of opportunity. By combing them together I believe we are very close to perfect money. Relatively stable, divisible down to 10 cents, global while being state and bank independent.
How it has evolved Vaultoro since it’s inception?
It took 6 months to reach our first million euros traded worth of bitcoin and gold traded, it took 3 months to do the second million and 1 month to get the third. So people are loving our sevice wich is great because we work really hard to make sure people have a great experience.
Do you have transparency measures implemented?
Yes, I lost a a heap of money during the collapses of MtGox, so I wanted to show the world how extremely transparent an exchange could be while keeping users data private. The Vaultoro»Glass Books» protocol was developed to give users the ability to see a proof of above 100% reserve of both bitcoin and gold while protecting user privacy. Vaultoro prides itself as being one of the most transparent exchanges in the industry and hopes to inspire the industry with it’s easy to use solution.
What is the first message would you leave to someone who wants to use Vaultoro?
We are in very uncertain times, Britain wanting to exit the EU, an unprecedented negative interest rate policy, $12 Trillion of new currency being printed stealing value from savers through inflation, a Chinese yuan devaluation, $10T in negative yield bonds, a slashing of the World Bank global GDP estimates, Venezuela, Greece, Cyprus collapse, Chinese corporate debt of over $630 trillion in derivatives!, Puerto Rico $72B default, Rio de Janiero missed debt payments to France and close to default and to top it all off the circus that is the US elections. This whole beast is a house of cards.
Do yourself and your loved ones a favour and diversify out of the euro and into assets like bitcoin and gold, don’t risk holding everything in Euro.
What do you think about the future of Bitcoin?
I think the future of bitcoin is very very bright because it’s permission less. You don’t need to ask anyone permission to add something cool to the Bitcoin network. There are thousands if not millions of people all around the world all creating things that interface with and ad value to the bitcoin network. It’s going to be around for a very long time as it will only get stronger.
Finally, could you explain what is Bitcoin? from your point of view
Decentralized blockchain based currencies like bitcoin are the separation of bank and state. A peaceful exit into a bright future of true free markets and free people.
Also you can read the interview in Spanish version: