🇦🇲🦊 Why Armenia and Armenians should get into Cryptocurrencies?
Curated resources for Armenian founders and tech enthusiasts.
Armenia should back decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum to accelerate technological development, strengthen monetary policy, and attract international capital. Here we break down why Armenia and Armenians should get into crypto and more!
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Definitions:
Cryptocurrency: A digital currency where transactions are recorded onto an unalterable ledger called a blockchain, maintained on a decentralized network.
Bitcoin: The world’s first digital currency.
Blockchain: A system of storing successive blocks of information, where each block is mathematically intertwined with the next one. Storing information (like transactions) this way makes it impossible to alter the information in an older block without having to recalculate all the blocks that come after it (which would be easily discovered).
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens: An NFT refers to a specific set of code in a blockchain; there is only one and it is uniquely identified, as a unique art piece.
1. Cryptocurrency is Now a $2 Trillion Dollar Industry
Now, I know what you are thinking. How and when did this industry become so big? Honestly, covid did play a big role. Although still super early, mass adoption into cryptocurrency has started and will only increase within the next few years. One of the most important technological innovations of the last decade.
2. International Capital Would Flow into Armenia
The biggest investors (a16z, Founder’s fund, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global) in the world are pouring money into crypto at an unprecedented rate. CoinStats based in Armenia recently raised $1.2M Seed financing to continue building their free portfolio tracking app. With so much innovation left to be built in the next evolution of the Web, this could be a great opportunity for Armenia to be at the forefront of this technological change.
3. Increase in Remittance Inflows
On average, over $1.3B gets sent to Armenia yearly from family and friends. Although small in terms of remittance dollars compared to other countries, cryptocurrency wallets open up cross-border transactions at lightspeeds through the use of an internet connection with little to no fees. Banks in emerging markets, including Armenia, are terrible too. The people fight rampant inflation, regulatory hurdles, slow payments, and insanely high transaction costs. Crypto offers a hedge against inflation, an alternative or additive to traditional banking, and a cheaper method of cross-border payments to individuals and businesses across the region.
4. Rising Popularity of Digital Art
Most recently, the pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital art, or as some call it, NFTs. The beauty of NFTs is that no NFT can ever be replicated. It also gives the original content creators control and ownership over their work as well as a cut every time the NFT gets resold. Armenia is known for having beautiful art and talented artists, and with NFTs shaking up the art world, so many amazing artists could benefit from it in perpetuity. Find an NFT project that relates to you, join the community on discord and be an active member to learn as much as possible. FYI in August alone, OpenSea, an NFT marketplace surpassed $3.4 billion in transaction volume as over 1.5 million NFTs changed hands
El Salvador became the first nation to make bitcoin a legal tender. Could Armenia be next? Companies like Nooor are trying to help build Armenia as the next blockchain hub. There is so much to unfold in the world of cryptocurrencies, NFTs, Web3.0, DAOs, etc... Technically, each one of the topics could be its own newsletter. Learn as much as you can before diving in; the internet is filled with guides covering this shift. That said, I wanted to use this opportunity to start the high-level conversation around the ability of cryptocurrencies and how they could help Armenia and Armenians positively! Let me know your thoughts by messaging me!
Armenian Tech News 📣
📈 Armenian founder Tigran Sloyan raises 50M Series C for CodeSignal, 8 months after raising their Series B. Congrats to the whole team!
🤩 Near Space Labs raises a $13M Series A round to make high-quality geospatial intelligence widely accessible.
🎯 TUMO announces a $50 million ‘TUMO Armenia’ Campaign to extend its learning network and serve 80,000 students and reach all young Armenians even in the most remote villages.
🖼 Snapchat and Armenian dzook announced the beginning of cooperation which will allow you to fully animate the content of the shot.
💸 Through new funds restructuring the salaries for the scientists will rise 3 times by 2025. The gradual rise will start with a 30% increase in 2021. If now the average monthly salary of a researcher is 90,400 drams, after the change in 2025 the salary will reach 276,000 drams.
👨💻 👩💻 DigiTec Expo 2021 is back after 1 year of hiatus. Discover the role of current technologies through panel discussions to discuss the mechanisms of their adaptation to the challenges of the ever-changing world. (October 29, 2021). Find out more on the Facebook event page!
What we’re following 🚀
How a CEO should be spending his time by Sam Corcos, founder of Level.
How to understand your startup offer and calculate/understand your Options.
If you are looking for a framework to find your startup idea, take a look at the breakdown by First Round. 12 Frameworks for Finding Startup Ideas - Advice for Future Founders.
The Minimum Viable Testing Process for Evaluating Startup Ideas.
Advice for the Pre-Product/Market Fit Days by First Round Capital.
Introduction to PLG (product-led growth) by Sandhya Hegde.
Jobs 💼
Das Haus Ltd. is looking Front-end Developer (React.JS, Typescript, HTML, CSS). Apply here. Role is in Yerevan but is remote friendly!
International Armenian Job Board.
Post your Jobs here
Startup spotlight 👨💻👩💻
ARLOOPA Inc.
ARLOOPA, founded in 2014 by Arman Atoyan and Torgom Bleyan, transforms your business with Augmented Reality and immerses you into the world of magical Virtual Reality games. Headquartered in San Francisco, ARLOOPA is proud to serve customers such as The Coca-Cola Company, WWF, and others. Their AR/VR development startup has a proven track record ranging from cloud-based AR services, personalized AR applications and game development, VR applications and game development, 2D and 3D content creation.
We are looking for startups to cover in our next newsletter! Fill in this form!
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