In a first for ven, Hub Culture, creators of the digital currency, announced that they have acquired a stake in Alternet Systems an accelerator of digital currency and mobile commerce services. Announce during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Hub Culture is funding the deal using ven as the value metric for the purchase. A penny stock, Alternet Systems trades under the ticker ALYI in the OTC markets, where shares are higher by 41% today to $0.17.
Under the terms of the deal, Alternet will be granted ‘Authority Status’ partner of Hub Culture. As an Authority, among activities Alternet will be able to do include distributing ven, operating on behalf of customers, providing real-time currency trading, allowing corporations to convert assets to Ven to hedge their balance sheets, to meet carbon obligations, or enabling an investment fund to use authority status to hold and control a large amount of Ven for a stable long-term investment solution.
Speaking about the deal, Hub Culture Founding Director Stan Stalnaker stated that “Our investment in Alternet Systems is based on our confidence in the future success of the new products and services related to Ven which Alternet is developing with our core technology teams. We felt it was important to have a stake in their success as these services come to market. Granting Alternet Systems status as a Ven Authority leapfrogs them to the cutting edge of the multi-billion dollar digital currency industry, and maximizes their unique capabilities to grow Ven in new markets faster."
According to Stalnaker, part of the attractiveness of the deal is based on Alternet’s activity in the mobile sector where they hope the company will be able to further the use of ven in the Latin American market. On this, Stalnake told DC Magnates that "they have mobile wallet and deep telecom connections, plus government multilateral connections.” He added “ imagine a digital euro for LATAM as an example.”
The 5 million ven investment by Hub Culture into Alternet Systems is being backed by around $500,000 in assets that was issued into ven to fund the deal. Overall, according to Stalnaker, total outstanding ven is around 60 million, with the currency currently being used among items to acquire shares in Hub Culture managed investment funds as well as to purchase goods at Hub Culture Pavilions.
Differing from the numerous Cryptocurrencies that have been created in recent years, created in 2007, ven is a centralized Multi-Asset backed digital currency. But, similar to decentralized P2P currencies, ven is also founded with a transparent ledger to record and identify transactions.
(Correction - An earlier version of this post incorrectly wrote the size of the investment was backed by $500, while the correct figure is $500,000)
