Blue Star Capital’s SatoshiPay hails ‘new chapter’ with new appointments
Blue Star Capital’s (BLU) investee company, SatoshiPay has announced a series of senior management role changes and promotions to support the expected expansion of its business.
SatoshiPay, a payments business which uses blockchain technology, explained to investors that the expansion of its business is intended to support the delivery of Pendulum, an open-source blockchain that is intended to connect DeFi to foreign exchange networks.
The Company has announced that the current Chief Executive Officer, Meinhard Benn, who co-founded SatoshiPay in 2014, is changing his role to Chairman ‘in order to focus on guiding the company’s long-term vision, strategic networking and high-level community building.’ It said this also allows for SatoshiPay to put in place a CEO with expertise in business scaling.
Alexander Wilke, the current Chief Operating Officer, will take on the role as CEO. Wilke is an entrepreneur and operations executive with more than 13 years’ industry experience leading technical and business teams focussing on payments, mobile and business intelligence.
As Chief Operating Officer, Alexander Wilke steered large parts of SatoshiPay, headed the strategic change in focus to cross-border payments via DTransfer and brokered large client projects, including Axel Springer and Börsenmedien, the Company highlighted to investors.
In addition to his new role as Chairman, Benn will continue to be a director in the holding company, SatoshiPay Ltd, and, as a result, its current board structure will remain unchanged.
Benn remains the largest shareholder in SatoshiPay, which the Group said makes him ‘an ideal person to represent the interests of all shareholders as the Chairman going forward.’
SatoshiPay unveiled a string of further appointments including, inter alia, its current CTO, Dr Torsten Stüber, as the new CTO of Pendulum, and Former Chief Product Officer, Dr Aaron Lindner, who will become Chief Strategy Officer with ‘a strong focus’ on Pendulum, it noted.
In a further update alongside this morning’s announcement, SatoshiPay told investors that Pendulum’s public testnet is currently being built and that this is expected to launch shortly.
To date, SatoshiPay has sent out an updated token launch strategy to Pendulum’s presale participants in which it advised that it has decided to become a parachain, a blockchain running on the decentralised node infrastructure of the Polkadot network, it detailed.
The Company said the major advantages of launching Polkadot as a parachain are ‘a strong, engaged community of developers and a secure decentralised network from inception.’
As a result, SatoshiPay said it intends to implement a strategic supporter round for Pendulum and, subsequently, to participate in parachain auctions. The Group also expects that the parachain status will significantly elevate the importance of the Pendulum ecosystem.
SatoshiPay added that its B2B cross-border money transfer service DTransfer, which triggered the development of the Pendulum concept, is expected to grow ‘at a steady pace in the coming months.’ Currently, DTransfer is being readied for its first Pendulum-based test money transfers and it is preparing transfer corridors with solid fiat stable coins in place.
Commenting on the news this morning, Meinhard Benn, co-founder and current CEO stated: “SatoshiPay has always been a team effort and I am very fortunate to have brought together such a talented and motivated group of pioneers, thinkers and creators. I fully trust the team to deliver on our mission of connecting the world through instant payments.”
He said with regulatory compliance and strict corporate governance being a strong focus for SatoshiPay, that the resulting policies and procedures guarantee “a smooth transition” to the firm’s new management structure, therefore preparing it for “the expected rapid growth.”
Blue Star Capital’s CEO, Derek Lew commented, “We are pleased to see these management promotions as the Company moves into its next phase of growth. Meinhard’s move to Chairman allows for the execution of the board’s strategic vision for SatoshiPay and Pendulum to be enhanced while Alexander’s operational experience and skill provides specific focus to accelerate the company’s growth within the crypto world.”
He said: “The establishment of Pendulum and the synergistic benefits that will exist between DTransfer and the Pendulum blockchain are significant. We are very encouraged by the progress already made with Pendulum and we look forward to its continued growth.”