Stellar co-founder Jed McCaleb hit a roadblock in his mission to serve the global underbanked when earlier this month his co-founder resigned , leaving him with her responsibilities, including more frequently engaging with the public.
For a computer programmer whose career has been largely under scrutiny since he founded defunct bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, the idea of taking on a more public role at Stellar was intimidating. But, he says it was a necessary step for the startup.
After years of building a payments rail system designed to make it cheaper to offer banking services to developing nations, McCaleb said it was time for him to make the case that Stellar should be considered a leading blockchain platform for enterprise customers.
McCaleb told CoinDesk: "We’ve spent the past two years building a product, and now we’re showing it to the world." Founded in 2014 after McCaleb and his then-girlfriend and co-founder Kim left another startup he founded, Ripple , the two companies have always been equated in the blockchain community, despite their differing business models.
Stellar has raised a little over $3m from Stripe to build a new distributed ledger payments rail similar to Ripple’s, but aimed specifically at serving clients in developing nations.
In contrast, Ripple has raised more than $38m from investors as diverse as Andreessen Horowitz and Santander. Barclays in South Africa
In his first public appearance, McCaleb spoke onstage at the Exponential Finance conference with Barclays Africa’s CEO of corporate and investment banking, Stephen van Coller.
In interview with CoinDesk, van Coller described how his company is testing its prototype on the Stellar payments rail at a high school in Johanessburg, South Africa. About 100 students aged 16-years-old to 18-years-old are currently testing a minimum viable product (MVP) designed so feature phones can be used to pay for goods.To be […]
