<article>Tembusu Systems, a Singapore-based <a href="https://bitcoin.org/en/">Bitcoin</a> startup, raised S$1.2 million round ($887,000) in bridge funding for its TRUST platform, to develop and sell its new product, the company said.</article>

Tembusu Systems, a Singapore-based <a href="https://bitcoin.org/en/">Bitcoin</a> startup, raised S$1.2 million round ($887,000) in bridge funding for its TRUST platform, to develop and sell its new product, the company said.
This move away from Bitcoin ATMs reflects a shift it its larger business direction, in light of the volatility and risk involved in the Bitcoin sector. TRUST has been described by them as a “next-generation distributed blockchain technology”.
The funds will be spent on product and business development. Due to a shift towards being a software product rather than Bitcoin ATMs, there&#8217;s minimal inventory.
According to COO and co-founder Jarrod Luo, the company will be be expanding the capabilities of the team and investing in talent acquisition.
The TRUST (Tembusu Reputation-based Universally Secure Transaction System) framework supposedly addresses concerns raised by governments, banks and other institutions intrigued by cryptocurrencies.
The latest round of funding values the company at S$11 million (US$8.1 million) currently, but Tembusu has declined to name the investors. According to Luo, “Our investor has made a request for us not to mention their name for the time being. It&#8217;s not something that&#8217;s a big secret &#8211; we plan to let everyone know in due time. All we can say is that they are a Singapore blue chip that sees great potential in what we are doing.”
Details are sparse, but Tembusu maintains its new product enables offline transactions, uses proof-of-identities and has a credit worthiness scoring system. Additionally, users can recover money from their digital wallets post-hacking, being able to recover their losses.
Tembusu says their TRUST technology will enable banks, governments and corporations to launch their own asset-backed cryptocurrencies.
Explaining TRUST&#8217;s value proposition, Luo stated “One of the key weaknesses of BTC that TRUST helps address is the excessive anonymity that is so often used for criminal ends. On the flipside, BTC users who reveal their identity lose a lot of privacy as their transactions are visible. BTC also suffers from the inability to restore lost accounts and the extreme difficulty in recovering ill-gotten Bitcoins.”
Asset-backed cryptocurrencies are more likely to maintain their value and offer more stability to these naturally conservative institutions, compared to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are still relatively immature. TRUST can apparently be deployed for use in payment processing systems, low-cost remittance services, a cross-border loyalty points system, and banking and trade facilities for the unbanked. However, exact details on both the foundational technology and implementation are sparse.
Counting the University of Athens academic Yanis Varoufakis &#8211; recently appointed as Greece’s finance minister &#8211; and David Lee, a professor of quantitative finance at the Singapore Management University, as advisors, Tembusu has significant access to both the social capital and financial expertise needed to develop a compelling cryptocurrency product.
Asked if this move represented a long-term pivot away from the Bitcoin sector for Tembusu, Luo stated “Even though our ATMs were seeing decent sales figures on average right until the recall, the more we worked with Bitcoin itself as a currency and a commodity of trade, the more we realised that Bitcoin had many weaknesses that stood in the way of it gaining widespread acceptance and stability.”
The ATM business experience of Tembusu, while validating the viability of their business case, seems to indicate that direct interaction with BTC exposes business ventures to tremendous volatility and risk, accounting for the recent pivot and move to publicly disassociate itself with Bitcoin, while emphasising their cryptocurrency and blockchain expertise.
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Tembusu Systems raises $887k in bridge funding

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Tembusu Systems raises $887k in bridge funding

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