April 29, Bitrue reached out to me that they wanted to have a meeting in the Netherlands. They read my blog about the meetup in Amersfoort:

https://xrpcommunity.blog/xrp-community-meetup-amersfoort-nl-part-ii/

what....... as a fact is already .......PRETTY COOL.

To not jump in all the details, Bitrue decided to have the meetup at May 25th in the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. And that is where the blog needs to start ........

I decided to take the train....... parking in Amsterdam is interesting to say at the least:

The X kind of gives it away and the 7.50 is PER HOUR ! ! !

I also had another engagement after the meetup, that required a designated driver, ...... so the train was my transportation going to Amsterdam ....

I have live in the Capital City of the Netherlands and it is always nice to come back...... the Train Station is magnificent.

The station is 215 years old and looks magnificent, joy to start the day with. Beurs van Berlage is not more than a five minute walk and shows you a lot of beautiful things. Before ........ I start talking about the incredible history of the place Bitrue chose I will show you some pictures of the buildings on the way to the meetup place. Amsterdam is famous for the famous facades, that all differ..... and cheese, the Netherlands, is known about cheese!! (The middle picture ........ yes, those are cheeses in the window)!!

So getting at the Beurs van Berlage. Also an old building ...... around 125 years old, but that is not the most interesting part of the building...... the most interesting the building is known for.... it's purpose ... it was designed to be the Dutch commodity exchange; it was a contest and architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage won. Years the commodity exchange sat in the building. The area still shows financial vehicle trading and the architecture is magnificent...

And NOW Crypto Currency moved to the Building.... nice transition to Bitrue.

I entered the building together with Tom Kuster, and ran into Wietse and Ali. This already offered me the first dilemma; these three people were also in Amersfoort and it was too easy,....... to compare this meetup with the one in Amersfoort. I promised myself NOT to do this. I was introduced to Curis Wang, CEO of Bitrue and what a kind person this is... I was looking forward to this day.

The Plan: MEET the team of Bitrue, hear their story.... get some info from Wietse, always interesting and Q & A with Bitrue and the people at the meet. Between 40 and 50 people showed up, from a lot of different countries ... amazing. That was the first win for Bitrue, they probably did something right as a lot of people wanted to know who is Bitrue......... but had to wait a little bit as Wietse had the floor first ............

Started off with a great presentation, with a great first image that raised a lot of questions and not only in the room:

So Xign, it made it to Twitter, to the Internet, but a lot of questions. Well,.... it is one of the projects taken upon by XRPL Labs. Wietse, Tristan (soccer player / golfer) ?!? and Ali are the magicians that are XRPL Labs.

So Xign, a Signing Platform..... Yes, ... a signing platform, not only a crypto wallet but a banking app that can be explained with 5 easy questions:

1. Is it only for Crypto Geeks, no, NOT at all, it is an app that can be explained to your family, your mom knows how to use it!

2. Is it for Crypto Tokes. Yes...... but not ONLY for crypto tokens, you are able to pay, so Euros, Dollars are also part of the app!

3. Family seed and Mnemonic are part of the app, eh ........... you think that is easy... NO, not what I would think, neither do Wietse, Ali and Tristan, so ...... Secure Setup and User Friendly is what you get.

4. Account addresses....... that are REALLY long are not part of Xign.... in this banking app you will be able to use Directories, Lookup and via the different Socials, you are able to send / receive transactions.....

5. Only pushing (sending) transactions. Forget about THAT, if XRPL Labs wants to do something, they do it well: Push & Pull (send & request) !!!

Ehhhhhhh................. like .............. COOL

So how does it all work:

If you want to look at it as a developer.... like we ALL would like it looks like this.

The first thing would be to sign requests. If you look at the ledger, you will see the transaction type, from what account the payment is made, with the according fee. With all that you need to fill out destination and destination tag with the amount. The flags..... well somebody knows what flags means,.. so it HAS a purpose!!!. You also want to fill out when the payment has to be made and the sequence, when it actually can be paid!

So ...... what does the End User (sender) see:

He/ She sees the account but the Destination is not known. The amount is also something that is not known.

So ...... what does the Developer / Beneficiary see

He/ She sees it the other way round. Knows the Destination Address and the amount, not the account where it comes from!!

Xign, makes it easier: Look at the following:

The Xign App will make it clear

Going from a Sign Request:

and reviewing the transaction, to selecting an account and sending the developer / beneficiary a confirmation (a web hook):

So What is Xign, if you still have questions, looking at this? A banking app, useable in many industries. It should give you awesome user experience, all you want to keep secret, stays secret, it is a very easy integration for developers and it is easy to use the XRPL/ ILP for payments.

Definitely another ground breaking tool coming from the hands of XRPL Labs

So............ the Bitrue meetup started off with a nice piece of information coming from Netherlands' own Wietse Wind.

Now it was time for Curis Wang, telling, sharing with us, who is:

Curtis started of with where he was coming from and how it all started. He wanted to think big. The only industry that has been thriving through the years and has ALWAYS thrived is......... the BANKING industry.

So Banks have to Improve or they will be Replaced. So this is also where the Mission Statement comes from , to give more people equal access to financial services.

Still, why starting another Exchange, there are SOOOOO Many.

According to Curis:

(P&D stands for Pump & Dump). So he is not asking for listing fees, does not want to list Shit coins though. Bitrue has grown a lot and more people have found them.

The growth is part the amazing job of the XRP Community but I would also like to highlight the fact that Bitrue is Listening. 48 XRP Pairs were created after asking the Community what they wanted to see; something that is VERY important for Curis and his team: Listening to the Community. 48 Pairs and it does not stop there !!!

Customers really are the most important and was shared with us during the whole presentation. Critical questions arose as 12 hours / 24 hours customer care is very difficult. Acknowledgement is the first step, solving the second. Solving can in some cases not happen within 24 hours.

The a very important topic in Curis' presentation was the Bitrue Power Piggy ....Sustainable, what is it .... is it fake ..... is it a stunt......

None of the above ! ! ! !

Freezing Tokens/ Coins/ Crypto Currency to actually earn 7.3% interest; yes .... it is what Bitrue says and yes ..... it is what they GIVE.

It is marketing. As Bitrue is a young exchange, not well known everywhere, they want to get bigger and have a great marketing strategy. Whether this is sustainable or not needs to be seen, but so far so good. The freezing actually is not really freezing as you can take out your coins any time. There is a maximum, but they will also re-think that situation.

One more very important topic was the release of the Bitrue Coin (BTR). This will happen at the beginning of June

Bitrue wants to look for a decentralized banking landscape, where you can borrow and lend crypto (BTR) to the Crypto Market but also to the Traditional Market. Which will hopefully maximize returns. This can be explained in 4 words:

1. Trade
2. Move
3. Earn
4. Loan

Important to know, will this new coin be ERC20 (build on the Ethereum Blockchain) or will it be XRPL. build on the XRP Blockchain. Silence fell in the room and the answer was not the latter. At the moment Ripple does not have sufficient resources to assist Bitrue getting this on the XRPL. Wietse will help out where he can, but so far BTR will start as an ERC20 and will move to XRPL.

The presentation was amazing and was followed by a short break, followed by an AMA with the whole Bitrue team that came over:

Especially Iris (head of Marketing) answered a lot of questions that ranged from left to right. Esoteric Trading Solutions Suzy, all the way from Australia, had critical questions, but were all answered with amazing answers. Whether Bitrue has to have a trading pair with the future Facebook coin started a discussion that resulted in a pole immediately:

Let's see what Curis has for us.... wonder oh wonder ..... I believe you should say something like:

Be Careful what you wish for .......

After the discussions, the Bitrue team had some great snacks for us and the 40+ group kept on talking about all the things they just heard. Very interesting to talk about.

Personally I think Bitrue has ambition, has potential, and has a good view of the current market... and the future market. They are different than what we have out there and I would definitely indulge you to take a look.

If you have any questions regarding Bitrue, I may be able to answer but the best way is just ask Bitrue on Twitter, they answer very quickly, within 12 / 24 hours. And if you speak to Iris..... tell her hi from XRPTwin

Two more things:

I am independent, I did NOT get paid to write this as this colors my vision and my outcome on paper. I did not receive any XRP, BTR, not even Ripple. I am, once again, independent and write it positive , if I am positive and negative if I am negative.

Finally, I would like to thank Tom Kuster for showing me the inside of the Beurs van Berlage, although he did not want to, I want to thank Wietse for an incredible explanation what he and the XRPL Lab Team is working on, Curis and Iris and the Bitrue Team to make this an incredible meetup and your continuous XRP support.

Me...... being a member of the XRP Community, I would love to say we are proud having an exchange on our side, that is so pro XRP, so pro Ripple.

Thank you