Efforts being made by Tennessee business leaders to attract technology startups are starting to pay off. According to a recent news story published by the Knoxville News Sentinel, a major cryptocurrency exchange that also operates an interesting decentralized internet platform has decided to set up its American headquarters in the Volunteer State. Amplify is digital currency exchange that focuses on providing trading tools for speculators and long-term investors alike; its blockchain platform is powered by the open-source network known as Substratum, which aims to provide unfiltered access to the internet on a peer-to-peer basis.
CEO David Weill explained that his decision to set up shop in Knoxville is tied to the emerging tech startup scene across Tennessee, a state where local business leaders believe would be perfect for a “Vol Valley” revolution. In the case of Amplify, Weill is particularly interested in the proximity to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee. Amplify will be taking up the upper loft space of Cafe 4 in the Market Square district.
Amplify is one of the few cryptocurrency exchanges where account holders can actually acquire tokens with fiat currency such as United States dollars and euros. The company is operating in a crowded and highly competitive space, but its affiliation with Substratum makes it very unique.
Substratum is a network of hosts and nodes supported by a digital currency economy. To a certain extent, Substratum is similar to the ambitious project being pursued by the fictional Pied Piper tech giant of the hit HBO comedy series “Silicon Valley.” In the Substratum network, individuals can turn their internet-connected devices into hosts that serve websites, application and digital content for end users who do not have to connect to virtual private networks, underground platforms or proxies; the purpose is to offer a decentralized browsing platform that cannot be disrupted by censorship schemes.
Within the Substratum network, individuals who put their machines and bandwidth to work on the “browsing blockchain platform” can be rewarded for their services with cryptocurrency, and the same goes for those who make network contributions as nodes. This is the same blockchain that the Amplify Exchange runs on, and it includes an integration feature to enable merchant payments to be made with digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, and others. Amplify also offers paper trading accounts and learning tools for traders who are new to the world of cryptocurrency investments.
