European EdTech Startups

The Lobby
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Europe is home to many of the world’s top education systems. Moreover, it has incubated a number of EdTech startups, an industry that is expected to be worth $252 billion in 2020.

Norway’s ‘Kahoot!’ is perhaps the world’s most popular EdTech app, and one of the first to gamify learning experience both inside and beyond the classroom environment. Platforms like LessonUp from the Netherlands have emerged to help teachers plan and deliver lessons, while London-based Zzish allows teachers to create quizzes, assign homework, and track student progress. France also joins the game with Klassroom, a platform that facilitates communication between parents and teachers, whereas Airtame from Denmark aims to replace the old blackboards with electronics, allowing users to stream digital content onto any computer or mobile device.

This new trend is also penetrating into continuing education and corporate training, changing the business education sector and giving corporations powerful tools for achieving employee and management growth more effectively. These innovations give the aspiring young generation better tools to pursue the careers of their dreams.

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Ritva and its ambition in the EdTech field

Nowadays, the educational systems around the world are gradually evolving and modernize themselves. Instead of using textbooks, students and learners in schools, offices and other social settings are encouraged to use technology as a part of their learning.

In an attempt to make learning more inspiring and exciting, we crave to improve education around the globe and help everyone - of any age, and from all walk of life – unleash the magic of learning. Our aim is to build the leading learning platform worldwide. To this end, Ritva shall devote ourselves to innovate and pioneer the field of EdTech.

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THE RESILIENCE OF EURO

The Euro was unexpectedly resilient against most of the other major currencies last week, despite the service sector is almost coming to a halt due to the current pandemic outbreak. In contrary to widespread expectations, the Euro gained ground against the US Dollar, the Japanese Yen and the Swiss Franc last week, while holding its ground against the British Pound. As market continues to be flooded with concerns about the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the overall picture remains uncertain, but the EURO stands out brightly.

This week – like the past week – will almost certainly be dominated by the continuing responses of central banks and governments to the spread of Covid-19. The European Central Bank, like several others, has responded strongly to the glooming recession – essentially clearing the way for potentially unlimited money-printing.

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IS RITVA’S PROFIT FROM IB GROUPS AFFECTED BY FOREX MARKET?

This might come as a surprise, but the ups-and-downs of the forex market has no effect on the work of IB. This is so because IB’s income comes from their client’s trading volume instead of trading activity. On each trade that a client makes, our IB is rewarded with a portion of the spread. Therefore, Ritva is always confident to always be in a state of positive profit.

Although the market will undoubtedly remains in uncertainty for the coming weeks, traders are not sitting still. In fact, the more volatile the market is, the higher trading volume it is likely to observe. This is due to the face that traders are optimistic in making higher return from the larger spread and movement of the market. Recall that IBs and thereby Ritva’s income is from the volume being traded on the market, rather the green and red, this period of time turns out to be benefiting us.

Despite the coronavirus fear, Ritva’s in-house IB groups and staffs are working diligently on their jobs and duties. All things we’re doing here right now in Ritva are consistently for our investor’s continuous income as well as the long-run of Ritva regardless of the virus-hit economy.

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WHICH IS THE BETTER MARKET FOR YOU TO TRADE ON: STOCKS OR FOREX? (PART 1)
Stock trading and Forex trading are truly different from each other in terms of trading, trading options, liquidity, trading times, margins, leverage, and more. This analysis will focus on the liquidity factor due to its importance to allow investors to decide which is better.

The Forex market is decentralized and represents a trading network of participants worldwide. The stock market is immensely widespread, but it is exceeded in size by the Forex market, which is the largest financial market in the world. When we weigh the Forex market vs the Stock market in terms of size, Forex takes the round. Why do we care about the size? The greater the size of the Forex market, the greater its liquidity will be.

Liquidity makes it easier to trade an instrument. To a large extent, superior liquidity tends to equate to proportionally tighter spreads, and lower transaction costs. Let’s consider an actual Forex trading vs Stock trading example, and compare some typical costs. Let’s use Microsoft as our liquid share, and EUR/USD as our liquid currency pair.

When trading Microsoft, traders have to pay a market spread and incentives for brokers. The market spread might typically range anywhere from 2-5 cents for Microsoft in normal market conditions. This is a range of roughly 0.04% to 0.09%. Commission rates vary from broker to broker, but you might pay 10-12 cents per share.

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WHICH IS THE BETTER MARKET FOR YOU TO TRADE ON: STOCKS OR FOREX? (PART 2)

Now let’s compare that to EUR/USD. The most common type of retail trading is on a spread basis. With EUR/USD trading at 1.1190, this is a round-trip transaction cost of 0.0001/1/1.1190.

Furthermore, on such an account, you might pay less commission. Want to know what that works out to as a percentage? It’s less than 0.01%. In the case of this ‘Forex vs Stock market’ scenario, Forex has the upper hand. The round-trip spread cost of trading the Forex position is less than the market spread on the share. And there’s more: once you factor in the share commission for IBs, the Forex trade is even more cost effective. In addition, a higher exchange rate is better whatsoever. This is because, when you exchange currencies, you will get more of the foreign currency you’re buying in spite of the global coronavirus epidemic.

In terms of trading, Forex has a big advantage that outweighs stocks, and so Ritva completely satisfy investors in this term. The advantage you get in stock trading is that big moves happen more frequently. The takeaway key is… whatever you decide to trade, decide on a tested strategy, try it on a demo account on Ritva’s website and then you can trade it live.

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FUNDRAISING DURING CORONAVIRUS (PART 1)

As the COVID-19 pandemic forces Europeans to stay at home and leaves companies fretting about economic consequences, startup founders across the region are, understandably, submerging themselves in a multitude of concerns. It is hard enough to raise money in a healthy economy, let alone in the crisis that is taking place globally. Venture Capital (VC) investors are calling for startups to slow down or stop hiring, slash spending, allow their employees to work from home, and cut off non-essential travel. In short, startups are advised to activate their business continuity plans to brace themselves amidst this time of unease and uncertainty. Does it mean VC will cease their investment?

The answer is a resounding NO! There are a lot of funds out there with a deep pocket of capital to deploy. Having that said, VC investors are inevitably less enthusiastic, but they are not shutting off the door. For example, last week Blossom Capital signed [a term sheet] and according to Ophelia Brown, a partner of venture capital firm Blossom Capital they expect the next one is imminent.

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FUNDRAISING DURING CORONAVIRUS (PART 2)

VCs will become more selective

According to Christopher Priebe, partner at Global Founders Capital, the bar is higher and the next round is harder than it is a year ago. “The honest but not very popular answer here is most funds reserve 50% of their capital for follow-on investing and the intention is to use those reserves to double down on the most obvious winners, not to bail out questionable companies. So if this downturn persists or becomes more severe, all VCs are going to have a handful of ‘good’ but not yet ‘great’ companies that they need to make tough calls on.” says Paul Murphy, a partner at Northzone.

Ritva’s benefit

Although the coronavirus pandemic has affected European startups in several ways, it is an opportunity for Ritva’s VCs to take time studying and thereby selecting the most resilient and capable startup out there. This is undoubtedly a survival test for startups. Through this test, Ritva’s VCs will have a clearer look at the startups, making sure that those are selected are well prepared and capable of handling the difficulties and excel.

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WHY TRADE FOREX INSTEAD OF STOCKS?

In terms of daily transaction volume, the forex market is the world’s largest market and it’s almost the most liquid. Not to be mentioned, this market is highly accessible given that it’s open 24 hours a day, and investors interested in trading forex can make use of far more leverage than they could by trading stocks.

There are several reasons why investors should choose foreign exchange (forex) trading over trading stocks.

The World’s Largest Market

According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), In 2019, the global foreign exchange (forex) market saw an average daily turnover of approximately 5.1 trillion U.S. dollars. This means that on an average day in 2019, the sum of all transactions in the forex market amounted to almost 6.6 trillion U.S. dollars.

In comparison, The New York Stock Exchange’s daily trading volume averaged US$38.5 billion during the first five sessions of May 2017. While The Nasdaq’s daily trading volume averaged close to US$85 billion during the first four sessions of that same month. Having a larger market means that it makes it more difficult for individual traders and institutions to engage in price manipulation, which can cause securities to experience sharp price fluctuations in short time periods.

Robust Liquidity

The forex market’s significant size offers traders significant liquidity, which is the ease with which traders can exchange one asset for another. Besides giving traders greater maneuverability, high liquidity can help provide them with lower transaction costs as well as protect traders from price manipulation.

When a market enjoys substantial liquidity, it can more easily handle large increases in trading volume without experiencing significant changes in price, making the market less vulnerable to sharp changes in trading volume aimed at causing price volatility.

24-Hour an Online Availability

One major benefit of trading forex is that the currency markets are open 24 hours a day. Fortunately, there are intermediaries including banks, broker-dealers and other financial institutions located in many different cities to help service the demand. For individual traders, 24-hour access simply means greater options.

Furthermore, all forex trading activities can be done online. Traders or IBs (Introducing broker) don’t need to be in person at the physical forex exchange for placing their orders. As the coronavirus fear spreading out the world, ‘online’ needless to say is the greatest choice.

Substantial Leverage

Traders might trade forex instead of stocks because they can obtain far greater leverage. By borrowing money to make trades, investors can potentially enjoy stronger returns. For example, if a trader has access to 400:1 margin, they can make a £4,000,000 trade with just £10,000 in the margin. As a result, they would only need to put 0.25% of the trade down as margin. While taking this approach can provide traders with stronger returns, they must keep in mind that leverage is a double-edged sword and can also greatly amplify losses.

As a result, traders will benefit from consulting a financial adviser or other qualified financial professionals before using leverage.

Summary

As outlined, there are several reasons why investors should opt for forex trading over stock trading. By trading forex, investors can access a market that is far larger in scope than that of the stock market. Because of its size, the stock market offers greater liquidity, which means that investors may be able to enjoy lower transaction costs and more easily enter and exit trades.

The forex market also offers traders greater flexibility than the stock market. Given that it’s open 24 hours a day, investors can more easily combine forex trading with other responsibilities. Finally, the forex market offers greater leverage than the stock market, a factor that can potentially amplify gains as well as losses.

THAT’S WHY FOREX, AS WELL AS IB, IS RITVA’S CHOICE FOR THE STRATEGY OF THIS PERIOD OF TIME

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CRYPTOCURRENCIES ARE TURNING MAINSTREAM

Payment businesses have gone through a revolution in the last few years. From blockchain, and FinTech to AI and cryptocurrencies, the world of international commerce is moving faster than ever.

The payment industry of the future is shaped by a mobile device or a computer. It happens at home and on the go. The shop is open 24 hours a day, and customers are demanding more from their platforms than ever before.

In 2019, E-commerce was responsible for around $3.53 trillion in sales, increasing from $2.92 trillion in 2018. By 2022, the global e-commerce is expected to rise to $5.69 trillion. This represents expected growth of 61% over the next three years. The digital marketplace is growing, and the future belongs to the businesses that can stay ahead of the curve.

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CRYPTO VS. FIAT CURRENCIES (PART 1)

Ritva is an international investment project and is constantly working towards bringing investors an extraordinary experience including convenience and safety.

Accordingly, cryptocurrency comes to Ritva as the best mean of payment method. Why? Because cryptocurrencies are numerous and versatile and can be utilized as entirely private bank accounts and payment cards for almost any occasion. They offer a multitude of ways to earn a form of interest with little or no effort and help users protect sensitive data and holdings on the go 24/7.

Borderless Usage

Cryptocurrencies are a borderless means of exchange allowing for instant and cost-effective transactions across the world. There is no waiting, no international fees and no limitations as to who can or cannot send funds to whom or when and where those funds can be accessed. All that is needed is an internet-enabled device like a cell phone and, immediately, someone without access to a banking institution is given an alternative solution with which they can pay bills, earn income, safe-keep their funds, make purchases and conduct business.

Using cryptocurrencies while traveling adds an extra layer of security and can be used as a remote source of emergency funds that can be accessed without an ID, a bank account, credit cards, a wire transfer or even a personal computer device.

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CRYPTO VS. FIAT CURRENCIES (PART 2)

Privacy

Banks and credit institutions, as well as retailers and service providers, obtain and retain too much of their customers’ personal and financial information. On the contrary, cryptocurrency transactions provide an alternative by limiting the amount of transaction data to mere numbers also known as cryptocurrency wallet addresses and transaction IDs confirming that a wallet-to-wallet transaction took place.

A cryptocurrency payment processor acting as a third party will typically require your name (and shipping address for the delivery of physical goods), but the rest of your information will remain private as long as you don’t connect your bank or credit card account and transact solely in BTC and altcoins.

Transaction Fees

You’ve no doubt read your monthly account statements from the bank or credit card company, and balked at the level of fees imposed for writing checks, transferring funds, or breathing in the general direction of the finance houses involved. Transaction fees can take a significant bite out of your assets – especially if you’re performing a lot of transactions in a month.

Since the data miners (remote and separate computer systems) that do the number crunching which generates Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies receive their compensation from the cryptocurrency network involved, transaction fees usually don’t apply.

There may be some external fees involved if you engage the services of a third-party management service to maintain your cryptocurrency wallet, but another one of the advantages of cryptocurrency is that they are still likely to be much less than the transaction charges incurred by traditional financial systems.

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CRYPTO VS. FIAT CURRENCIES (PART 3)

Custody of the assets

In a traditional banking or credit card system, you effectively turn stewardship of your funds over to a third party that can exercise the power of life or death over your assets. Accounts may be closed without notice for infringements of a financial institution’s Terms of Service – requiring you as the account holder to jump through hoops in order to get yourself back into the system.

Perhaps the greatest of all advantages of cryptocurrency is that unless you’ve delegated management of your wallet over to a third party service, you are the sole owner of the corresponding private and public encryption keys that make up your cryptocurrency network identity or address.

Security

Once a cryptocurrency transfer has been authorized, it can’t be reversed as in the case of the “charge-back” transactions allowed by credit card companies. This is a hedge against fraud which requires a specific agreement to be made between a buyer and seller regarding refunds in the event of a mistake or returns policy.

The strong encryption techniques employed throughout the distributed ledger (blockchain) and cryptocurrency transaction processes are a safeguard against fraud and account tampering, and guarantees of consumer privacy.

To sum up, cryptocurrency payments have the potential of creating a more borderless and globalized economy, as well as fighting financial inequality by bringing fast and secured financial services to people without access to a bank. This is a big win for everyone. And this is also why Ritva chooses cryptocurrency over cash for payment.

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CRYPTO VS. FIAT CURRENCIES (PART 3)

Custody of the assets

In a traditional banking or credit card system, you effectively turn stewardship of your funds over to a third party that can exercise the power of life or death over your assets. Accounts may be closed without notice for infringements of a financial institution’s Terms of Service – requiring you as the account holder to jump through hoops in order to get yourself back into the system.

Perhaps the greatest of all advantages of cryptocurrency is that unless you’ve delegated management of your wallet over to a third party service, you are the sole owner of the corresponding private and public encryption keys that make up your cryptocurrency network identity or address.

Security

Once a cryptocurrency transfer has been authorized, it can’t be reversed as in the case of the “charge-back” transactions allowed by credit card companies. This is a hedge against fraud which requires a specific agreement to be made between a buyer and seller regarding refunds in the event of a mistake or returns policy.

The strong encryption techniques employed throughout the distributed ledger (blockchain) and cryptocurrency transaction processes are a safeguard against fraud and account tampering, and guarantees of consumer privacy.

To sum up, cryptocurrency payments have the potential of creating a more borderless and globalized economy, as well as fighting financial inequality by bringing fast and secured financial services to people without access to a bank. This is a big win for everyone. And this is also why Ritva chooses cryptocurrency over cash for payment.

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THE RISE OF EDTECH (PART 1)

With the increasing number of universities and schools shutting down their campuses and moving their learning online to prevent the spread of CoronaVirus, it is time for the EdTech to prove its worth. Before the spread of COVID-19, only a few countries focused on promoting online learning platforms, however, gradually, everyone started to realize the importance of such platforms amid the CoronaVirus outbreak. Now, the question is, is this feasible?

What do experts say?

According to Robert Hsiung, CEO of the Chinese division of the EdTech company Emeritus, “The conversation about educational technologies as an option in the face of a health crisis like this, no longer revolves around whether they work or not, but how quickly and efficiently the technologies can be implemented”. Hsiung added that “there is currently a massive demand for high-quality online experiences; all businesses at all levels are working to create new solutions for online lessons. This is opening the way for the creation of new companies with the potential to become leaders in online education, especially when extraordinary circumstances, such as a health crisis, demand it”.

For Goldie Blumenstyk, senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Once universities develop the ability to meet the needs of their students via remote technology, there is not much reason to return to previous models”. In the same vein, John Katzman commented that “such events are the ones that make the line between face-to-face and virtual educational experiences increasingly tenuous”. But outside of theory, who is developing these educational projects?

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THE RISE OF EDTECH (PART 2)

The EdTech arena

The distance education technology sector has had explosive growth in recent months. In just 3 months, there are 3,000 jobs created in this sector. The investment in the Edtech sector amounts to 18.66 billion dollars globally, counting investors such as Facebook, Matrix Partners, and GGV Capital.

Coursera - one of the most established educational technology suppliers, for example, was already valued at a trillion dollars even before the first coronavirus outbreak. As part of the effort to operate the resource of online education as a global response to the health crisis, it has begun to offer a wide variety of free courses to universities that close as a preventative measure to contain the virus. The universities that register for this online service will have access to the teaching materials offered by Coursera until July 31 of this year, with the option of extensions according to the relevant risk assessments. The students that are enrolled in individual courses up to July 31 will have access to the content free of charge until September of this year.

Today, technical resources are available to maintain not just one or two online classes but to provide the structure for distance education to entire universities. When the health crisis gives way, these structures will remain and mark the step to a breakthrough in the way we deliver learning.

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ACADEMIA - WHERE SCHOLARS MEET

In the world of digitalization, many academics and researchers are becoming increasingly interested in their digital identity. Being proactive about where and how they appear on the internet, it may bring them opportunities for collaboration and valuation contribution to their teaching as well as research work. And one of the biggest academic networking site which allows them to build their profile, to form collaborative partnerships with other researchers, and to ask and answer questions is Academia.edu.

About Academia

Guided by a mission to accelerate the world’s research, Academia.edu aims to make every academic paper ever published available for free online and accessible by anyone in the world. Academia.edu was founded in 2008 in San Francisco by Richard Price who recognized the need for open access of scholarly work while he was a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Oxford University.

An enormous and prestigious community

In 2019, Academia announced that 75 million users had joined the world’s largest platform for free and open access to scholarly research. Over 70,000 new users join the platform everyday. Especially, Academia has been used by academics at 16,271 universities such as the University of Oxford, University of California- Berkeley, New York University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Undoubtedly, Academia has been doing great in the process of creating a sphere where scholars meet.

Even though this is a huge community with thousands of researches available, it does not mean that any research can be published on the site. In an attempt to build a healthy networking site, Academia has created a list of strict policies for publishing their member’s studies. Fortunately, one of Ritva key researches has been available now on the site.

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ESTONIA - A STARTUP PARADISE

What’s common between Skype, TransferWise and Pipedrive? They are all Estonian startups. With just over 1.3 million people, this tiny central and eastern Europe (CEE) country has become a digital nation in its true sense. There are roughly about 350 startups in Estonia – one for every 3,700 citizens. Surely, the country isn’t lacking in entrepreneurial spirit.

Post its liberation from the Soviet Union, Estonia rebuilt itself from scratch. This offered them the opportunity to focus on the internet and new technologies in their development agenda and become the tech center in Europe. In 2000, Estonia became the first country to declare the internet as a basic human right. The country was also the first to conduct elections online in 2005. Whether you want to pay taxes, set up a business, file a complaint, claim returns, you can do it all online.

Estonia runs itself like a tech startup. Apart from e-government and technology education right from 1st grade, the country is also the most transparent and the least corrupt in the CEE region. Estonia’s economic freedom is regarded as one of the highest in the World and the best in the CEE region.

With so many things going for the country, Estonia has naturally become a European startup hub and a hotbed for companies which are ringing in global acclaim and raising millions of dollars.

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RVCHAIN ON ARXIV

On 28 May 2020, the Ritva blockchain research is accepted and officially published on arxiv.org owned by Cornell University. This university is considered a highly prestigious college not only in US but also all over the world.

Cornell University ranked no. 5 for best colleges for information technology in America and no. 14 among the world’s universities in the 2018 QS World University Rankings. Cornell is a highly rated private university located in Ithaca, New York. It is a large institution with an enrollment of 15,175 undergraduate students. Admissions is extremely competitive as the Cornell acceptance rate is 11%. Popular majors include Biology, Computer Science, and Business. Graduating 95% of students, Cornell alumni go on to earn a starting salary of $64,800.

Arxiv is maintained by Cornell University, one of the top notch University in the US and worldwide

  • No one can deny the reputation of Arxiv academic website. It consists of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, electrical engineering, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, mathematical finance and economics which can be accessed online.

  • Begun on August 14, 1991, arXiv.org passed the half-million-article milestone on October 3,2008, and had hit a million by the end of 2014.

  • By October 2016 the submission rate had grown to more than 10,000 per month.

The reasons that Ritva submitted their research on Arxiv:

  1. To give readers access to our article, people who do not have access to paid academic journals can read papers on arXiv, too.

  2. To get comments from peers

  3. To claim scientific priority

Our research is:

  • being read and cited early
  • being discussed in the general press
  • being able to claim precedence in case of competing research on hot topics

Learn more: arxiv.org/abs/2006.01758

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RESEARCHGATE - CONNECT THE WORLD OF SCIENCE

Contemporary scholarly scientific research and publishing are characterized by a great number of journals, the swift tempo of publication, and the competitiveness of the funding process. These factors, in conjunction with the extensive adoption of communication via social media platforms in academia, have given rise to a demand for new venues for scholars and scientists to collaborate on, publicize, and share. In response to this demand, Researchgate had been founded.

About Researchgate

ResearchGate, founded in 2008 by physicians Dr. Ijad Madisch and Dr. Sören Hofmayer, and computer scientist Horst Fickenscher, is the professional network for scientists and researchers. Over 17 million members from all over the world use it to share, discover, and discuss research. According to a 2014 study by Nature and a 2016 article in Times Higher Education, it is the largest academic social network in terms of active users. ResearchGate is guided by a mission to connect the world of science and make research open to all.

Reception

A 2009 article in BusinessWeek reported that ResearchGate was a “potentially powerful link” in promoting innovation in developing countries by connecting scientists from those nations with their peers in industrialized nations.

Academic reception of ResearchGate remains generally positive, as recent reviews of extant literature show an accepting audience with broad coverage of concepts.

Strictly site member policy

While reading articles does not require registration, people who wish to become site members (and thereby can upload their paper for review) need to have an email address at a recognized institution or to be manually confirmed as a published researcher in order to sign up for an account. The strict policy helps Researchgate stand-out as a trusted social networking site between others.

RVchain Published in Researchgate

Ritva has successfully listed one of its key researches named RVChain on Researchgate. According to the research, “RVChain takes advantage of trusted execution environment to offer confidentiality protection for transactions, and scale the throughput of the network in proportion with the number of network participants by supporting parallel shadow chains.”

Learn more at: researchgate.net/publication/341833538_The_Ritva_Blockchain_Enabling_Confidential_Transactions_at_Scale