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Having built up Zanadu into China’s premier lifestyle travel platform after a tough but rewarding five years, Mr. Zan Wu, together with his co-founder, Dirk Eschenbacher, now wants to create a new startup, Atlas, into “the next generation TripAdvisor and Booking.com combined” using blockchain and crypto. Atlas, which will be launched in Singapore since there is no mandate in China yet for crypto businesses, will connect hotels and restaurants, with content, directly with customers in a tokenized economy. As Wu sees it, the big opportunity in travel is to bring together content, transactions and user data. “But the big players have taken most of those three buckets, the window of opportunity is gone and you can’t create a TripAdvisor or Booking.com or Ctrip by doing something similar. You have to be fundamentally different.” To build its platform, which will be developed in Shenzhen and Hangzhou, Atlas is looking to raise USD 20 million by selling 35% of its Atlas token supply. Investors pay in Ethereum and “their outcome is the size of the token economy we will create”, said Wu. “Who we raise the money from is more complicated and critical than just raising VC money. We want investors who can give us diversity and we will also open up to our ecosystem partners.” Read Original Article |
