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Spin Announces ICO for PIN to build blockchain-based reputation protocolSAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 24, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Spin, the North American urban and campus mobility company, today announced the Pin Protocol ("Pin"), a blockchain-based reputation and rewards protocol for its own network of shared bikes and other partners in the future, along with a corresponding cryptocurrency called PIN. The Pin Protocol aims to be the universal credit bureau for users in the growing sharing economy, and will help Spin in its mission to bring shared mobility options to cities and campuses. A forthcoming Initial Coin Offering ("ICO") will be held in conjunction with the launch, following a pre-sale which sold out in hours.
Spin currently services over 24 markets including Seattle, DC, Dallas, Los Angeles, UCSD, and RIT. Last April, it raised an $8M Series A from Grishin Robotics, a firm led by Dmitry Grishin, co-founder of Mail.ru, Russia's leading iternet company, and China Rock Capital Management, investors in Ripple, the creators of the XRP token which in the past month became the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization behind only Bitcoin. "The launch of the Pin Protocol marks a big step forward for providers in this new sharing economy," said Spin co-founder and President Euwyn Poon, 33, and an early blockchain investor and advocate. In 2014 he launched Delta Financial, a startup backed by Y Combinator, Initialized Capital and Winklevoss Capital. Along with being a two-time Y Combinator alumnus, he is the founding partner of of venture capital firm Exponent, and a former M&A and securities lawyer at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York City. "The Pin Protocol represents an innovative application of blockchain technology in the IoT space, solving a key problem for renters of physical objects, whether shared bikes, housing, battery packs, or even autonomous vehicles in the future," said Dmitry Grishin of Grishin Robotics. "As global investors in bikeshare companies, we've seen the pain point of how to incentivize proper user behavior across a number of different operators and believe that this is a novel solution." The Pin Protocol consists of a reputation and rewards engine and a utility token called PIN, which all work hand-in-hand to let asset providers record positive and negative rental behavior in a normalized manner. PIN tokens are issued when positive behavior is recorded, and the recorded user behaviors are algorithmically transformed into reputation scores, referenceable by asset providers using the Pin Protocol. Pin also has built in arbitration and voting engines, driven by the PIN tokens, to help with self-governance. About Spin Spin is a urban and campus mobility company that has deployed over 12,000 bikes in cities and campuses around North America. Its fleet of GPS-equipped, orange-colored smart-bikes can be unlocked by scanning a QR code, and can be dropped off anywhere, all at no cost to cities and campuses. In April 2017, Spin raised an $8M Series A to launch across North American cities and campuses. Spin is led by a team with experience from Y Combinator, Lyft, Uber and other technology companies. To learn more visit https://spin.pm
SOURCE Spin 
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