Blue Star Regulatory News (BLU)

Blue Star Capital plc

("Blue Star" or the "Company")

Update on SatoshiPay

Release of IOTA proof-of-concept website

Blue Star Capital plc (AIM: BLU), the investing company with a focus on new technologies, is pleased to announce that further to the update announced on 29 September 2017 regarding SatoshiPay's proof of concept project with the IOTA Foundation, SatoshiPay has now released the proof-of-concept demo site to the public at https://satoshipay.tangle.works.

SatoshiPay is exploring the replacement of Bitcoin with an alternative cryptocurrency, IOTA, as SatoshiPay's settlement network to allow instantaneous fee-free micropayments. Further background on the rationale for finding an alternative to Bitcoin was set out in the Company's announcement of 17 July 2017. The demonstration website features a fully browser-based implementation of IOTA's new Flash Network technology, which allows instantaneous payments by creating a layer on top of the IOTA ledger. Users can test the website by clicking the orange button on the screen and clicking "Fund the Channel" to be given 400 Testnet IOTAs.

Tony Fabrizi, CEO of Blue Star commented:

"We are pleased to see launch of this test website which demonstrates SatoshiPay's business model and which enables website publishers a working platform to see the ease with which they could monetise their content whilst allowing consumers to view paid-for content at the click of a button."

Meinhard Benn, CEO of SatoshiPay commented:

"The release of the proof-of concept with IOTA is an exciting step forward. When combined with the rapid pace at which blockchain technology is evolving, for example with unique distributed ledgers like IOTA's Tangle, the scale and efficiency with which SatoshiPay's business model can be rolled out is significantly improved."

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of EU Regulation 596/2014 ("MAR").

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About Blue Star Capital Plc

Blue Star is an investing company with a focus on new technologies. Blue Star's investments include a 31% holding in SatoshiPay, a nanopayment software and blockchain company; a holding in Disruptive Tech Limited, an investing company with five investments including a 38% holding in VNU Group LLC ("VNU") a speciality online direct retailer of premium goods paid for through an instant credit facility and a holding in Nektan PLC; and an 1% investment in Sthaler, an early stage identity and payments technology business which enables a consumer to identify themselves and pay using just their finger at retail points of sale. 

About SatoshiPay Ltd

SatoshiPay is headquartered in London with development led through its office in Berlin. Angel funding for SatoshiPay Ltd was supplied by Axel Springer Plug & Play and Henning Peters. Seed funding was raised through Jim Mellon, Huiyin Blockchain Venture and Blue Star Capital. Development of SatoshiPay's nanopayment product started in April 2015 and its beta version was released in February 2016. Find updated information at the company's website https://satoshipay.io, its blog https://medium.com/@SatoshiPay and Twitter @SatoshiPay.

About IOTA Foundation

The IOTA Foundation is a non-profit foundation in Germany, established with the purpose of developing, maintaining and standardizing new open source protocols based on distributed ledger technologies (DLT). The IOTA tangle provides a revolutionary open source DLT which is scalable, lightweight and makes it possible to transfer value or data without any fees. Find more information about IOTA at http://iota.org or Twitter @iotatoken