Posted by R. K. Mahin | HBZ 
March 2, 2019
HBZ & Helbiz, Inc & Strategy
There seems to be unnecessary confusion regarding the relationship between HBZ and Helbiz. Helbiz was originally solely focused on launching its car sharing operation but its insurance provider close to launch increased the insurance price 4000% after realizing the direct crypto association without proven operational track record, which was brought to the attention of regulators and banks, making it impossible for Helbiz to launch, get licenses or be profitable in any market. Both Credit Card processors, banks and government regulators issuing licenses refused to be involved in an unproven crypto operation, dealing with liability, making it difficult to both launch operations as well as hire people to scale.
While Helbiz had an agreement with a separate insurance provider who expressed interest in co-developing a blockchain powered pay-as-you-go model for car sharing they refused to start work, insure or implementing the technology without proving an existing operation with over a 2 years of operational history.
A clear and distinct separation between the day-to-day street operation and integrated cryptocurrency aspects is what allows Helbiz to operate legally globally and scale its operation as Helbiz is not a virtual platform, but directly dealing with real human lives, and motorized vehicles in traffic with liability and therefore highly dependent on traditional insurance agencies, banks and government licenses.
The direct crypto association in Helbiz, Inc. and unforeseen changes prevented the launch of the car sharing operation which required the company to rethink its short and long term strategy, and scooter sharing was a way to create and scale the platform globally, short term establishing operations in several countries while growing the user base in the meantime while finding a new way to establish its carsharing operation legally. The car sharing is still of high priority of Helbiz, and it is for the same reason it has acquired an exiting and operational p2p car sharing operation in Asia with several years of existence which is in the process of being rebranded. This operation will gradually serve as a test fleet for the Helbiz smart car hardware, blockchain based data sharing and pay-as-you-go insurance.
Acquiring such a company allows Helbiz to prove an established operation with several years of history, allow Helbiz to move forward with both HBZ based blockchain insurance, testing the Helbiz hardware in an exiting fleet while building out the HBZ powered data sharing, where users store their driving and car data on the blockchain, where insurance, automotive or 3rd party companies can access the user data with HBZ paid to the individual users contributing to the sold dataset.
If Helbiz would have ignorantly insisted on a strict crypto operation without conforming to the global situation in 2019, especially after the decline of all currencies, it would have meant that neither an app nor operation would have been launched or started at his point or in the near foreseeable future. The few early crypto companies otherwise trying to operate in such ways only have very restricted pilot programs restricting them from scaling and operating in direct partnership with governments and regulators which is essential in this particular industry.
