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Pitching a dollar-pegged token that offers cryptocurrency speculators a way to move their investments across volatile exchanges, TrustToken (the first public investment from a16z crypto) is now looking for public investments from accredited investors on CoinList.

The companyfirst token is TrueUSD, a stablecoin that is redeemable one-to-one for U.S. dollars. In its first four months of trading, the speculative investors that are looking for some sort of island of security have boosted the coinmarket price to more than $85 million.

Therea $61 million hard cap on the token allocated over three tranches at $0.12, $0.14 and $0.16 per trust token.

Other investors in TrustTokeninitial $20 million pre-sale include BlockTower Capital, Danhua Capital, GGV Capital, Jump Capital and other undisclosed investors.

As it expands its investor base to include accredited investors, the TrueUSD currency is also expanding its reach, with an agreement between the company and HitBTC to list the stablecoin as a quote currency. The TrueUSD coin can be used as a stalking horse to secure investments in Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tether, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Monero, 0x and NEO, according to a statement from the company.

Every TrueUSD token is redeemable one-for-one with U.S. dollars, which the companyfounders think should open the door for more institutional investment (or speculation depending on your point of view) into the market.

Using TrueUSDsystem, dollars are held in the escrow accounts of multiple trust companies rather than in a bank account. Those accounts are verified by an independent third party that issues monthly reports on the amount of dollars held in collateral.

A buyer of TrueUSD needs to pass a know your customer and AML check and then can send dollars to one of TrueUSDtrust company partners. Once that transaction is verified, the TrueUSD smart contract issues tokens on a one-to-one ratio before sending the tokens to a buyer. The company uses Prime Trust, a Las Vegas-based company for its financial services.

Once tokens are delivered to a wallet, those tokens can be transferred or used as payment to buy other cryptocurrencies.

&The users of this space are really the traders,& says TrustToken co-founder and chief executive Danny An. &They want a native crypto asset thatstable. They want to be able to hedge against volatility.&

An said the company does have a broader vision than just helping traders secure speculative assets so they can come up with even more arcane financial instruments. &For the entire crypto-economy to work, a lot of people believe that a stablecoin or multiple stablecoins need to be created,& An said.

TrustToken makes money whenever its coins are minted or burned, An says. &Whenever USD is involved we take a small cut,& which is 10 basis points per transaction, he said.

Ultimately, TrustToken (like other alt-coins) wants to tokenize all real-world assets. And one of the most attractive markets for An and his co-founders is real estate. &There is $200 trillion dollars of real estate that is offline,& said An. Tokenizing those assets would create more wealth in the world overall, he said. &Assets that are not liquid are not as valuable as assets that are liquid,& An said.

Ita far cry from the work that An and his co-founders Rafael Cosman and Stephen Kade were doing at Kernel — a company that was developing technologies to create neural interfaces between humans and machines.

&The problem with Kernel or Google Brain [where the team also spent time] was that the timelines were very long,& An said.

Snapchat is building a visual product search feature, codenamed &Eagle,& that delivers users to Amazon listings. Buried inside the code of SnapchatAndroid app is an unreleased &Visual Search& feature where you &Press and hold to identify an object, song, barcode, and more! This works by sending data to Amazon, Shazam, and other partners.& Once an object or barcode has been scanned you can &See all results at Amazon.&

Visual product search could make Snapchatcamera a more general purpose tool for seeing and navigating the world, rather than just a social media maker. It could differentiate Snapchat from Instagram, whose clone of Snapchat Stories now has more than twice the users and a six times faster gro

wth rate than the original. And if Snapchat has worked out an affiliate referrals deal with Amazon, it could open a new revenue stream. Thatsomething Snap Inc. direly needs after posting a $385 million loss last quarter and missing revenue estimates by $14 million.

TechCrunch was tipped off to the hidden Snapchat code by app researcher Ishan Agarwal. His tips have previously led to TechCrunch scoops about Instagramvideo calling, soundtracks, Focus portrait mode and QR Nametags features that were all later officially launched. Amazon didn&t respond to a press inquiry before publishing time, and itunclear if its actively involved in the development of Snapchat visual search or just a destination for its results. Snap already sells its Spetacles v2 camera glasses on Amazon — the only place beyond its own site. Snap Inc. gave TechCrunch a &no comment,& about visual search but the companycode tells the story.

Snapchat first dabbled in understanding the world around you with its Shazam integrationback in 2016 that lets you tap and hold to identify a song playing nearby, check it out on Shazam, send it to a friend or follow the artist on Snapchat. Project Eagle builds on this audio search feature to offer visual search through a similar interface and set of partnerships.The ability to identify purchaseable objects or scan barcodes could turn Snapchat, which some view as a teen toy, into more of a utility.

Whatinside SnapchatEagle eye

Snapchatcode doesn&t explain exactly how the Project Eagle feature will work, but in the newest version of Snapchat it was renamed as &Camera Search.& If you remember, Snap used another animal name, &Cheetah&, as the secret word for its big redesign. The appcode liststhe ability to surface &sellers& and &reviews,& &Copy URL& of a product and &Share& or &Send Product& to friends — likely via Snap messages or Snapchat Stories. In characteristic cool kid teenspeak, an error message for &product not found& reads &Bummer, we didn&t catch that!&

Eaglevisual search may be connected to Snapchat&context cards,& which debuted late last year and pull up business contact info, restaurant reservations, movie tickets, Ubers or Lyfts and more. Surfacing within Snapchat a context card of details about ownable objects might be the first step to getting users to buy them… and advertisers to pay Snap to promote them. Iteasy to imagine context cards being accessible for products tagged in Snap Ads as well as scanned through visual search. And Snap already has in-app shopping.

SnapchatCamera Search could become a direct competitor for PinterestLens, which identifies objects and brings up related content. Pinterest has evolved the product, embedding it inside the apps of retailers like Target. Beyond shopping, Camera Search could let Snapchat users find Stories that contain the same object they&re snapping.

Being able to recognize what you&re seeing makes Snapchat more fun, but italso a new way of navigating reality. In mid-2017 Snapchat launched World Lenses that map the surfaces of your surroundings so you can place 3D animated objects like its Dancing Hotdog mascot alongside real people in real places. Snapchat also released a machine vision-powered search feature last year that compiles Stories of user-submitted Snaps featuring your chosen keyword, like videos with &puppies& or &fireworks,& even if the captions don&t mention them.

PinterestLens visual search feature

Snapchat was so interested in visual search that this year, it reportedly held early-stage acquisition talks with machine vision startup Blippar. The talks fell through with the U.K. augmented reality company that has raised at least $99 million for its own visual search feature, but which recently began to implode due to low usage and financing trouble. Snap Inc. might have been hoping to jumpstart its Camera Search efforts.

Snap calls itself a camera company, after all. But with the weak sales of its mediocre v1 Spectacles, the well-reviewed v2 failing to break into the cultural zeitgeist and no other hardware products on the market, Snap may need to redefine what exactly that tag line means. Visual search could frame Snapchat as more of a sensor than just a camera. With its popular use for rapid-fire selfie messaging, italready the lens through which some teens see the world. Soon, Snap could be ready to train its eagle eye on purchases, not just faces.

In related Snapchat news: