Mastercoin Upgrades Premier Bitcoin Asset Layer, Relaunches as Omni
Original Bitcoin 2.0 Protocol Powers MaidSafe, Tether, Factom, La’Zooz and
35 More Cryptocurrency Tokens, Passes Counterparty in Market Cap of Assets

Core Developers Ready New Version of Omni Layer Asset Creation Platform, Omni Wallet Multi-Cryptocurrency Online Wallet, and Omni Exchange Decentralized Exchange, All to Launch in Q1 2015

(North American Bitcoin Conference, Miami – January 18, 2015) – Mastercoin (www.mastercoin.org), which created the Bitcoin 2.0 movement through the creation of the first overlay to the Bitcoin blockchain following the industry’s first crowdsale in August, 2013, announced today that it has substantially completed the development of the Omni Core engine behind the Omni Layer (formerly Master Protocol) and will rebrand all aspects of the Mastercoin ecosystem as Omni.

“This relaunch reflects both a change in the cryptocurrency asset landscape, with MaidSafe becoming a top 10 cryptocurrency overall, and the desire of the decentralized developer community that has grown up around these assets and protocols to become a unifying presence in the ongoing development of the blockchain for business,” said Craig Sellars, a technologist of the Omni Layer.

The Omni Layer is a protocol that sits on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, allowing the creation of assets that combine the unmatched network security and adoption rate of Bitcoin with enabling capabilities built into the Omni Layer which allow new assets like MaidSafe, Factom and Tether to create specific new uses cases like decentralized web services, data and records documentation, and a digitized traditional currency, respectively.

The Omni Layer is a decentralized community that was funded by the Mastercoin Foundation, which gathered support from the community totaling 4,700 bitcoins in August, 2013, and used these funds (including during times when bitcoin was valued at 4-5x today’s pricing) to fund hackathons and developer bounties. Two of the Foundation’s key projects, the Omni Wallet (the original use of the Omni brand by the Mastercoin community) and the decentralized exchange, will be completed by a new Omni Foundation, whose board members will be elected by the membership of the new Foundation.

Today the market values of token assets issued on the Omni Layer (including MaidSafe) exceed that of all Counterparty and other Bitcoin blockchain-issued assets combined.

About Omni
Omni (www.omnilayer.org) is the latest iteration of the Master Protocol, created in August, 2013, as the first bitcoin asset layer. As the original Bitcoin 2.0 entity, Omni has 18 months of development and its ecosystem includes a multi-currency wallet (Omni Wallet), which connects to a decentralized exchange (Omni Exchange). Omni is a global community of developers and entrepreneurs building the premium asset layer of Bitcoin as open-source software.