Raiden, Plasma, Qtum, NEM ... moving towards mainstream payments

Today Mr. Positive Blue and Mr. Negative Red meet Mrs. Inquisitive Brown to talk about mainstream payments. Mr Neutral Black has made a through reading of the document and Mr Technological Green is around just in case. Mr Market Purple has joined today for a beer.

- Recently, we spoke about Pundi-X, it would seem that they were going to use Ethereum to make payments at point-of-sale.

- That would not work! Is too slow!

- There are recent news. Apparently they have implemented NEM and QTUM.

- What does that imply?

- Nem is quite efective to deal quickly with transactions, ethereum is not today but the Raiden and Plasma projects will change that in a year. NEM is got the catapult project and they are migrating to C.

- Is C better than Java? 

- Better is a term I would not use to compare programming languages but It is very efficient, very close to compiler code. 

- Oh, by the way NEM has now a Magento implementation.

- Oh, magento, sound familiar but...

- Magento is one of the top plataforms for shops on the internet.

- That is an interesting step. It seems that this coin is moving in the right direction.

- What about Qtum?

- Far less mature in terms of time.

- Not close to VISA levels, but will be near in one to two years.

- What about Ethereum?

- The Raiden network is working now on testnet. Low transaction fees and excelent speed. 

- Who will win the race?

- Difficult to say. Ethereum has plenty of developing power behind, but NEM is more agile, Qtum is a promise.

- It going to be great for market player like me!

- And for developers!

The Bankera ICO - Numbers and numbers

Today Mr. Positive Blue and Mr. Negative Red meet Mrs. Inquisitive Brown to analyse the Quantstamp ICO. Mr Neutral Black has made a through reading of the document and Mr Technological Green is around just in case.

- What can you tell me about the Bankera ICO?
- In short, from a crypto-currency exchange they want to build a full bank. A very small one as per today standards, but clearly intended to capture the growth of the crypto-market. They have already some relevant licences and they need to get the rest.
- Is it a good product?
-I can't say. The exchange is there, but they plan to offer accounts in crypto-currencies. Why would anyone want to keep Bitcoins, or any other alt, in a bank? Other than that, same products as any bank out there.
- On the positive side, they have an exchange working and a seasoned and large team.
- Why don't we do some numbers?
- Sure. Just a very rough estimate. Tokenholders receive 20% of the net revenue of Spectrocoin and Bankera.
- In their blog they say they are giving 100k a week of net profit as today.
- I wonder how with a team of 50 people to pay for, but let's take their word for it.
- Perhaps the cards business is going well.

- So, if invest..what do I get in return?
- Most likely there will be an initial pump and dump. One way to get something back is to sell it quick.
-  I mean long term.
- We do not know how many tokens will be sold, and you don't really know your stake in the company.
- Let's assume that they reach the hard cap of 152 Million euros.
- That sounds like a huge ICO.
- How does that money go back to the token holders?
- The only guaranteed stream of revenue for the token holders is 20% of the SpectroCoin and Bankera net revenue. Bankera net revenue is likely to be zero for the moment. Spectrocoin last week revenue is claimed to be around USD 100k. 20% of that,  20k, will be divided among tokenholders, that is around USD 1 million a year
- But they will grow in the future won't they? How much does that revenue need to grow to give, lets say, a 10% per year for token holders?
- Currently is 3%, after the ICO, with all that new money... they would need to do really well.
- They would need to grow a lot.
- Do you think that is possible?
- There is a good perspective in the sector. Basically, there is not much of a sector at the moment and is going to be built.
- What happens if they sell much more in the ICO?
- Then is more difficult to reach a interesting return, but also more likely to grow.
- Do you think these numbers are good?
- For a start-up with a running product, yes.
- Is the team solid?
- They are experienced.
- Good advisors?
- I would say ... decent, not excellent.
- I do not know who are the shareholders of Bankera nor Spectrocoin.
- Apparently three entrepreneurs. Is a UK-Lithuanian company
- What could be the problems here?
- Well, if traditional banks are threatened they will develop similar services. Bankera would have the first to market advantage, and may even get bought.
- As a token holder, if it is bought, do I get anything?
- Well you see, there is no guarantee of participating on that. They new owner could potentially decide not to compensate token holders because a token is not a share.
- Well.. that's far away I guess.
- But, is this ICO good or not?
- It looks fine, the problem is that I do not see any institutional investor or if there are, I do not know who are they.
- Also, consider this: since they are selling 20% of the revenue, they are valuing the company at 600 million euros if they reach 150 million euros of token sales. Right now the revenue is 1 million a year. It is a big act of faith to invest with those numbers.

HERO founders token ICO

(This is not financial advice nor an endorsement of services. The author does not accept any responsibility for the accuracy of what is written here. To put it plainly, consider it fiction.)

This refers to this https://herotoken.io/ proposal,  November 9th, 2017.

Today Mr. Positive Blue and Mr. Negative Red meet Mrs. Inquisitive Brown to analyse the HERO Coin offering. Mr Neutral Black has made a through reading of the document. 


- So... what is all this about?

- It is one of the vaguest documents I have ever read! 

- Well, this is written in "Asian Style".

- What do you mean?

- There is plenty that has to be read between the lines.
- So, that would be NEGATIVE, there is lots of speculation and unclear terms in the White Paper.

- It is also a BUSINESS PLAN not a WHITE PAPER as it does discuss a business and not a technological innovation based in scientific research. 

- Is that good or bad? 

- It is good, because when you are proposing a business that does not require much math YOU DO NOT NEED A WHITE PAPER, BUT A BUSINESS PLAN... but let's see what Mr. Black says.

- This business is about LENDING. It's target market is mainly the Philippines.
- An why would they choose the Philippines for this?
- That does not sound like a rich country at all!

- However, THIS PROJECT IS ABOUT LENDING to people who do not have access to a regular banking system. The project speaks about lending to all types of business, prioritising business, but addressing also mortgages, personal credit and the rest of the usual services.- So, on the positive side THEY ADDRESS A LARGE UNNATENDED MARKET.

- I observe that they also have an already running business.

- The White Paper says this project is linked to an existing chain of pawn shops: Pawn Hero.
-That would be POSITIVE, team members and advisor have already running business.

- But, if I put money into the ICO where does it go?
- They propose to create a foundation, non-profit and audited that will develop the products and services. YOU WILL BE GIVING YOUR MONEY TO A FOUNDATION to be created (even that is written as "if" in the paper). 

- And what do I get in return?
- Unsurprisingly... you get a Hero Token. It does give you preferential access to future investments at a discount.

- So I am kind of buying a membership to an investment club.

- Well, I kind of have at the moment plenty of opportunities of investment that do not require a third party involved and I CANNOT SEE A ROADMAP in the proposal.

- Not everyone in the world has the opportunity to invest like you.

- So would you recommend this ICO? 

- AS A BUSINESS, IT IS BLURRY. I WOULD NOT INVEST DUE TO INSUFFICIENT INFORMATION AND LACK OF A CLEAR ROADMAP. This does not mean that could go over ICO price in the short term, depending on the hype.