Metacoin

Covering Bitcoin, the Blockchain, Altcoins, and Fintech

exscudo

BRED or ICO – Which Path?

We’re tooting our own horn…just a little.

If you have followed this site for the past month (and THANK YOU for doing so), you know that we have been talking about two sides of the “coin” when it comes to cryptocurrency. One the one side, the big behemoths, led by Bitcoin, which soared to north of $1400 US this morning. (NOTE: we realize there are some…issues? questions? with Tether and the USDT price on some sites. We’re going with Poloniex’s numbers from a little before noon Central time today.) On side two: the little guys, be they altcoins or ICOs.

AND YES…there are three sides to every coin, o wise one. Side three is the edge of the coin, where many of you might currently be. Reminder to get started with Coinbase, buy some Bitcoin or Ethereum, and get rolling! They’ll give you a bonus and we’ll get a bonus for referring you.

Back to the tooting of our horn: we believe we’re onto something with the BRED portfolio.

BRED is on a TEAR

When we first came up with the concept, we picked four of the coins with the highest market cap, but also four that could fall into different buckets. The same way that Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google make up FANG – with each bringing a different dish to the table – Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash all have something a little different about them:

  • Bitcoin – “first-mover advantage”
  • Ripple – “banks are using it”
  • Ethereum – “smart contract” (banks also using it)
  • Dash – “most consumer-friendly”

Simple enough, can fit this on a napkin. So we thought, let’s create a portfolio of just these four, give them 1/4 each of our investment, and leave it alone.

Here’s what it would look like right now:

BRED Portfolio

Yes, you read that correctly. A $10,000 investment, spread equally between these four coins, made on January 1, would be worth more than $51,995.12 today.

Oh, and if you sat on the edge of the coin and waited until April 1 to buy, you’d still be up 22% THIS MONTH.

But what if you’re waiting for an ICO?

Some ICOs Had INSANE Weeks

While some of this could be the start of a bubble – and our pal Roger Aitken talks about that in this post on GNO – ICOs are on a tear, too. Well, some of them…

  • GNO set records, rising to a valuation of $300m
  • TaaS has raised $6.1m US, all of it outside of the US
  • MobileGo has raised more than $6m in its first week
  • Exscudo* stumbled a little on day one, but is nearing the $1m mark in only its second day.

* We are participating in Exscudo’s “bounty program” and have purchased a small stake. Also, we wrote about it in more detail over here.

What’s the Takeaway?

If you think things are just getting going, you may very well be right. Bitcoin’s market cap is above $20b, but, with fixed supply and companies still scrambling to get involved in blockchain technology, the four members of the BRED portfolio seem to be hitting the gas pedal.

And these four ICOs, each with their own different angle and spin, could also be poised to make serious news of their own – I mean, in addition to the news they’ve made already.

BRED graphic

BRED or ICO?

What about both?

An ICO to Watch: Exscudo (EON)

ExscudoWe must admit: the first thing that got us interested in Exscudo was their “bounty program.” So if you don’t want to read the ins and outs and hear what makes this coin different, just skip to this link and sign up.

(Sidebar: if you are working on an ICO and you want us to know about it, let us know.)

Exscudo Basics

ExscudoIf you read the mission statement, you get the sense that the goal is to bridge the traditional and the digital, maybe serving as “Bitcoin meets SWIFT.” Or as “Ethereum meets Nasdaq.”

Or maybe if one of the crypto exchanges decided to launch its own currency. (Which…well, I’m not sure how a Poloniex currency would work.)

The core of the Exscudo value proposition is their proprietary technology, called EON, which is touted as a “flexible new generation blockchain technology.”

In any event, they might appear to be taking a really big bite out of the crypto economy – and maybe that’s a good thing, maybe it isn’t.

Here’s a bullet-pointed list of everything they’re planning on doing:

  • An exchange platform
  • Trading terminals
  • Wallet
  • Crypto debit card
  • Decentralized protected messenger
  • A merchant system.

If you’re thinking “that sounds like a lot,” you’re right.

So…how will they pull it off?

Let’s go to the videotape…

All told, this is an extremely audacious project.

ICO stats

They plan on issuing 240,000,000 during the ICO, with 150,720,000 available for sale (the rest will be allocated as detailed here; this is a sensible part of any ICO).

They’ve fixed the price of the coins – EONs – at 0.0002 BTC. Current math, then, tells us the following:

  • 1 BTC = $1,200 USD
  • 1 EON = $0.24 USD
  • ICO raise = $57,600,000

About that bounty…

Again, what really piqued our interest was the bounty program. Here’s where folks – like us, we’re members of this program – can potentially earn tokens. They’ve set aside 1 percent of the overall available for the bounty program – 2,400,000 coins. To earn them, you need to do things like “retweet” (“RT” for the uninitiated) their official tweets about the program, or like their Facebook status, or agree to say nice things about them on Bitcoin Talk.

It remains to be seen how quickly the bounty program will grow; at last writing, tweets were holding steady at around 500 RTs, and they had yet to report what was happening with individual bounty participants.

But we’re patient.

We plan on following this coin throughout its ICO, and beyond. We’ll keep you updated on what we learn.

One last thing…

Anyone else remember the name of Portugal’s pre-Euro currency? Yes, the “Escudo.” Hmmm.