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Aug 07 2017

Crypto Hedge Fund Update

One note before we dive in: we’ve actually made one minor tweak to the “Hedge Fund,” which you’ll see below. We’ll also explain why, but suffice it to say that this is a space that’s always shifting, and we thought this shift was important.

Hi! How was your weekend in Cryptoland? Oh, you didn’t visit?

Wait, you don’t know how to find Cryptoland? You must be new here.

Anyway, sit back and relax. Let’s take you on a little journey to the small corner of Cryptoland we call the DIY Hedge Fund.

***DISCLOSURE: As always, do your own research. This is not investment advice or financial advice. We aren’t responsible for gains or losses. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.***

Why We Invested In What We Invested In

The main reason behind the hedge fund was…well, to act as a hedge against other things happening in the world economy. As we mentioned back when we launched this fund, this was (1) hypothetical and (2) based on an assumption that someone has net investment funds of $100,000. That’s how we arrived at the $10,000 figure – 10% of the overall funds.

We gave it variety – didn’t want it all in Bitcoin, and we needed to have a couple emerging coins, too.

Plus, we wanted at least one recent ICO, leading us to WeTrust – which we’re actually getting out of in this hypothetical fund.

So we’ll have to change that fun graphic. But that’s not as important as telling you about the results…

First, where we started

Here’s how the initial investment, made on May 1, broke down.

Simple enough, right? 30% in BTC, and the rest split between those categories – “Established,” “Growth,” and “Emerging”) we talked about above.

(You could argue whether Litecoin should move into the second category of “Established” altcoins – it’s not a Growth coin anymore, and it’s one of the Crytpo Unicorns now, with greater than $2B in market cap – but let’s keep these categories as is for now.)

Now that we see where we started, let’s see what it looks like today, August 7, with the prices from this morning (as close to midnight as we could find, GMT, pulled from CoinMarketCap.com).

Not too shabby, right?

Actually, if you could get those sorts of returns from any asset, you should probably take them; any time you take $10,000 and turn it into nearly $40,000 inside of three months, it’s nothing short of staggering.

But We Had to Make a Tweak

That’s right, we ditched WeTrust, since we didn’t like the fact that it was our only negative return. We replaced it with Tierion, which is an ICO that – full disclosure – Dave personally invested in.

We simply swapped the dollar value of the WeTrust coin for an equal amount of Tierion, which was priced at $0.071 by the coin’s management team.

And we are now off to the races…again.

We’ll keep tracking this fund – as we do our BRED Portfolio – and we’ll let you know what happens as we continue our journey through Cryptoland.

BTW…

We’ve also been telling you about Bitconnect – the lending platform backed by the Bitconnect coin. Click on the banner ad below to get started; it’s our affiliate link but, if you join and get others on board, you can share in referral fees, too.

Apr 24 2017

An ICO to Watch: TaaS

EDITOR’S NOTE: We learned on April 22, by examining the terms for the TaaS ICO, that investment is prohibited in the United States. In addition to being bolded in the document, you must affirm that you are not a United States citizen before continuing. As of this writing, 9 a.m. CDT in the US on April 24, TaaS has raised US$5.5m.

If you’re new(ish) to the crypto space, you might be wondering: “How do I get in on some sweet ICO action?” And if you’re really new to the crypto space, you might ask: “What’s an ICO?” We’ll try to (figuratively) kill two birds with one stone, er, post by talking a little about a rather interesting ICO we bumped into: TaaS.

ICO: “Initial Coin Offering.”

Here’s a term that is pretty straightforward. IPO – “Initial Public Offering” – makes total sense in the investment vernacular, and is a pretty commonly used phrase. A company, having proved its worth over time, decides to raise money by, for the very first time, offering its shares to the public over one of the bigger stock markets (NYSE or Nasdaq).

Initial Coin Offerings work the same way, but the twist is that an ICO isn’t traded over a stock exchange. And, these coins are often the opposite of proven – in fact, many ICOs are trying to get enough capital to get their idea/coin/token off the ground.

Meet TaaS

First of all, we’ll admit it’s a pretty slick webpage – though the logo, frankly, leaves a lot to be desired. Also, there’s a bit of a Soviet connotation in the name – remember “TASS,” the Soviet news agency? (Nyet? You’re probably not old enough.)

But let’s talk about the technical aspects of this, and whether or not this idea is worthy of your investment dollars (or coins, as it were). From the website (which is the first one we’ve seen with the TLD extension of “.fund”):

TaaS is a tokenized closed-end fund designed to reduce the risks and technical barriers of investing in the blockchain space. Built on a profit-sharing smart contract, TaaS introduces an innovative Token-as-a-Service business model, allowing investors to subscribe to the fund’s income stream. TaaS built an innovative Cryptographic Audit technology to become the first, truly transparent fund dedicated to cryptocurrencies and tokens.

Sounds a little like a cross between a mutual fund and a venture capital fund.

A Crypto “Fund of Funds?”

We’ll go with that: here appears (at least to our eyes, which, while not “untrained,” aren’t experts in the fund space) to be the closest thing to a Fund of Funds that you’ll find. At least so far. Fund of Funds invest in, well, a bunch of funds. They’re like hedge funds but they just spread themselves around various mutual funds.

Or this could, if you read the materials on the site, appear to be closer to buying into a trading desk or flash trading firm. Except they’re just going after blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.

How will this shake out?

Darn good question: we’ve only got a few more weeks before the ICO is done and you can’t buy the tokens directly. Instead, you’ll have to rely on trading them on the open markets – and, as of this writing, only two exchanges are going to have the TaaS tokens as part of their mix: Livecoin and Kuna (the largest exchange in the Ukraine). (Read more here from Cointelegraph.)

So we’ll be watching closely.

By the way, if you want us to write up your ICO, send us a note: info – at – metacoin – dot – co.

Apr 20 2017

Sikoba Launching as Peer-to-Peer IOU Platform

Welcome to the brave new world of blockchain startups, where ideas range from the straightforward to the esoteric to the “what IS that?” Different angles toward distributed ledger technology, different industries impacted, and different levels of buzz, all in one emerging, exciting, and sometimes downright crazy industry.

So we thought we’d talk about one of the ideas that falls into the “straightforward” category: a company called Sikoba, whose ICO we started tracking a couple weeks ago here on the site. (And, of course, if you’re part of an ICO or blockchain startup, reach out! We’d love to hear from you. Info – at metacoin – dot – co.)

Don’t Call it a “Lending Platform”

When we caught up with Sikoba CEO Aleksander Kampa over email, we were very quickly corrected on one point: Sikoba is not a peer-to-peer lending platform. Here’s more:

Metacoin: Please give us your elevator pitch.

Kampa: Sikoba is a decentralised money platform based on peer-to-peer IOUs and built on blockchain technology. Participants who know and trust each other in real life grant each other credit lines in the Sikoba system. They can then pay each other without using fiat money. These peer-to-peer credit relationships are governed by contracts with specific conditions, fee structures and repayment rules. Using credit conversion, a kind of configurable rippling, payments between participants who do not trust each other become possible. Fiat money or cryptocurrencies are used when there are no credit links between participants, or to repay outstanding balances when needed.

Metacoin: How is Sikoba different than btcjam or other peer-to-peer lending platforms?

Kampa: Sikoba is not a peer-to-peer lending platform! It is a peer-to-peer IOU platform, which allows payments to be made without having money (whether fiat, crypto or any other asset) to begin with.

Metacoin: Why is blockchain technology needed?

Kampa: Sikoba is being designed as a decentralised system with the goal of eventually becoming independent and self-organising. Blockchain technology will make this possible.

Metacoin: What is the consensus model of your chain? (if applicable)

Kampa: We’re designing the Sikoba blockchain as a “federated blockchain”. This is a permissioned mining model where only authorized nodes add blocks to the blockchain. The Sikoba federation will be self-governing, meaning that members will be added or removed from the federation based on votes of the federation members themselves.

Metacoin: What are the tokens people get for participating?

Kampa: Following the presale, Sikoba presale tokens will be issued on the Ethereum blockchain. They will eventually become exchangeable into Sikoba (SKO) tokens, which will be used to pay for transaction fees on the Sikoba network.

Metacoin: When exactly does the sale start?

Kampa: The pre-allocation phase has started on 17 March 2017, the public presale will start on 25 April.

Metacoin: When will the token be released to participants?

Kampa: Sikoba presale tokens are expected to be released by the end of June 2017. Participants will receive usable Sikoba tokens when the Sikoba platform launches, which is expected in 3Q2018.

Metacoin: What is the current state of your project?

Kampa: We are a technical team of 3 people, plus several people providing support on a part-time basis (Ethereum coding, admin, legal). Sikoba is still at the concept stage, elements of technical documentation exist but are as yet incomplete. With the funds raised in the presale, we aim to expand the team, finalize a detailed white paper and develop a MVP before the end of the year.

Where to find info…

You can check out the Sikoba Presale Page to learn more. Sikoba is also on Twitter.

Kampa is pretty active on Medium, and you can see his take on “replacing banks” here.

Apr 15 2017

An ICO to Watch: Exscudo (EON)

We 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

If 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.