These will be common fixtures in our future financial landscape.
Filecoin ICO: $186M in 1 hour — What does this mean for upcoming ICOs?We are at the beginning of a tectonic shift in consumer financial behavior and with the windfalls going to those teams and companies arming themselves with what are essentially called ‘trading vehicles’.
The implications for future ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) is summed up in the latest activity surrounding Filecoin’s ICO. In just one hour, it raised $186M after having to slam the doors shut on buyers trying to get in at the last minute. The demand was so high, the software supporting the execution buckled under the pressure.
It was August 9th 1995 when a small company with no revenue IPO’ed by the name of Netscape. An article in Time Magazine titled ‘Netscape’s IPO Sparks a Boom’ stated “We didnt’ know what it was. We had never opened a browser. We had never gone on the Net. But we had heard that the deal would be hot, so we at Cramer & Co., my $250 million hedge fund ,dutifully put in our share of stock in the initial public offering of Netscape. We got several thousand shares. And we, along with most everyone who got some, made an absolute killing. The stock, which we thought was going to be priced at $12 a share, came in at $28 and then opened at $71. (It peaked at $97.62 on March 17, 1999) We were giddy. We had never made money that quickly in our lives. We thought it was going to be a one-time event, never to be repeated.”
The cryptocurrency world is about to have its Netscape moment. I’m predicting we will see our first series of $1 billion dollar ICOs sooner than later.
Considering the above, it could be a good idea to keep a few upcoming ICOs on your radar. Here are a few that might have that potential based on team, technology and breadth of market opportunity:
Vectorspace
The Vectorspace AI platform enables ‘Smart Basket’ (token baskets for traders, funds, ETFs) generation based on user-selected trends that exist in search, social media and news. Their ‘Smart Baskets’ on the ability for these baskets to determine for themselves whether or not to include additional cryptocurrencies or components from related baskets that may increase overall returns. Baskets that interact this way with one another will conduct these kinds of transactions between one another using the Vectorspace utility token, VEC which is also required to dynamically generate baskets.
Vectorspace looks to be designed to help you increase your profits with other cryptocurriences by reducing risk and maximizing your gains. Their focus is on “Advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) & Sentiment Analysis for Smart Cryptocurrency Basket Trading” and they have live products any crypto trader can use today. Their site updates every few minutes powered by their algorithms. It looks like they’re at the early stages of their pre-ICO but farther along in terms of their product offerings released in addition to their patents referenced on their crowdsale page in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Google
According to their whitepaper: “A growing number of organizations offer the ability to trade a basket or group of cryptocurrencies with a single transaction. Similar to a traditional ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund), “token baskets” as they’re more commonly called, enable a fund or individual investor to spread their risk, diversify and lower volatility while maximizing gains with more safety and stability. This approach is valuable but incomplete. For example, taking the top 20 best performing cryptocurrencies and placing them in a basket or fund minimizes gains compared to enabling fine-grained custom creation of token baskets. Which groups of cryptocurrencies are beating the market? Why? What do they have in common? How strong are those relationships? Are those relationships well known and obvious or are they hidden relationships? Are the relationships numerical or nonnumerical based on concepts, context and sentiment or a combination of both?
These are the questions Crypto Discover is designed to answer. Vectorspace AI’s Crypto Discover platform is an advanced cryptocurrency discovery engine that enables a user to automatically generate a token basket or “mini-index fund” made up of cryptocurrencies that are related to trends in news, global and local searches, concepts, context, keywords, hashtags, social media, URLs and other dynamic content.”
Vectorspace is a pre-ICO company so it might be possible to position in early here.
Clearcoin
ClearCoin is a technology company that powers the real-time buying and selling of media on decentralized applications and the broader digital environment. In 2017, the cryptocurrency economy added hundreds of billions of dollars of market capitalization. In the next ten years, the cryptocurrency economy could add trillions of dollars of market capitalization. This emerging industry has produced new decentralized applications, platforms, and distributed blockchain ledgers. New media opportunities have arisen as a result of the mainstream adoption of blockchain. Blockchain has gained acceptance because its distributed ledger technology solved the double spending problem for digital currencies. Blockchain solves similar problems for supply chains. ClearCoin works with the supply chain of the $563 billion media and advertising industry [2]. ClearCoin (CLR) tokens power its distributed ledger blockchain technology that can improve the supply chain of the rapidly growing media and advertising industry. ClearCoin’s solutions increase efficiencies and reduce the reported $16 billion of annual ad fraud. Recent years have brought many new digital advertising formats to the market. New display formats, new social formats, new video formats, and even emerging formats like virtual reality are growing in the market. With the huge growth in digital advertising spending, there has also been a growth in inaccuracies and fraud. In the way that blockchain solved the double spending problem for digital currency, blockchain can solve the ad fraud and inaccuracy problem for digital ads.
The digital advertising market continues to add billions of dollars every year. Digital advertising is susceptible to fraud, uncertainty, and inaccuracies. A study by WPP’s GroupM says ad fraud could cost businesses $16.4 billion in 2017. The $16.4 billion represents 20% of the total market, a very significant number. It is very important to advertisers to find a solution to the growing ad fraud problem. It has been stated by many in the industry that they are seeking a solution. ClearCoin’s global advertising technology built on top of blockchain is a bold solution to the aforementioned problems. The global advertising platform connects advertisers and publishers and tracks all transactions in a proof-of-history ledger. The proof-of-history ledger is built on blockchain and helps combat ad fraud and inaccuracies.
The ClearCoin token is used to transact on the platform and can be used to support other members of the ecosystem like advertisers and publishers. The ClearCoin (CLR) token is built on the Ethereum blockchain while ClearCoin’s inventory tracking blockchain is built on Hyperledger. ClearCoin (CLR) is the only token issued by ClearCoin. The ClearCoin ad platform accepts CLR tokens as a form of payment.
The ClearCoin global advertising platform will serve up key ad formats like Display, Mobile, Video, Native, Social, Audio, Television, Content, and Search. The technology will support other companies in the ecosystem such as Marketers, Brands, Agencies, Ad Networks, Publishers, Publisher Networks, Demand Side Platforms, Supply Side Platforms, and Data Providers.
Wepower
WePower is a blockchain-based green energy trading platform. WePower enables renewable energy producers to raise capital by issuing their own energy to- kens. These tokens represent energy they commit to produce and deliver. Energy tokenization standardizes simpli es and opens globally currently existing energy investment ecosystem. As a result energy producers can trade directly with the green energy buyers (consumers and in- vestors) and raise capital by selling energy upfront, at below market rates. Energy tokenization ensures liquidity and extends access to capital. The WePower blockchain solution is currently recognized by Elering, one of the most innovative Transmission System Operators in Europe.
To optimize the nancing cycle and open access to capital, WePower enables energy tokeniza- tion. Tokenized energy represents a contracting mechanism between an energy producer and energy buyer. WPR token holders will have priority access to participate in auctions for purchasing tokenized energy once the renewable energy plant is connected to the platform.
Energy allocation will depend on the number of WPR tokens held by the participant. Moreover, WPR token holders are rewarded by no less than 0.9% of tokenized energy donated directly by the renewable energy providers. WPR token holders may use or sell this energy. WePower comes to the market at a crucial time. Due to a drop in subsidies and increased re- newable energy development competing at market price, banks started increasing demand for own capital decreasing debt to capital ratio. It moved from 20:80 to close to 50:50 ratio for newly developing renewable energy projects. Equity capital became a limited source of nanc- ing contributing to a plunge (-23% YoY) in investment due to smaller leverages.
Energy tokenization together with a platform built on an open decentralized data-base, opens the green energy market globally to a broad pool of investors. In an open platform, new ener- gy projects do not depend on only local investors., Asset liquidity allows more favorable capi- tal-to-debt ratios without using Government subsidies. We estimate that the simpli cation of the investment process through WePower will signi cantly reduce nancing costs, which is eventually split between renewable energy producers and consumers/investors.
Lympo.io
The usage of mobile health (mHealth) apps and wearables is ever-growing. More than 52% of smart phone users gather health-related information on their phone. In 2016 alone, mHealth app store downloads totalled 3.2 billion. Health-related data is a precious asset for both individuals and stakeholders in the data-driven sports, health and wellness industry.
However, the users generating this data cannot aggregate, share and monetize it. Moreover, because it lacks the means to interconnect existing data, the industry cannot unlock its full potential for the benefit of all market players. The rise of mHealth applications has not yet delivered on the promise of digital technology empowering individuals and resulting in better health care and a more connected sports and wellness market.
The Lympo ecosystem resolves this problem. Powered by user-generated and user-controlled fitness and wellness data, Lympo will allow the exchange of value through the introduction LYM utility tokens. Lympo’s goal is an ecosystem where data is used e ciently by all industry stakeholders and everyone is rewarded fairly. It consists of three pillars: the Lympo fitness wallet, a marketplace and the Lympo crowdfunding platform.
The Lympo digital fitness wallet and user reward mechanism is at the core of the Lympo ecosystem. The wallet functions as an entry to the ecosystem and allows users to be rewarded in LYM tokens for their healthy lifestyle achievements. These tokens can be used to purchase goods and services in a marketplace starting from an existing Lympo platform uniting more than 500 fitness professionals and later expanding to a broad network of sports, wellness and health goods and services providers. Finally, LYM tokens will be used on the Lympo crowdfunding platform to invest in innovative data driven companies in the industry which will contribute to the growth of this new ecosystem.
Napoleonx
The Satoshi’s whitepaper and the creation of Bitcoin have been one of the most significant events since the creation of internet. By giving access to cryptocurrencies to anybody, lowering the fees of any transaction and freeing the protocol from the “old” banking system, the blockchain protocol is undoubtedly leading us to a disruptive evolution.
Yet, the expected massive adoption is still on its way. We do believe that this is due to the fact that one core brick is missing: the investment brick. Today, even the most enthusiastic cryptocurrency holders are stuck within the classic banking system to manage their own savings! To reach global adoption, ETH, Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general, need a large spectrum of listed assets that coin holders could invest in, including classical assets such as ETFs, stocks, fixed income, currencies, commodities, etc.
We think that two concomitant elements are creating a new paradigm that will completely redefine the investment industry, to the benefit of the community, while giving anyone access to the best investment strategies. On the one hand, we assist to the emergence of new governance schemes enabled by smart contracts (and the corresponding DAOs, DACs, etc) and on the other hand, we observe the omnipresence of the investing quant strategies and bots in the best hedge funds and banks. Combining these two growing elements allows people to get their complete freedom back on their investments, far from the current investment scheme controlled by the (old) banking system. Thus, instead of being advised by a banker, maybe more interested in selling its own products, investors would have direct access to a set of Decentralized Autonomous Funds to optimize their risk/return profile. Indeed, they will decide on the investment strategy (financial leverage and trading bots choice) within a growing selection over time to best fit their own needs.
Besides this revolution per se, we think that creating seamless access to a large set of tangible performing asset classes will also accelerate the massive use of cryptocurrencies in general. If any cryptocurrency holder could seamlessly manage one’s savings to invest in crypto assets, real assets or financial markets, it would be a game changer, for both the cryptoworld and the traditional asset management industry!
The land rush to stake out claims in this new digital financial frontier is unprecedented. Ironically, it’s made possible, in part, by teams similar to the one that made Netscape a story that continues to be shared during technological and financial revolutions like the one we are experiencing at this very moment in time. It’s just the beginning, like it has been so many times before.
- Gaëtan R., gaetanconsulting@gmail.com — Financial Data Consultant — Geneva Switzerland