Is Civic (CVC) a good investment?

In this article I’m going to talk about Civic- what it is , what are advantages and disadvantages of the project and whether it has potential to be adopted worldwide. So, Civic is an identity management platform that aims to provide decentralized, secure identity verification. With Civic you can protect your personal data and control exactly when and how it’s used.
First of all, let’s look at existing problems that Civic wants to solve. Nowadays, there are tons of problems with Identity management- Identity fraud, High costs of IDV ( identity verification), accessibility in low-income countries, painfully complicated process of KYC (or know your customer) and so on and so on.

In 2016, 1,1 billion identities were stolen across the globe and personal identity information was the most popular among thieves. Countless individuals and companies suffered losses.
Lack of identity documentation and high costs don’t let millions of people get access to banking services. Know your customer (KYC) process is also getting more time-consuming and expensive, especially for financial institutions. There are differences in regulation and the information that is required for various financial services. Differences in efficiency also play a big role- as a result, organizations often spend money on almost identical verification process . It’s really annoying both for customers and service providers.
Blockchain-based verification, because of its security and efficiency , can be also used by governments , used for elections etc. So, target market is huge and there is strong demand for a trusted, efficient and secure id verification service. Unlike many other ICOs, Civic aims to solve real problems and this is very important.

Now about the already existing product and plans for the future.
The company is currently offering basic services through the Civic secure identity platform (SIP), which individuals can access through the Civic app. It’s currently available on Android and Ios. You can set up your digital identity and after completing verification, become a Civic user. User’s personal information is stored locally , and is secured. If you want to use a service of a company that is partnered with Civic, they can request personal information and you will see exactly which information is needed and choose to give or deny access. The platform also has additional features like credit report alerting and identity fraud coverage.

At this moment, Civic platform is only a tiny part of what the team wants it to become. According to their plans, Civic will develop into a global, fully decentralized ecosystem for IDV devices. It’s going to be built on Rootstock, a smart contract platform based on bitcoin. The ecosystem will consist of 3 main components: utility token known as Civic token or CVC, a variety of smart contracts and new software applications that allow participants to interact within the ecosystem. It will be used by individuals, trustworthy IDV providers — Validators and Service providers , who seek for verified information. Validators , who can include financial institutions, government entities and utility providers , will verify the identity of an individual or a business and this approval will be put on the blockchain. Service providers who want to get access to this information, will pay in Civic tokens. With smart contracts, part of the payments will go to users and the rest to validators, who did the main job. This system will incentivize participation of users. With CVC, They will be able to buy identity- related products and services on the platform, such as personal background checks, dark web monitoring and so on. In order to attract more validators and service providers , 33% of the total amount of tokens will be distributed among partners. The same amount of tokens is held by Civic itself and another 33% was already distributed during the ICO.
Now here are advantages and disadvantages of Civic from my point of view:
ADVANTAGES:
It aims to solve real problems and has massive growth potential.

Vinny Lingham, the founder of Civic is a well-known and respected person in crypto world. He is experienced in this field and actively communicates with public.
Civic already has a working product which is quickly getting attention and it has already established several partnerships; for example, 0x project ICO required use of the Civic app to verify identities for token sale registration. WikiHow recently added civic as verification option. Company seems to be actively working on new partnerships, so we might soon see Civic app logo in many new places.
Civic has a clear vision and the plans to create a whole ecosystem are pretty well-constructed.
As Vinny stated, the technology is patented and It refers to business process that they have designed, so it might be helpful against competitors in the future.
And here are disadvantages:

The project has at least several serious competitors : Uport, Blockstack, Air and OpenID. As the identity verification market is huge, new blockchain applications will be created in the future. So, Civic has to form lots of partnerships and go mainstream as soon as possible in order to succeed.
Migration to Rootstock is also quite confusing. Vinny Lingham is a bitcoin maximalist and publicly says that he doesn’t believe in Ethereum.I don’t find his arguments persuasive, but anyway, Civic is going to be built on Rootstock which isn’t fully developed yet and nobody knows how it will handle the task of running an ecosystem. Also, all current Civic tokens that are based on Ethereum will be converted to Rototstock meta tokens in first quarter of 2018. This means that current token holders are not fully in charge of their investments as the company decides what to do. It also means that Ethereum was only used to raise funds your tokens don’t really represent anything until the final platform launch.
Forming partnerships with governments and major banks is very hard and Civic has to prove it security, scalability and efficiency beforehand.
As final CVC token is going to be used for payments within the ecosystem, it’s price has to be much more stable than it is in the current cryptocurrency space. Not many will use its services if the price goes up and down all the time.
And here are my thoughts on Civic as an investment:
In a short term, Civic definitely has potential to rise in value if suddenly more projects and especially ICOs start using the app for identity verification. Unlike many blockchain companies, it’s a real world use case and such news can easily start the hype. as a result, lots speculators will get on the train with hope of quick profits. Of course, it also increases possibility of a big dump or several ups and downs.

After the platform is launched, the remaining tokens will be distributed step-by –step, which greatly raises supply and is not a good news for the price per token. But if Civic manages to beat competition and gets adopted over time, then the market capitalization is going to be really big. As I already said, Civic tokens are not meant to be store of value and the platform needs to have a stable currency for successful operation. All in all, I think that Civic is an extremely interesting project that has potential to solve massive problems and bring good ROI. But if you decide to invest in Civic, it’s extremely important to choose the right time and strategy.
Thanks for reading!
