TenX Press release: Fintech Startup TenX receives 80 million USD to make blockchain assets usable in everyday life
Singaporean based startup TenX (www.tenx.tech) was founded on June 11th 2015 with its co-founders wanting to solve the problem of cryptocurrencies not really being usable in everyday life yet. Most people trying to spend Bitcoin, Ethereum or many others realise quite fast that it is hard to connect this revolutionary but novel system with “real world transactions”. Following a 1 million USD seed round at the beginning of 2017 with famous lead investor Fenbushi (www.fenbushi.vc), TenX offered a token swap over the weekend of June 24, 2017 1pm UTC. It exchanged an equivalent of 245,832 Ether (valued at roughly 80 million USD at the time of the token swap), to the company’s PAY tokens at a rate of 350 PAY tokens per 1 Ether (with a 20% bonus during the first 24 hours). The PAY tokens provide access to part of TenX’s revenue of their already live payment service and also serves as a loyalty program to its own users.
Contributors only had 7 minutes to submit their contributions to TenX’s receiving address before TenX stopped accepting further offers at 1:07 p.m. UTC. Roughly 4,000 people managed to participate directly while an additional several thousand people joined through pools to make it in time. Roughly 40,000 people did not manage to swap their tokens and will have to wait until July when the PAY tokens will be tradeable on cryptocurrency exchanges all over the world.
During the token swap TenX accepted one of the most diverse range of tokens any company has ever provided. In addition to Ethereum, also ERC20 tokens, Bitcoin, Dash and Litecoin were accepted. TenX made sure the transaction burden on the Ethereum network was kept to a minimum. By keeping contribution addresses unpublished until 15 minutes prior to the swap, TenX reduced unnecessary spamming of transactions leading up to the event. Transaction limits were also not suggested since such limits favor those who know how to bypass them. This technical finesse combined with an authentic marketing such as their regular vlog that reminds people of the series Silicon Valley, made the company stand out like no other has in this industry before:
TenX is also one of the very few companies who already has a working product and existing user base all over the world. With all this positive momentum it received 45,000 more of ether-equivalent than it had originally planned, according to its white paper. Instead of refunding this excess, TenX has agreed to honor all contributions: “We will not withdraw the extra 45,000 ETH but rather leave them for additional liquidity in the crypto ecosystem to support a decentralised TenX as outlined in our whitepaper. This is actually a WIN-WIN for token holders AND the company.” This decision was made after estimations showed that in order to refund the excess Ether, close to 75% or 3,000 people would see their tokens canceled — a move TenX did not want for its community. TenX offered to anyone unhappy with this arrangement to reach out prior to Tuesday, June 27, 2017 11:59pm EST, to receive a full refund, and has also confirmed once again that no new PAY tokens after the token swap will ever be created.
TenX will use these funds to develop their payment system even further from where it already is today: This included apps for Android, web and iPhone; debit cards and other further payment services; a decentralized system to connect any blockchain and thereby add any new cryptocurrency to the already existing multi-asset platform. A detailed funding breakdown and the next steps for TenX are laid out clearly in its white paper:
In a video shared about the behind the scenes, co-founders Toby Hoenisch, Paul Kitti, Dr. Julian Hosp and Michael Sperk congratulated the entire TenX team of 12 people on achieving this important stepping stone but also reminded the “TenX family” that this is just the beginning, not the end, of their mission to make any blockchain asset usable in everyday life.
