AMA with BigCoin Vietnam
While everyone in the US was busy enjoying their Thanksgiving turkeys, we were hard at work spreading the gospel and introducing the Vietnamese crypto community to our project with a fun AMA with our founder, Sinjin David Jung. The night ended with Sinjin serenading the Vietnamese with a rendition of Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing’ (it was 1:00am here so who can blame him? But it sure is a shame you can’t attach MP3s to Medium articles lol). We’ve translated the highlights for you to read below!
BigCoin Vietnam
November 27, 2020
Q: Can you list 1–3 killer features of ARCC that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your platform has that you feel most confident about?
A: I don’t really think we are in competition with anyone because ultimately our mission is for economic development and microfinance. So, if you’re another project doing the same thing, we’re very happy about it!
The major difference between ARCC and all the other competitors is that we are focused on being a layer two application. But in order for that to happen we needed to have our own ecosystem. We need to have a real network platform utility. People don’t talk about network or product or coin utility anymore, but really for that to happen you need an ecosystem or network.
This was a very long and difficult process just to do the development architecture and platform economics. So that is the killer difference there. The biggest difference is that we’re not just a product, we’re an entire ecosystem. We are not just using Algorand for our blockchain, we are development partners with them. Its easy to make an ERC20 token, but are other projects actually partnered with the Ethereum foundation? They aren’t, but we are for our protocol.
We have a full ecosystem of a microequity exchange, a DeFi exchange token, an auction platform, and a microasset network consisting of a digital wallet, identity, group investment platform, community funding, and survey system. Phew!
We are operationally self funded. We never needed to raise money, we never did an ICO or an IEO. We can continue on even if no one funds us, but we did get funding for the reserve for ARCC.
Our main ecosystem coin, ARCC can be earned for free on our microasset network (ARCC.one) which we will be launching in Beta on Dec 15th.
Q: What kind of token is ARCC? What will I get from holding this token? Is there a Staking program for ARCC?
A: ARCC is the Asia Reserve Currency Coin, and is the first official Algorand Standard Asset (ASA). The ASA is like Ethereum’s ERC20. ARCC is the ecosystem coin for a new type of microfinance crypto platform for microasset and microequity development in emerging markets, like for Vietnam!
ARCC is backed by a 4M USD fund in ALGOs and 80% of the revenues generated by IBMR.io go directly to funding ARCC’s activities, projects and price. Basically, if you know about Facebook’s Libra project (now Diem), ARCC is similar except we have been working on it since May 2017 and our focus is about microfinance, not just payments. ARCC is part of an entirely new microfinance ecosystem built on the Algorand protocol.
We do have a DeFi staking mechanism on our microfinance exchange, MESE.io. The current rate is now 60% per year return. It’s quite a high rate for now, it will decrease week on week, but for now since we are just launching it, we will maintain a high rate. The key thing is being able to sustain a good staking rate with real revenue, so we have our actual layer 2 application launching on December 15th, so we are confident that we can do at least 30% return on staking without a problem later in the year.
Actually, many DeFi projects initially gave out something like 300%-800% a year, which is completely unsustainable. The price went up, then came crashing down and now disappeared. Good financial experiments, but not good for investment.
Q: And the next question: As I can see, ARCC is built on the Algorand blockchain. Could you talk more about the relationship between Algorand with ARCC? What will you intend to do to have more new partnerships in this field?
A: So we actually are the first ASA token on Algorand. For those who don’t know Algorand, the founder, Silvio Micali, is an MIT professor. We partnered with them in June 2019, then they launched their mainnet in August, and then we launched ARCC in February 2020. An ASA is equivalent to an ERC20 token on Ethereum, and ARCC was the very first one.
Actually, we only take on operational development partners such as Algorand and Consensus labs in China. Consensus Labs in China is the largest crypto incubator in China. We didn’t partner with Venture Capital or funders because what people don’t know is that it doesn’t make for a fair launch because they always get the biggest benefit. They wanted to keep changing our focus, so we didn’t partner with them. We just kept on working from May 2017 until now. But now that we have finally built our layer 2 platform, we are just looking for strong community partners like BigCoin really.
People need to understand, the real value of crypto comes from participation, not from just the coin value. If it was strictly the coin value, and it would just pump and dump. You need people participating in what the coin is enabling, not just what it is trading at. You need real revenue and real products! So now that ARCC is getting big enough to stand independently, we are looking to help others and make more community relationships.
I think one more point, if you look at DeFi products, they had great trading participation from liquidity rewards, but no revenue participation, so in the end, they died. But if you look at UNISWAP, everyone thought they were going to die, but in the end, they have real revenue from real user participation, so they continue to grow. You can only fool the market for the short term, and trading isn’t always real value.
I know that Vietnamese crypto traders are very educated, so I wanted to clearly share that about DeFi.
Q: Does ARCC plan to make some giveaways or to make contests so people can get ARCC free or maybe there are already some giveaways?
A: Absolutely, we have an exclusive airdrop for your members, but long term we will continue to do airdrops and promotions with strong community groups.
But in the end, it is not about giveaways, but letting people earn their own ARCC for the long term, whether it is from staking or participation in our network. So, we hope to really provide value for anyone using ARCC and participating in our ecosystem. What we are trying to do is create an independent financial system for Southeast Asia and eventually other markets. But to do that, ARCC needs to have a real utility for people.
On ARCC.one, initially all you need to do is fill out surveys to earn ARCC for free. This can be surveys about your health, how many times you went to the doctor, or what your favorite food and drink are, favorite clothes and fashion, what do you think about the economy or other countries, and we will give you ARCC in exchange for that data. And from that, we can create regional snapshots of what is going on in real time.
But also, you can invest your ARCC in our microequity exchange (MESE.io) and different investments funds on ARCC.one as well. So there’s a real utility to ARCC as debt free investment vehicle.
Ultimately we want to make ARCC like the EURO for Southeast and South Asia. I know it sounds like a big dream, but look at how much impact BTC has on the world right now. It’s possible and even if someone says, no you can’t do that, well, we need to do it to create stability and growth for these countries. But anyways, we won’t take ‘no’ as an answer! It’s already been nearly 4 years and we have the strongest partnerships already. And I am very good at making money and running big businesses, so I am confident we can do it!
You know, I’m from gaming, fintech, and investments. I spent my life making money for the most powerful people in Asia. But what was the point when all of the countries are having such a hard time? I like to say I’m using my evil experience to make something that I know what will be effective and good. So I don’t need to go to hell!
Q: And the next question: In addition to helping our community to have more awareness of the ARCC project by organizing the AMA, do you have any other plans to develop users in Vietnam?
A: Yes absolutely, Vietnam is one of our key markets we are targeting for both ARCC and ARCC.one. So working with Bigcoin Vietnam and their partners, we expect to become the number one project in Vietnam within a year! The other key market we are looking at are Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India and the Philippines.
Soon in crypto, real revenue and real users are going to be more important than fake trading volume and layer one protocol options. We are going to see the crypto market get a huge boost from real world adoption and our project will be one of the first in the world to have real adoption.
I really believe that. By having ARCC, you are becoming like shareholders in the entire ecosystem. We don’t want to make money from our users, we want to grow with our users and grow together.
