Genie ICO update

Project on hold indefinitely

It have been quite a while since we have updated the plans on our Genie ICO digital exchange platform. We have decided to put the project on hold indefinitely in view of the new regulatory environment and the funding on the project.

As you are aware, after the ICO closed, we used the funds to start the development of the blockchain-based platform that would grow into allowing digital assets trading on it using our tokens. We developed the alpha version, expanded our development team, and our developers started to build the alpha version into a working platform.

In the meantime, there was news that the digital exchanges would start get regulated. And as such, Payment Services regulations would be launched in Singapore. This resulted in us waiting to hear what the rules and regulatory rules would be for digital asset exchanges. And we evaluated if we need the pivot to be compliant with the new rules. We didn’t apply for the licenses as we wanted to see if we have the funding in place to be compliant.

In the meantime, however, with the crypto market collapse in late-2018, and 2019, the pricing of ETH and BTC that we had collected collapsed by almost 95% at its peak in USD, and we had to pay our developers in fiat. As a result, we had to make severe cost reductions, first we reduced our people costs, then we reduced the development team costs, however despite this the funding was insufficient to carry on with the development.

Now that the new regulations (Payment Service Act) are released, the licenses for the first batch of applicants has still not be given out, but the funding has dried up. And with the pandemic, we don’t have visibility on whether we will be able to restart the project. Therefore, we are deciding to put the project on hold indefinitely. As a consequence, the token repurchases have been suspended. We will keep monitoring the regulatory landscape and the funding, and if things change, we will update this space.