Why we started Crypto Launchpad
If you asked someone who invests in cryptocurrencies which currency they invest in and why, you would get answers like, “because I believe in what they are doing” or “because the team looks good”. If you asked the same person how they heard about the currency, they would often say it was all over Facebook and the advertising was everywhere.
Contrastingly, if you asked a traditional Fund Manager if they were invested in cryptocurrencies, the majority of the time, the answer would be NO. They would respond that cryptocurrency is a bubble that is likely to crash and justifying the exposure to stakeholders is impossible, especially with the level of insider trading, pump and dump syndicates and the lack of real information.
Why does this matter?
If you want to invest in cryptocurrencies today, your key source of information is the thousands of groups on Facebook, posts on Reddit and channels on Slack/Telegram. All of these sources pull their information from each other — and quite often the real source of the information is an unaccountable twitter post or the like that has been taken out of context.
A key example of this is the recent fluctuations in NEO. The price of NEO moved around $13.93USD in 2 days due to a highly circulated post about an “upcoming NEO announcement”. That shift equals a change in market cap of $905,450,000USD within a period of 48 hours. When the “announcement” broke, it became clear NEO and Microsoft are simply co-sponsoring a dev competition, and the price corrected itself.
This sort of market volatility is dangerous. To prevent this, there is a real need for a verifiable information platform in the crypto world. Currently, significant fund managers cannot keep cryptocurrencies as an investment in their portfolios due to the unsystematic risk. Furthermore, the mum and dad investors who are taking a punt on cryptocurrencies may lose their investments due to poorly informed decision making. And finally, global regulators are looking to take a negative stance against this revolutionary technology to protect existing market investors.
On a personal note, as investors and believers that blockchain is an enabling technology, our mission is to make this space safer for everyone involved. We want this eco-system to grow, evolve, and shape the future of industry and business. Success for us looks like people investing in projects that they are passionate about and believe in, with comfort in knowing these projects will do their absolute best to create value and not simply run away with the investors’ money. This is a big shift from the current situation where, as a crypto investor, you have to make your best guess on whether an investment will grow exponentially or fall to nothing. In the future, we want all investors to be in a position to make an informed decision on which investment is likely provide them the best return.
What are the issues?
Additionally, there are a number of the other issues and risks that exist in the space. Scam ICO’s are creating coins with no real value, fooling investors into committing large amounts of money and running away with the proceeds — never to be heard from again. In just the last month, we’ve witnessed one ICO raising 375k in pre-seed, and another using advisors and influences to raise millions, both to disappear and stop responding to their supporters once the money was in their pockets. Not all ICO’s are scams and there have been some projects that have done all they could to protect their investors, such as Power Ledger. However, currently there is no way to separate the good from the bad, nor the real from the fake.
Governments are starting to take adverse positions as more and more people start to fall victim to these scams. A number of mechanisms have been implemented to do this, such as the blanket ban in China, but no one has approached the problem from an information and due diligence perspective. This is where we come in.
What we are doing.
Crypto Launchpad is creating a due diligence framework for ICO’s and cryptocurrencies. This framework is currently in development with input from industry experts, leaders across technical auditing companies, global law and consulting firms, and experts in investment banking. This due diligence framework will be publicly released once completed alongside information on how to use the framework to test the viability of new ICO’s. Crypto Launchpad will then facilitate an independent audit by our partner organisations using this framework, and certify ICO’s that meet the standard. For ICO’s that are approved by this standard, Crypto Launchpad will also offer underwriting and investment banking services as well as providing a streamlined process for listing across our partner exchanges.
Information generated by this process will be available for subscribers on Crypto Launchpad’s information hub, including ratings and analyst’s reviews. The Crypto Launchpad information hub will also act as an official announcement portal for ICO’s who have met the standard requirements so people in the space have a clear source of valuable, tested and independent information on ICO’s as opposed to relying on many different and unverifiable sources.
Where we are going.
We want to make investing, using, and holding utility tokens in cryptocurrencies safer. We are starting our journey by creating the due diligence standard in partnership with some of the most reputable organisations in the space. We are working with exchanges to streamline and secure the listing process. We are partnering with various companies in the crypto world to collaborate and create real change and at the centre of a community.
Additionally, we are also releasing a pre-assessment tool for ICO’s to do a quick check on whether they are likely to meet the standard or not which will be available for beta users shortly. If you want to use this tool sign up for the beta list at www.cryptolaunchpad.io under tools. Also follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook for updates on our progress.
We look forward to sharing this journey with you.
The Crypto Launchpad team
Adiraj Gupta, Kerry McNulty, Steve Macdonald, Michael Kotlyar and all our investors, advisors and supporters.
