Current — Record Revenues, Product Progress, $CRNC Token, Gas Costs, Listing & Dividend Royalties
The ~2500%+ growth we have encountered in 2020 has continued into 2021. We have a great team that has contributed a ton to get us where we are today. As a company, we are looking forward to keeping things moving up and to the right. Like many early-stage startups, there are still several scale challenges we continue to work through. And, based on these, we are looking to increase our headcount significantly over 2021 to help address the gaps.
TL;DR — Key Announcements
- Revenue is up 2500% since Q1 2020
- Broke the projected December 2020 revenue target of $1.2 million by $200,000 for a total of >$1.4 million. Both January & February will be 7 figure months for us and we anticipate having our biggest ever quarter in Q1 of this year.
- Average Daily Active Users are up nearly 1150% since Q1 2020
- The Current Rewards Super App is now approaching 500,000 Daily Active Users
- By mid-February 2021, Current surpassed a huge milestone of 10,000,000 Earners
- The Current App increased its rating to 4.5 and remains the #1 app overall in our category within the Google Play Store and in the Top 50–100 of all apps in the USA. We recently surpassed 900,000 reviews and should cross over to 1,000,000 reviews by Q2.
- Mode recently launched the first-ever hardware as a subscription service in February 2021. Allowing for participating customers to get a new phone every year and boost their earning rate on Current by 50%. With nearly 600 devices having been shipped to date, we will begin scaling the initiative in Q2.
- The $CRNC Token was officially unlocked on December 28, 2020, to enable p2p transactions. It’s planned the token is listed on the Securitize Markets ATS-compliant exchange in the first half of 2021. A formal date will be announced once Securitize Markets has received its final approvals.
- Ethereum price appreciation has provided for much higher gas fees. As a likely long-term issue, we are working on a solution to the gas issue through a partnership we feel will greatly benefit all holders and the underlying ecosystem.
We continue to have hit new records across all of our key metrics. What has driven these positive trends? Well, our overall product offering looks much different than it did a year ago. At that point, our user acquisition goals centered around exciting a user with free music streaming with minimal additional earning opportunities through, primarily, surveys and offers, rewarded video ads, and data point sharing. Since then, we have learned a tremendous amount about our users and the product has expanded upon these features by the addition of other earning opportunities related to their daily habits. In 2020, we refined and launched the Current Rewards Lock Screen, Charge Screen, Raffles, Deals, and VIP Offers via direct brand partnerships, as well as other mechanics to further increase engagement such as our earnings rate and super boost features.
Many of these additions were introduced in our last update and continue to be major contributors to our recent growth by unlocking millions of dollars in value to our users each quarter. Our suite of brand partners will continue to grow throughout 2021, with plans to provide regionally-specific international deals. This area of the business is on track to generate upwards of multiple seven-figure revenues for the year, with plenty of room to expand in the years to come.
We’re now at a point where we have found a sweet spot in terms of creating a great user experience where retained users will continue to return to our product in search of new earning opportunities — thereby creating a daily habit in the process. This dynamic has really started to play out in terms of substantial improvement in nearly all of our key metrics.
The Mode Phone
As we discussed in detail in our last update, we feel that developing a competitively-priced smartphone for our key user demographic (budget-conscious users) where the user can defray the cost of the phone and service by regular interaction with the earning features pre-loaded onto the phone is the most logical next step to source and retain users seeking to be rewarded for their time, attention and data. This is why we created the Mode Phone (modephone.com). While our business plan anticipates a healthy margin on the sale of each phone with extended LTV supported by a first of its kind subscription program, the real value lies with retained users who will continue to interact with our phone and apps over the life of the phone. Early data shows users who use Current on Mode Phones produce 2–3x more rewards and earnings than users who use Current alone.
The response to the Mode Phone has been well received since its launch back in late 2020. With minimal marketing, our sales are quickly approaching 1,000 units, with customers all around the world. Given our user demographic, even a $150 upfront payment can be challenging. With hopes of creating as few barriers to entry as possible, we have started offering the Mode Phone pursuant to a subscription model, where a phone user can obtain the phone for a one-time $29 upfront payment and a monthly subscription fee of $12. Now that all of the pieces are in place, our plan is to ramp up the marketing of the Mode Phone over the next quarter.
Additionally, since release, the team has been working tirelessly to completely finesse the software to include a new software update, a new home screen, and Earnings UI updates. On the logistics side, there have been challenges shipping directly from overseas. With the worldwide strain on shipping channels due to Covid (work restrictions across warehouses, customs, and air freight partners), costs have continued to remain volatile. To combat this, we have signed an agreement with a new, US-based, fulfillment company and will be diverting some products to the US in March to aid in reducing shipping times and costs.
Initiatives that remain throughout 2021 include adding a new European frequency to the next batch that will allow us to expand across all European markets, restocking inventory in Q2 for the existing model, dramatically increasing the scale of units sold, and exploring the role out of a successor 5G enabled model planned for Q4-Q1 2021–2022.
$CRNC Token
The Official $CRNC Token contract: 0x929c232066398d1103993fc7bb70d1bd6b8e4709 was unlocked as planned on Monday, December 28th, at 9:00 AM PST (UTC -8:00). Since then, the amount of wallets holding $CRNC has doubled to approximately 445 holders. The number of individuals who have registered, or are in the process of registering to become whitelisted to hold $CRNC, via Securitize iD, totals more than 6,000 and consistently growing at about 50 new registrants per day over the last few months. It has been great to see a steady flow of potential new holders start the registration process.
P2P Transfers, Holder Restrictions & Public Reporting Requirements
With the unlock of the $CRNC token, the tokens can now be sent, sold, purchased, or held, only by Securitize iD whitelisted wallets. During this time between token unlock, and exchange listing (more on this later on in this section), the availability of the token is temporarily limited to p2p transactions. While we cannot facilitate these transactions as that would be the equivalent of acting as an unregistered broker/dealer, we can be of assistance by monitoring any transactions and confirming receipt between participants. For p2p transactions, we would recommend that tokens should be sent prior to any payments made. That way, if payment is not forthcoming, we can lock the recipient’s wallet, burn the tokens at issue and subsequently reissue them. If you are a token holder, you can use the Pre-Trade Verification Tool to verify a whitelisted wallet and check to see if both sides of a transaction are verified. This is very helpful to ensure gas fees aren’t wasted by a failed transaction.
While the token is only available via p2p transactions, temporary limitations are in place which dictates there can be no more than 2,000 concurrent holders worldwide, 500 of which can be non-accredited. These restrictions will remain in place until the token is listed on an exchange. Once we exceed these thresholds, we will be compelled to make regular Form-10 filings with the SEC. The Form-10 filings, among other things, require Current to publicly disclose financials and other disclosures about the company on both an annual and quarterly basis, starting 120 calendar days from the end of the company’s fiscal year — or, in our case, by April 30, 2022. These filings are different from our usual company updates, however, it is our goal to continue to share information in a transparent manner with which to provide everyone with an accurate depiction of the health and progress of the business. To greatly improve the frequency of our communications as well as other investor relations goals, we are taking steps in the first half of the year to add a few key hires to the team specifically for this.
Ethereum Network Gas Fee Issues
Shortly after the token was unlocked we quickly became aware that the cost of sending a transaction through the Ethereum Network had increased quite dramatically. Unless you have been living under a rock over the last few months, you will have noticed that the price of ETH has increased significantly since the end of December. A combination of ETH’s appreciation in price, and an increase in the network activity, have subsequently caused an increase in gas costs (fees) to send a transaction through the network. Under normal circumstances, this would be palatable and just par for the course for transacting on Ethereum. However, the $CRNC Token’s contract is not like other contracts. The contract is full of extra compliance commands which take extra computing power to be verified by the network, thus the higher gas (fee) requirements. Your average ETH transaction costs about 21,000 gas or about $4 at current prices to send a transaction. To send a $CRNC token, the recommended settings for the contract are between 650,000–800,000 gas. Most transactions that have gone through, have done so in the range between 500,000–650,000 gas. This makes it about 25 times more expensive than sending ETH over the network, making it almost prohibitively expensive for sending small amounts. As it is our intention to make $CRNC as freely available as possible, we’ve been looking into solutions to this issue.
Solutions to Ethereum Network Gas Fees
Of all possible options, the most attractive solution would be to migrate off the Ethereum network entirely onto a different blockchain that would provide cheaper, faster, and more efficient transactions. Having evaluated a variety of different chains that Securitize already supports, there are a few that stand out. Discussions are ongoing as we continue to further evaluate these options, however, if decided upon, the process should not take more than a couple of weeks to complete.
If we move forward down this path, once an agreement is reached, an announcement will be made with full details of the partnership, including the timeline for the migration to take place. Based on that timeline, the process might look like something like this. First, the $CRNC Token contract on the Ethereum Network would be locked and a snapshot of the cap table would be created. Once locked, the token can no longer freely move from wallet to wallet. This essentially freezes the number of tokens in each holder’s wallet at a specific point in time. Current would then provide instructions to all holders and those whitelisted to create new wallets compatible with a new chain. Existing ETH-based $CRNC Tokens would be burnt from existing wallets that hold the token. Book entries would then be created for each holder and the new $CRNC tokens would be issued in the amount dictated by the book entry from when the token was locked.
The Near Term Impact
The most immediate impact of the chain migration would be on the new issuance of $CRNC Tokens. In February, we had planned multiple issuances — the first issuance of advisor allocations, bounty allocations, as well as, commencing monthly investor bonuses soon after. These issuances would be paid back immediately upon migration. For example, if the migration does not take place until April, an investor would receive whatever they were holding in their wallet pre-migration plus their bonus distribution for February, March, and April when tokens are reissued. Same thing for the advisor and bounty allocations. In short, if your distribution period starts one month from token unlock, your monthly distributions would be back paid up until the month the migration takes place. Additionally, independent of which chain Current would move forward with, it will not affect our ability to list on other exchanges.
Part 2: Securitize Markets Listing Timeline
Late last year we were excited to learn of Securitize’s acquisition of a FINRA-registered broker-dealer with an alternative trading system (ATS) application on file with the SEC in preparation to launch their own exchange. After learning more about their ambitions for their new platform — Securitize Markets, we couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity and what it means for the entire industry.
Today, the industry is a fragmented collection of few closed ecosystems for secondary market trading that lack shared order books and therefore zero shared volume across ATS compliant exchanges. It’s like trying to buy Apple stock from a single exchange, and not across many. Securitize Markets aims to fix that and become an open ecosystem with shared order books across other ATS compliant exchanges. Securitize has grown quite dramatically over the few months to over 100,000 active investors.
The Securitize Markets ATS-compliant exchange is planned to go live in the first half of 2021. As of our last update, we were anticipating being able to list on the exchange sometime in Q1 2021. However, they are awaiting final approval from regulators before its launch. That said, the exchange platform is fully built, so once they receive the final approval, the plan is to go live shortly thereafter. We’re all extremely excited for this moment as it culminates years of hard work, and it’s right within our reach. 2020 was a banner year for the Security Token industry, posting tremendous growth across the board. Last year’s industry-wide growth was perfectly summed up in a recent article contributed to Forbes.
- Opening Market Cap: $59,339,362.52
- Closing market cap: $366,100,103
- Cap Change: +516.96%
- Total Trading Volume: $69,660,511.35
- Vol Change: +1,105.23%
- Tzero security token 2020 return ($TZROP): +205.26%
- Overstock security token 2020 return ($OSTKO): +195.00%
With the addition of Securitize Markets as well as others planned to go live in 2021, in combination with a much greater interest in digital assets, we will likely see even more liquidity and higher volumes in the markets this year.
Q1 2021 Dividend Royalties
The illustration of what was discussed in our last update is still very much relevant today. Independent of the chain migration and exchange listing, dividend royalties could be executed as planned. After Q1 revenues are locked in, dividend royalties from this period would be announced in their amount per token and date of execution for early Q2. As a holder, on the date of distribution, you would then have the option to claim your dividend in USD as well as other options that may include Stablecoin, ETH, or BTC.
How to Get Involved
- Chat with us on Twitter!
- Add Questions here for an upcoming Q&A.
- Have someone in mind that you think is a perfect fit for one of our open positions? Send them a link to our job board. As a reminder, we pay a referral fee for any employee we hire!
If you ever need to reach out to our investor relations, or leadership team, please feel free to email info@current.us, and we assure you that we will respond in a timely fashion. Please keep an eye on our Telegram Announcement channel or Medium for all future updates. If you’d like to ask a question specifically for an upcoming Q&A, drop a question in our Google Form.
[PLEASE READ] Important legal disclaimer: No money or other consideration is being solicited by this communique, and if sent in response, will not be accepted. Our discussion may contain forward-looking statements that are based on our beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the following words: “may,” “will,” “could,” “would,” “should,” “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “is designed to,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “project,” “potential,” “continue,” “ongoing,” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words.
These statements involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that may cause actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from the information expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Although we believe that we have a reasonable basis for each such forward-looking statement, we caution you that these statements are based on a combination of facts and factors currently known by us and our projections of the future, about which we cannot be certain. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about: developing and designing the Current network, including the $CRNC token and its future utility; the anticipated development and growth of the Current Network; maintaining and expanding our base of users; our anticipated growth and growth strategies and our ability to effectively manage that growth and effect these strategies; our expectations regarding regulatory developments and their effect on the Current Network, including the ability of applications on our network to develop a user base and a successful business model; and potential future listings on an exchange or ATS. We cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate. Furthermore, if the forward-looking statements prove to be inaccurate, the inaccuracy may be material. In light of the significant uncertainties in these forward-looking statements, you should not regard these statements as a representation or warranty by us or any other person that we will achieve our objectives and plans in any specified time frame, or at all. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements publicly, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
