2018 Balance. Sprouting the seed
Making an analogy to agriculture, 2017 was the seed selection for EthicHub and the planting of that seed while in 2018 we have seen EthicHub seed to sprout. Thanks to you EthicHub is an existing reality. We are operational and improving day after day thanks to your contributions and support.
As mentioned in our first financial report for H1 market conditions have not been favourable. Nevertheless, even under these difficult circumstances with the initial funding we have accomplished a number of amazing things:
- Setting up a project collection office in Mexico — We have already screened over 1.000 suitable borrowers.
- Launching the Alpha version of our lending platform, which is already operational and has helped more than 60 farmers to receive loans.
- Promoting the project internationally during our Asian roadshow, with RSK and Startup Token, and by participating in dozens of events all over Europe and also in Mexico.
Resulting from these actions, we’ve been able to build a large global community and a network of top collaborators. We are currently in the process of developing the Ambassadors Network (you are invited to become part of it).
Most important, first loans have been already funded an even paid back.
EthicHub`s solution is being increasingly recognized: Our proposal has granted EthicHub the Blockchain4Humanity Award as “Best Financial Inclusion” project at LaBitConf 2017 in Bogota, the “StartUp with the Greatest Social Impact” at the international Fintech Awards 2018 in Madrid. And just recently we received the “Design for Development” award at the Bienal of Iberoamerican Design by a Spanish public agency for development (Cooperación Española). The most amazing thing is that we have never actively looked for any award, it has been our community that enlisted us for these contests. We are very grateful to you all!
But this has not been an easy path. We were expecting to open the Token Sale in September and we had to postpone it because of different reasons explained in this article. Since then we have been focusing on the improvement of the platform’s user experience (UX) by simplifying the procedure to increase the users’ conversion rate:
- We had improved the plattform to be Mobile First.
- We have integrated a wallet so users won´t need to install Metamask plug-in.
- Today we gladly announce the introduction of a Fiat gateway to allow contributors to use credit cards, thus eliminating the hassle of buying cryptocurrency at exchanges.
Now with a friendly enough UX in 2019 we will focus on marketing campaigns to bring more users to the platform.
Looking for funding to accomplish our roadmap’s next milestones has also been a priority. Because EthicHub aims to become a foundation equity funding is not an alternative, so we have developed 2 financing alternatives to be launched at the beginning of 2019:
-ImpactDebt for those that do not consider buying tokens: Investors who care not only about the risk/return ratio but also the impact of their investments. We will offer 5 year bullet debt with 15% annual interest.
-Private sale: For regulatory reasons we cannot do public Token Sale so we are about to launch the new token model and open a new selling round only for accredited investors.
Required funding to continue the platform’s development and to prepare the Token Sale is €500K. The minimum amount to participate is €10K (or equivalent amount in other currencies). If you are interested, please contact us by sending an email to investors@ethichub.com
Going back to the agriculture analogy: 2019 will see EthicHub growing and maturing to become soon the leading global p2p lending platform to serve unbanked farmers, fulfilling our mission of democratizing access to credit and best investment opportunities. Our aim is to become a real unicorn, a project impacting for good the lives of a billion people.
