HelloGold Foundation Update #9–7th March 2018
Business
HelloGold has won the award for Prominent in Wealth Asset & Investment Management of the Year at Malaysia Fintech Expo!
The team was also nominated as Fintech Startup of the Year while Robin was nominated as Fintech Personality of the Year.
In the 5 months since Round 1 of the Token Sale, the HelloGold team has grown extensively from 16 to 40 team members. An offsite was planned to ensure that the direction going forward both for 2018 and in the long term remained clear for everyone. It is a credit to the entire team that HelloGold’s cause of democratising financial inclusion and the team culture of openness and inclusivity continues even after the surge in team members.
On the marketing side, February 2018 was HelloGold’s best month so far with regards to gold sales. Overall customer AUM and activation rate improved as a result of a) targeted communications and b) lower gold prices. We’ve also seen a 50% increase in customer registrations from the previous month.
Moving forward there will be some fluctuation to customer acquisition. The customer experience has been overhauled so that customers get to experience the app before committing any personal data. As a result we expect lower registrations initially but higher activation rates in the medium term. Additionally the entire digital acquisition strategy is being reviewed for funnel optimisation and this will take a few weeks to bed in.
Meanwhile we’ve seen strong press coverage on GoldX being shariah-compliant and this has put some tail wind on HelloGold customer acquisition. There will be more announcements over the next few weeks and we expect the additional press coverage to benefit HelloGold.
Technical
1. KYC v2. Tech has now launched KYCv2.1 for both iOS and Android. Users will now be able to quickly explore the app before needing to submit additional KYC information in order to start buying and selling gold. Tech will be working on KYCv2.2 next which will allow HelloGold to onboard non-Malaysian residents.
2. Wallet Integration. Tech has completed the app and back-end development to integrate the Axiata Boost wallet. There is a dependency on Axiata to implement some of the customisations on their end and so the team is working closely with Axiata to ensure continuation of the Systems Integration Test.
3. Product Blockchain. Development of key contracts have been completed for the creation of customer accounts and wallets along with some basic transactions. On-going work is being done to develop the APIs such that the existing transaction server is able to trigger the transactions in the blockchain. At the same time, Tech will be working out how to integrate the product blockchain as a secondary transaction ledger for the existing application.
4. Preparing the core systems for regional expansion. Design of the transaction server has been completed by grouping related transactions to increase cohesion and also cleaning up the interfaces to ensure that coupling of unrelated elements is reduced. As a result the transaction component should be more adaptable for future enhancements.
As you may be aware, HelloGold is passionate about expanding the ethereum developer community. HelloGold’s lead blockchain dev, Dave, recently conducted a workshop at the JSConf Asia in conjunction with Crypto-Jobs List. Following this event and his talk at Gophercon Singapore last year, Dave has been invited both to present a workshop and talk at Gophercon India from 8th to 11th March 2018.
Tokens
Official HelloGold Token Telegram group
We have opened an official HelloGold Token Telegram group for supporters to discuss the HelloGold project with the team (but not price predictions!). We are also planning more engagement activities inside the group, so watch this space! To join the group, click here.
Feedback on utility of HGT
The first activity in the Telegram group is discussing utility of HGT. We have heard the suggestions from supporters and have listed some of these and our own ideas here. You may list your preferred options or add more thoughts on the Telegram group here.
GOLDX is Shariah Compliant
After the launch of GOLDX in January, GOLDX also became certified as Shariah compliant by Amanie Advisors. This opens up the Middle East market for HelloGold — look out for more news on this coming out soon!
TrakInvest
HelloGold has announced a partnership with TrakInvest to roll out affordable investment products, tools and educational content across Asia. TrakInvest has a running social trading platform with 100,000 users as well as The TrakInvest Show — its own reality TV show! The team is led by Bobby Bhatia, who has more than 25 years’ experience in financial services including leadership positions in JP Morgan and AIG.
Events
The team will be traveling for several events throughout March:
Ethereum Community Conference in Paris from 8–10 March 2018
Gophercon India in Pune from 9–10 March 2018
World Leaders Summit in Dubai on 11 March 2018
BCI Summit in New York City from 29–30 March 2018
If you are in any of these locations, do feel free to meet us in person or arrange a meetup with the local community!
GOLDX reward distribution
The rewards for February 2018 will be distributed on 12th March 2018. The total allocation will be 1.162 GOLDX, a 19% increase from the previous month.
We will continue to provide updates on a monthly basis. Please do get in touch with us in between updates if you have any thoughts, suggestions or recommendations.
The HelloGold Foundation Team
