JCF May 2020 Update: Tokenized Assets for Social Impact Investment

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Greetings!

Hope you all had a good start heading towards spring (in Northern Hemisphere), as COVID-19 appears to slow down. Here’s a quick briefing for Joint Commonwealth Fund (JCF) in the past month:

• As of 2020–05–15, we have 42 token holders (Monthly Active User, MAU, checkable at our smart contract), Net Asset Value (NAV) stands at: USD $98.30, and a total fund size, or Assets Under Management (AUM) of $33,236.39.
• We’ve successfully completed the Apr. 2020 dividend payment on Apr. 29th, where the average monthly return on investment (RoI) is : 1.02% in terms of JCF tokens (12.24% annualized), with the highest being 34.85% and lowest 0.53%. The different RoI reflects that JCF is a “social impact” fund aiming to bridge the wealth gap and provide passive income.
• There has been one manual enter and exit position event, as we follow the daily MACD indicator in accessing we should be ‘in’ the top 10 crypto position or ‘out’, depending on whether the general crypto market is going up or down.
• There has been healthy user growth on a 5% weekly basis, and thanks to our sister service CryptoShop.VIP, which helps people to purchase JCF tokens without having to go through the tedious process of setting up an exchange account.
• Last but not least, we’ve explored further how to offer other “tokenized assets” opportunities that may be based on gold, antiques, stock options, or even forestry, and have prepared for a potential oversea operation.

On this last point we’d like to explain more.

We shared in our March 2020 update, that JCF actually has two parts: 1) the portfolio (top 10 cryptocurrencies), and 2) the social impact / redistribution mechanisms, as JCF’s goal is to make basic income universal for everyone by 2040.

However, we’ve also got various responses, from “I don’t really understand cryptocurrencies” to “I can probably invest better myself”, to “why would I share profits to people I don’t know?”

These are all great questions and feedback, so we thought about whether we can offer other services that could satisfy and answer these needs. Namely, instead of ONLY investing in crypto, can’t someone invest in, say, real estates or gold with limited access, while retaining all the good “social impact” aspects of JCF?

We thought of course it would! Only that the devils are in the details!

Thanks to our advisor Chris Yu of Polaris Capital Partners, we were able to talk with one tokenized REITs (Real Estate Investment Trust) expert, to learn whether this is feasible. The expert mentioned that legal and tax issues are at the core, and we’ll need to apply for licenses in general.

However, when discussing about a “forest protection token”, where token holders are essentially sponsors to protect a specific “forest” assets. The expert considered that it would be much more feasible, with less legal and compliance issues, the only question is: who’s going to invest in such tokens?

Some might have heard the term “social impact investors”, which describe investors who seek not just a financial return, but also potential social benefits / values from their investments. Areas of investment could include sustainable energy, education, micro-finance, agriculture, and healthcare. The estimated amount of such investors represent $100 billion in impact assets in 2017 alone.

In specific instances, people have donated money to help recover damages in forest fire, even the Rainforst Foundation in U.S., has started to accept crypto donations. To promote and facilitate crypto donation, The Giving Block has helped social organizations to accept crypto donations for social goals.

So as JCF looks forward to expand to other asset types, we feel that by helping forest asset owners to tokenize their assets, they may then be able to use the fund collected to maintain, operate, and retain the eco-social-environmental value of their assets. In other words, crypto/blockchain can be used as a conservation tool in this case. This will be the next chapter in our journey to provide people with access to crypto assets, while bridging the wealth gap! Stay tuned!

If you’ve got any comments or feedback, please feel free to leave a message, shoot us an email at ask@jcf.world, or post to our FB page. Thanks to all your support and let’s build a more generous world together, by making basic income as universal as possible!