Plutus — Better than a Bank
Introduction
I suppose a lot of you reading this are some of the earlier supporters of Plutus, who have been with us through this journey since the very beginning. I want to take this opportunity to first thank you all for the support and talk a bit about Plutus’ journey so far; including our hurdles, how we have overcome them, and our future objectives.
This year (2019), will be remembered mostly for its massive bear market and the capitulation of many newcomers due to constant heartbreak from volatility in the charts, as well as the lack of utility for any available token. However, for us at Plutus, it was a year where we buidl.
In order to build a great product, you need a great team. As a personal experience in my career, building a synchronised team has always been the biggest challenge. As a founder, you have a responsibility to yourself, your colleagues, and your supporters to succeed; and that can only be possible if you are lucky enough to have talented individuals around you.
At Plutus, I couldn’t be prouder of our team’s achievements and the hard work they have committed, working over hours and on weekends. The result is a great product that’s better than a bank!
We made promises, got pushed back by industry red tape, but we did not stop, and we ended up delivering something much greater than what we originally set out to achieve.
“Rome ne s’est pas faite en un jour” — some smart ass.
2019
Over the last 12 months, the team has evolved the product from a payments system to a fully functional finance tool with unique features unmatched by others. We have taken onboard all user feedback and streamlined the previously clunky features into an intuitive, secure and robust product. We are pleased to see these efforts reflected by our recent nomination for “Best Consumer Finance Product of the Year” and “Blockchain Project of the Year” by FStech, competing alongside large-scale corporations such as HSBC.
The vast progress that has been made should highlight the future greatness to come.
We believe all crypto services should be non-custodial and educate their users of counter-party risks associated with making deposits to a 3rd parties honey pot. If you don’t hodl your keys, you don’t own your crypto.
Journey so Far…
Plutus is one of the first and only start-ups to do a crowdsale for an original idea of an in-app utility token and achieved this without any promises of financial gains. Due to our early arrival on the scene, we raised one of the least amounts of funding in the space and still created a superior product.
If you compare the amount raised versus the results achieved, you will find that Plutus has raised ten times less and produced ten times more in terms of the complexity of our technology. Startups in the ICO space and in FinTech spend tens of millions on their digital products, yet we have achieved similar results in the leanest way imaginable which is a testament to the efficiency of our team and the exciting times to come.
Total Funding vs Product
- Plutus = $1m
- Revolut = $336m
- Starling Bank = $344m
- Monzo = $425m
- Coinbase = $545m
Many in the crypto sector naively judge the success of a platform/protocol on the price and volume of their subsequent token which should not be the case, especially for start-ups in the development phase without a working product or token use case.
Exchanges charge millions in so-called listing fees (which we believe is not a correct allocation of budget) and encourage speculation over vapourware which reflects badly on the community. Not to mention the legal implications of promoting such tokens without delivering on the fundamentals. The industry is littered with examples of companies who promoted their token as a get rich scheme and have not produced anything or very little since, I don’t have to name any.
We created PLU for a different purpose, it was the first ever utility token which was designed to reward users in a similar fashion to Airmiles and loyalty reward points. One of the main differences being that it is decentralised, meaning users will not be locked within an ecosystem, you can convert your earned PLU into spendable balance on your Plutus card and spend at any store of your choice.
We wanted an organic growth and a stable market for PLU, we did not wish for it to become a speculative token on 3rd party exchanges whilst we focused on building a game-changing product; one that is better than a bank.
Pluton Token Value
Now that we have achieved a working product, a core focus for the team is to further enhance the token utility and use cases for Pluton. It was not designed with the intention of bringing financial gains, however, it was formulated with a deflationary model, meaning as our user base and transaction volume increases on the PlutusDEX, the amount emitted through the reward pool to customers is proportionately reduced.
To simplify even further, more users results in a lower supply rate, keeping the circulating amount scarce and the demand high. The purpose of this design is to bring value to our members who earn PLU via the rewards system and convert them into fiat for in-store or online purchases (please refer to the yellow paper for more details).
Pluton is the first decentralised loyalty rewards token I pitched to the community back in 2015. There have been several attempts to replicate the idea since, however, we are proud to lead the way and continue to innovate.
My philosophy:
If someone replicates what you are doing it means you are on the right path, don’t complain, innovate, improve and make whatever they are copying irrelevant because you are continually coming up with something much better.
This is exactly what we sought out to do and have successfully achieved with our non-custodial peer-to-peer marketplace for crypto and fiat conversions. It is similarly what we intend to bring to our upcoming rewards programme. I can proudly reveal that Plutus has partnered with several well-known multinational brands which we will be tied to our rewards programme to deliver great benefits to Plutus shoppers.
I strongly believe these partnerships are key to unlocking additional utility and use-cases for PLU holders and we cannot wait to reveal what we have been working on. A detailed breakdown of PLU’s new use cases will be revealed in the new year.
What’s the Vision?
Plutus is the first FinTech to bridge the gap between crypto and fiat monetary systems in a way that stays true to both cultures. Cryptocurrencies were designed to empower the user with full control over their assets and we intend to maintain this integrity by leaving the users in sole possession over their private keys. Not your keys, not your crypto.
I believe our ground-breaking technology could be key to increasing adoption inadvertently, our non-crypto members will receive PLU rewards from their Plutus Card and this will open the doors for them to investigate crypto further.
In the short term, we are looking to focus on the key values of our product and improve the user experience from suggestions and feedback we gather from our community. However, the main thing to look forward to next year is the additional token utility and partnerships mentioned earlier, as well as the PlutusDEX on mobile.
We currently have a week on week (WoW) total user base growth of between 14- 23% since the 2.0 release on the 6th of November and 34.3% this week which has not even ended yet. We have an ambitious user acquisition strategy prepared to grow our customer base to over a hundred thousand users, at the current growth rate, this will be achievable before the end of next year.
The future beyond 2020 couldn’t look better, one of our main objectives has always been, and will remain, to obtain a banking license, ideally one issued by the FCA in the UK. This is key to unlocking additional financial services whilst reducing overall operating costs. Like all our objectives, we’ll achieve this one too.
On behalf of the whole Plutus team, I would like to thank you all once again for your continued support, and kindly request that you stay part of our success in years to come.
In the meantime, if you don’t already have a Plutus card, then please sign up to the waiting list in order to receive access to our platform. You can also join our community and team members for a chat on Discord.
Danial Daychopan,
Plutus Team Member
