Hello All,
COVID-19
Before we move on to the important announcement of the RMT Utility modification, we want to offer our prayers to everyone affected by the on-going COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. We hope that this situation will pass quickly, and wish all who are affected lots of strength.
Introduction
Over the past year, we have analyzed the utility of the RMT token and the tokenomics. Our primary goal at SureRemit is to provide fast international non-cash remittances using cryptocurrency as a payment layer, and by using a native token, transfer benefits to the customers in the form of zero to low fees. The initial RMT utility approach was to utilize the RMT token for transaction settlement: in short, all SureRemit sales/transactions are processed in RMT. More app sales result in a higher demand for the RMT token which is required to make the purchase, then demand and supply economics take over to determine the market value of RMT.
It’s a simplistic model, but our analysis over the past year has revealed that a pure “payment token” model can only work under specific market conditions where, simultaneously, company sales are increasing steadily, the token is liquid, and the price trend is unidirectional and positive (i.e., consistently trending upwards).
For the past two years, we’ve experienced a highly volatile crypto market with severe downside pressure across most crypto-assets. As a result of these market conditions, the company became disincentivized to drive sales due to the economic risk involved. With the current RMT utility, when a user purchases a voucher and pays in RMT, we receive the RMT, which we can’t sell back on the market due to a lack of liquidity, downward-trending prices, or because we don’t want to add further selling pressure to the market. These same factors mean that we need to pay our partner merchants in fiat for the voucher sale, so, the more the sales, the higher the financial losses to the company. Since our primary goal is to sell our services, it is important that our incentives to do so align with the token-holders’ expectations that we do. Consequently, our operational decision-making to drive sales needs to be independent of the market decision-making of the token-holders (which influences token price and liquidity). Further technical details on this phenomenon will be published at a later stage for the benefit of the wider industry.
Summarizing, the past two years have shown us that we can’t make SureRemit a success with the current RMT utility structure, where due to market conditions that we cannot influence, practically every sale we make results in a loss for the company, and because of our actions to curtail losses, the market reacts in a way that also ensures further RMT price depression in a vicious cycle.
THE NEW MODEL: Burning vs. Recirculation
After a lot of theorizing, deliberation, and consultation, we concluded that the best utility structure is one where RMT burns through usage, instead of bringing it back into circulation. We must, therefore, modify the RMT utility to:
- Drive SureRemit usage without being exposed to current (and potential future) volatile, illiquid, or any adverse cryptocurrency market conditions,
- Use alternative/parallel payment options independent of the RMT market
- while establishing a continuous demand for the RMT token
THE NEW RMT Utility
So, here we go… the new RMT Utility, what changes?
Removing the settlement of transactions in RMT.
Removing the settlement of transactions in RMT results in SureRemit not being exposed to the activities in the secondary RMT marketplace. Users can pay for our services in other cryptos; BTC, XLM, ETH, etc. Upon receipt of these payments, we convert them immediately to the asset that is acceptable to our merchants as payment and settle them (in the future, RMT might be one of them).
RMT is used to pay the transaction fees.
Users will pay about 1% of the total value as a transaction fee. This fee is only payable in RMT. Users who hold RMT in their in-app wallets and to pay fees will receive a 25% discount on the transaction fee.
RMT received in transaction fees are burned.
All RMT received in transaction fees are burned monthly and are therefore taken out of circulation. Result: the total RMT supply continually decreases. The more sales we make, the more transaction fees we receive, the more RMT burned.
Example:
A user buys a $100 voucher and the transaction fee is 1%. The total amount charged is $101. The $1 received in fees goes towards buying the maximum possible amount of RMT off circulation to be burned. If a user holds RMT in their in-app wallet (the transaction fee is paid directly in RMT), there’s a discount of 25%, resulting in a transaction fee of 0.75%. The burn address is public.
We decided (for now) not to require users to mandatorily hold RMT in-app as it exposes users to price fluctuation. Users can decide for themselves if they want to hold RMT in-app to pay fees subsequently. The new RMT utility setup could make it attractive for users to do so, but the company must continue to separate itself from such speculative decision-making.
250 million RMT burn when the new SureRemit App goes live
To further align the interests of all parties involved, we have decided to burn 250 million RMT out of our company treasury (25% of total supply), because a large token treasury could still have a significant influence on the decision-making process of token-holders. Again, we want the company’s contribution to any RMT market action to only be a natural consequence of the ordinary course of business. This ‘burning event’ takes place when the new SureRemit App launches.
Additional RMT Burning
Our core and only focus is to increase SureRemit sales. When a certain level of RMT is burned through receipt of transaction fees and at certain RMT price levels (both still undecided) we’ll burn additional RMT from the remaining company treasury.
RMT’s Future
The new RMT utility also provides easier access to (mass) adoption of the RMT token and is future proof. When a liquid market is established, it will be easier for RMT to be accepted as means of payment by merchants, allowing us to reinstate the transaction settlement in RMT.
SUMMARY
Our experiment with the original token economics has resulted in many important learnings. This new RMT utility structure finally aligns the interests of SureRemit and the token-holders and is, therefore, more future-proof. The initial token burn followed by perpetual, sales-driven RMT token burn results in a constantly decreasing RMT supply. Decreasing token supply as a consequence of an increase in demand for company services is our way of aligning incentives of the company, our users and the token-holders. With this utility setup, we eliminate the risk that is currently apparent for SureRemit which can also affect its survivability, while making the process more transparent. SureRemit stakeholders can now estimate the business’ progress by simply observing the burn address.
The goal of this new RMT utility setup is also to thank all of you who have been supporting us. We have an incredibly supportive community and many of you have continued to contribute to our development from the beginning with your constant engagement across our channels. Without you, we would not have been able to reach this phase of learning and growth. We sincerely thank you. We’re looking forward to observing where this new direction takes us.
AMA Friday, March 27th 11.00 to 14.00 GMT
SureRemit will host a Reddit AMA session on Friday the 27th of March from 11.00 to 14.00 GMT. The AMA takes place on our Reddit page. We’ll open the post 24hrs before for you to post your questions.
DOWNLOAD SUREREMIT APP
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iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/sureremit/id1102261592?mt=8
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WeChat: https://www.reddit.com/r/sureremit/comments/bv5hwj/sureremit_now_also_available_in_wechat/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/sureremit/
WHITEPAPER
RMT EXCHANGES
BITMART: https://www.bitmart.io/
SDEX: https://stellarterm.com/exchange/RMT-sureremit.co/XLM-native
WBFEX: https://www.wbfex.com/
BUSHA: https://busha.co/
LATOKEN: https://latoken.com/
SUREREMIT SOCIAL
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This group is created for all of you SureRemit holders and enthusiasts for community social interactions. SureRemit Circle focuses on providing service, team contact, updates and answering questions.