The Token Fund’s Review of ICO Projects
In September the booming trend of ICOs kept rising and the month has already become one of the busiest this year. Over dozens of projects all over the world with a few that have triggered our particular attention. What follows next is a review of Red Pulse (Hong Kong, Shanghai),Token Stars British Virgin Islands, Cyprus) and KIK Project (Canada) examined by our analysts.
15.09.2017
1. Red Pulse Project (Hong Kong, Shanghai)
Red Pulse is an existing company that offers its clients a real-time analysis of China’s financial markets, verified data and a news release in the financial and/or investment sectors. What makes it particularly interesting is the fact that this is the first ICO powered by the NEO platform. During the correction period in September, the fund acquired NEO tokens with a view to participate in the Red Pulse ICO.
Here are Red Pulse’s key arguments in favor of its participation in the ICO:
· finished products in a multi-million dollar area
· China’s steadily growing stock market
· strong support from the world’s leading financial enterprises (partnership and integration with Bloomberg, Thompson Reuters, S&P Capital IQ) and from key crypto community members, including NEO, Accenture, OnChain and Binance.
The founders of the project, Jonathan Ha, Stanley Chao and Peter Alexander have held high-level positions in LG, IBM, Dell, Nationwide Bank and in other top companies. Red Pulse’s managers have over ten years of work experience in their respective areas.
Unlike more developed financial markets, such as the USA and Europe, where institutional investors account for over 90% of the participants in commercial activities, China’s stock market is dominated by private investors, representing some 80 percent of the total volume of trade. The demand for analytical products is constantly growing there.
RPX tokens will be used to pay for the production, dissemination and consumption of the content, initially oriented towards China’s capital markets. Moreover, the use of the blockchain technology enables them to introduce a publicly accessible system of mutual settlements. The existence of tokens will foster the creation of an ecosystem aimed at encouraging direct research (without intermediaries), thus contributing to the growth of the project-related community.
A positive development was a fundraising goal of $15,000,000 — a sufficiently modest sum required for a successful company’s project. A 30 percent bonus will be available in the first day of the ICO.
The Token Fund team decided to take part in this project at the ICO stage, whose launch is to be announced shortly.
2. Token Stars Project (British Virgin Islands, Cyprus)
Token Stars project, the world’s first and truly unique project aimed at the mass tokenization of celebrities. Token Stars aims to supply resources and contribute to the promotion of soon-to-be stars, while radically changing and decentralizing the talent management industry. This concept is very attractive from the financial perspective and, most importantly, it will actually help people develop their talents and pursue their aspirations.
Project offers sponsorship and promotion to young and promising tennis players so that they do not quit professional sport, thus increasing their chances of success. When an athlete has earned the prize money and has achieved celebrity status, he or she starts entering into sponsorship contracts, the proceeds of which will be received by the token holders.
The Token Stars’ team is composed of Pavel Stukolov, an investment expert who has made venture investments of over $250,000,000; Irina Shashkina, a development director at Rambler&Co; Evgeni Potapov who has a ten years’ experience as a CEO of IT Summa headquartered in San Francisco; and Vladimir Shmidt, the former commercial director of Sberbank’s mobile unit. In addition the key team members, the project involves sports counsellors (Veronika Kudermetova, No 66 according to the WTA rating and Vera Zvonaryova’s coach Sergey Demekhin), business counsellors (the blockchain expert and the founder of the Synswap platform Oleg Abdrashitov, Mail.ru communications vice-president Kseniya Chabanenko and Elena Masolova, featured in Forbes as one of the top 30 Internet entrepreneurs).
Many popular editions, including Cryptoinsider, Finance magnates, VC.ru, Forbes and Coinfox, publish articles about Token Stars.
3. KIK Project (Canada)
KIK has recently generated a massive media buzz so we could not overlook it in our review. It is one of the world’s top 7 messengers, popular among more than fifteen million users, mostly from the USA (64%), whose average age varies between 13 and 24. For its messenger, KIK supports a leading chat bot platform with over 187,000 users.
Its success with KIK points, which is a means of payment that has proved its significance within the messenger, incited its founders to implement the blockchain technology into the messenger’s ecosystem. A wallet is also intended to be integrated into the KIK user’s account through Ethereum.
The KIN token is to be used for the following purposes: closed VIP groups created by popular users and charging an entry fee; the unique premium content accessible with KIN tokens; broadcast ads, monetization of bots, remunerations for user surveys and other paid services of KIK Messsenger.
Major investors shut the Pre-Sale stage long before the start of the ICO’s main stage. A lot of buzz about the project encourages ordinary users interested in ICO projects to participate in it.
At first glance, we have here an excellent, established product, which has a multimillion person audience and a solid reputation. On the other hand, how lucrative could this project be for investors within the given timeframe? Some of the contentious points are making us look at its prospects in a different way here they are:
1) Why implement tokens into the messenger’s structure if users have KIK Points that could be replaced with the existing cryptocurrency by adopting Ethereum, for instance? Evidently, the plans to use the messenger’s own tokens are intended to kindle interest in and to attract users to the messenger itself, their number having reached a certain limit.
2) A huge supply of tokens at ICOs: one trillion tokens worth $125,000,000 is to be issued shortly. The fund will freeze part of the funds for 5 years. When tokens come on the exchange (the exact date is unknown), it is expected that there will be an ample supply of tokens and, most likely, an insufficient demand from users, given that the number of KIN tokens is well above the number of users, who are ready to purchase them to use the available services.
3) First major investors shut the Pre-Sale stage in August with a 30 percent bonus and no airbag protection when entering the exchange. Speculators may temporarily increase the token’s value, but its value is likely to decrease in the near future, because the influx of new users will not be able to ensure the token’s steady growth in the days ahead. The user market has already been shaped, and most users are unlikely to be familiar with the cryptocurrency market.
The Token Fund team decided not to take part in this project’s ICO.
