2 Malaysian Crypto Projects That Lived and Died a Quiet Death
With 2329 Initial Coin Offerings ( ICO ) in 2019 alone , its no surprise that creating a token and having it get noticed by the community is a monumental task. Though some of these projects did start out with ( somewhat ) noteworthy propositions , they didn’t quite catch on with the public and eventually faded out of view.
In fact. If you’ve even heard of these projects when they were around you must be one of the news-fashioned ones. Or you might have stumbled across some of these while checking the Bitcoin price at 2 am 😉.
1. Harapan Coin ( HRP )
Branding itself as the world’s first political fundraising platform , Harapan Coin was initially founded to support transferring money into the country with the goal of helping Opposition campaigns. It was reported at the time that the central bank had blocked all suspicious movement of money coming from overseas during the GE14 elections.
Sounds like something crypto can come to the rescue !
As you can expect any mention of crypto and ICOs will attract the attention of the central bank ( BNM ) and Securities Comission of Malaysia ( SC ). A task force was indeed set up to study Harapan Coin’s proposals , but we were not able to find any follow ups on the matter.
While the coin was endorsed by Federal Territories Minister at the time , YB Khalid Abdul Samad , the rest of the team seems to be in the grey. Likely due to privacy concerns , we only have information on the core developers in the form of a blurred photo , a first name and country flag , presumably where they are currently residing.
As of 2020 , the websites , whitepaper and social media links have gone quiet. You can no longer buy nor create new wallets if you wanted to transfer these tokens. From the partially functioning website and numerous broken links , its safe to assume that the project has been laid to rest in the vast ICO cemeteries.
The original introductory video on the project is still available here.
2. LaVida Coin ( LVC )
Founded by none other than Malaysian cosmetics mogul Datuk Seri Dr Hasmida Othman — in fact better known as Datuk Seri Vida , LaVida Coin had 3 sub-projects mentioned in its roadmap. All for a staggering $ 1.5 billion !
1. A new entertainment platform ( $ 1 billion )
2. Development of a new payment gateway , LaVida Pay ( $ 100 million )
3. Non-profit Islamic community hub , including the construction of a mosque ( $ 400 million )
At the time of listing , you can get your hands on 1 LVC at $ 0.66 or RM 2.71 with bulk discounts up to 3000 LVC for RM 9900.
On the 29th August 2018 , the central bank ( BNM ) added LaVida Coin to the Consumer Alerts list as it had not complied with the nations regulatory standards. Subsequently , on the 5th October 2018 , Securities Commission of Malaysia ( SC ) was swift to notice the ICO as well and ordered all operations and promotional agenda to be stopped.
As of October 2020 , not a trace of the original project sources are to be found. Websites , social media , not even blockchain addresses which are immutable by nature. Assuming the token was even made.
If the amount of funding capital this ICO aims to raise doesn’t set off enough red flags , here’s a good article by FinTech Malaysia explaining everything else that is off putting.
But I Still Have a Great Idea !
Fret not. There are numerous other blockchain implementations founded by Malaysians that are doing well , most notably CoinGecko , a website that provides fundamental analysis on crypto markets alongside technical data such as market cap and prices. Other honourable mentions include HelloGold , LuxTag and numerous others mentioned in a great write up by FinTech Malaysia.
