Token Report: 2 ICOs to Watch This Week
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Every Monday, we cover the news of the past week in crypto assets and offer a list of upcoming token generation events (TGEs) to watch, pulled from the Token Tracker, where we never miss a current or upcoming token sale. Check it out on our new corporate site. This week, we were keeping an eye on two: a gold-backed cryptocurrency project in Asia and a cooperative banking app, Moeda.
Last Week in Crypto Assets
- Estonia is toying with the idea of issuing its own government cryptocurrency, dubbed “estcoins,” which would enable anyone in the world to invest in the country as well as be used as a form of payment for public and private services. It’s connected to a three-year-old program called e-Residency, a government-issued digital ID that can be applied for by anyone in the world and then run a business based in the European Union. A blog post published Aug. 22 by the director of the e-Residency program announced Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin is on board as an advisor. The author proposes that the funds raised in a token sale could possibly be used to invest in public sector technologies, be part of a community-run VC fund or support Estonian companies started by e-residents.
- Cryptocurrency investing platform startup Enigma was the victim of a phishing scheme that saw its website compromised and the equivalent of more than 500,000 USD sent to a false address. See more details in our “Scam of the Week” below.
- South Korean multi-sector conglomerate Dongbu Group’s Savings Bank announced last week that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Bitcoin remittance company Sentbe. Sentbe allows users to send money to China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines. The country legalized Bitcoin remittances in July this year after an amendment to its Foreign Exchange Transactions Act.
- Segregated Witness (SegWit) was officially activated on the Bitcoin network on Aug. 23, marking a protocol change that will remove transaction malleability, theoretically aiding in bigger blocks. SegWit comes after a yearlong debate among bitcoin miners, some who believe it is not the scaling solution the network needs and hard forked the blockchain to form bitcoin cash on Aug. 1.
- Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced last week that it would removeilliquid trading pairs, which affect Bitcoin, Ethereum, Augur, EOS and Gnosis among some others. Kraken also decided to temporarily suspend the creation of new advanced trading orders, with the promise that they will return in a month or two “as soon as we are better able to process them.” The changes took place Aug. 22.
The Week Ahead in Token Sales
HelloGold (HGT)
Documentation
Open Date: August 28, 04:00 GMT
Hard cap: 9.6M USD
Hoping to democratize gold-based savings and financing, HelloGold is developing an application on which users can buy fractional ownership of gold and convert it to a digital gold token, allowing the usage of the stored gold as value outside of the HelloGold system. The tokens will be able to be traded on exchanges and made available to purchase, thus forming a cryptocurrency backed by physical investment-grade gold. HelloGold is targeting low-to-medium-income customers who otherwise have traditionally been left with little to no access to a vast majority of financial products, including gold investments. HelloGold is the first Shariah-complaint digital gold scheme that is fully compliant with the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions. In a post published Monday, HelloGold announced it has reduced from 180 million to 80 million the supply of HGT it will offer to the public. It cited “high demand” in a pre-sale, but did not offer specifics.
HelloGold has developed a mobile app on iOS and Android on which Malaysians can buy investment-grade gold starting from 1 Malaysian Ringgit. It launched in Malaysia due to a high smartphone penetration rate in the country and a large target population, according to the developers. Users can save, borrow and send gold, which is stored in a vault in Singapore and redeemable as bars, coins or cash. HelloGold’s next steps are to move parts of its backend onto Ethereum smart contracts and create its gold-backed digital currency that can be exchanged with other crypto or fiat currencies through the token sale.
For non-Malaysians, a demo version of the mobile app is available for viewing on the Apple App Store and on Google Play. HelloGold has also made available its token sale smart contracts for review on Github.
Team
HelloGold was founded by Robin Lee, the former CFO of the World Gold Council and principal accounting officer of SPDR Gold Trust, which held over 30 billion USD in assets under management. HelloGold’s CTO Wykeen Seet was previously vice president at Bangkok Bank where he led mobile banking and international remittance projects over 8 years. HelloGold’s advisors include Bo Shen, co-founder of BitShares’ Invictus Innovations Incorporated, and David Lee, a founding investor in Zcash, Qtum and TenX.
Moeda (MDA)
Documentation
Open Date: August 28
Hard cap: 15M USD
Moeda is a cooperative banking app being built for payments, remittances and micro business loans with the fiat-pegged Moeda token (MDA). It also aims to launch a charity lending program called the Seed Projects Program to allow users to invest in the “impact economy” of companies promoting social good with their MDA tokens. Funds raised in Moeda’s token sale will be partially invested in this fund. Moeda is targeting the population of approximately 2 billion people in the world who are not a part of the financial system, including those that don’t have a bank account or are heavily in debt or with negative credit.
Moeda will initially launch in Brazil and make its remittance, transfer and loan services available to 100,000 members on the platform. It has partnered with 170 cooperative credit banks in the country to provide mobile banking services and capital access to sustainable development projects. It has a goal of reaching 1 million users by 2022.
Moeda held a private pre-sale through Bitcoin Suisse AG that ran from July 18 to Aug. 28. The public sale begins on Aug. 28 and will end on Sep. 28, at the price of 1 USD per MDA. A maximum of 5 million MDA tokens will be issued in the public token sale, at a cap of 15 million USD.
Team
Moeda’s founder and CEO is Taynah Reis, a software engineer who has been working at social impact organizations for the last 13 years. She served as president of Brazil’s Green Cross, an environmental nonprofit organization founded by former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1993, for two years before founding her own green energy company in 2016. Moeda’s CTO Brad Chun is an early bitcoin investor and former equities trader who started his career in tech startups in 1997. Moeda’s advisors include a permanent representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, non-governmental organization leaders and finance managers.
Token Report is an independent financial information service founded by Galen Moore and Peter Vessenes. Galen is a financial journalist with a background in startups, venture capital and launching news sites. Peter is a co-founder of the Bitcoin Foundation, and launched the first VC-backed Bitcoin company in 2011. He is managing director at New Alchemy, a boutique consulting and investment group based in Seattle, Wash., that is making a pre-seed investment in Token Report.
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