We're giving away three Ledger Nano S on 9/1: https://www.benjacoin.com/benjacoin-giveaway-ledger-nano-s

For the beginners who don't know, a hardware wallet is one of the best security measures you can take with your crypto and the Ledger Nano S is one of the most popular hardware wallets. They range between $50 and $150 USD, but here's your chance to get one for free. Good luck!

BenjaCoin is now available on the EtherDelta exchange: https://etherdelta.github.io/#BENJA-ETH

Originally published in Hacker Noon: https://hackernoon.com/how-were-getting-the-nfl-to-buy-cryptocurrency-2938c03a647a by Andrew Chapin, the benjaCoin.com lead.

Re-published here:
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Two milestones were achieved in the past month: the total amount raised by ICOs in 2017 crossed $1 billion, putting us on a $2-billion pace for the year, and the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies crossed and settled over $100 billion.

Despite such staggering numbers and the increase in mainstream media attention, we’re still operating in a niche market. While it’s difficult to draw the line and say exactly when the market truly reaches a growth stage, there are two items that seem paramount: consumer protection, and utility for mainstream corporations.

That last one is one that we’re tackling with benjaCoin. As of yesterday, we’ve secured commitments from all of our vendors: they’re on board with a token-based ad network. We’re getting the big boys into cryptocurrency.

The Benja merchandise network launched three years ago with a mission to change the deals space: we brought personalization, an impression-based business model (vs. the standard margin-crushing commission or fee models), and unique user-experiences to the market.

So far, so good: we’ve attracted top-tier vendors and brands including Patagonia, the NFL Shop, and Under Armour, great investors including the VegasTechFund, and we’ve saved our users a lot of money.
Earlier this year, we decided to launch a cryptotoken to address major issues around pricing transparency and billing cycle lag times. That’s benjaCoin, which is available today at Orderbook.io, but that’s not the point of this post. This is about the questions that our partners had and how we’re addressing them.

The Challenge is simple: these companies are scared of cryptocurrency.

And if you’re wondering why, here’s where Ethereum has been in the last three months:
5/17: $88.36
5/24: $194.16
5/27: $146.80
6/13: $395.46
6/27: $243.58
7/16: $141.47
8/7: $266.59
Many of these corporations are publicly-held and would never willingly hold a piece of real estate or inventory with this kind of volatility. Many of these organizations have entire teams dedicated to minimizing or avoiding these kinds of risks.

But of course, we were not asking them to transact their ad business in Ethereum or Bitcoin — we were asking them to transact in benjaCoin, which will take place over a Benja-owned, semi-closed network that we have some control over. This shifted the conversation and turned it into a sales job.
There were three major keys to this sale:
- We had to simplify the language and make it easy to talk about among themselves. We understood that there are some individuals who will never understand blockchain, and pitched accordingly. Cryptocurrency is intimidating. Cryptotoken is a little better, but once we started saying “token” and “benjaCoin,” people were a lot less tense. There’s just something about that crypto prefix.
We also leaned on an analogy: buying a benjaCoin token is buying a ticket for the ride. Rather than exchanging USD for 1,000 impressions, we explained, you’re exchanging a benjaCoin token. Simple as that.
- Once framed properly, it was still important to explain why we are adding a step to their ad-purchasing process. In exchange for their cooperation, we explained, they would receive things they’ve been asking us (and all other ad networks) for: true transparency in pricing, and a same-day billing cycle. These are huge wins for them — and therefore, an extra step to their process is something they’re thrilled to do.
- We pledged to make the user experience simple, much like the folks at BuySellAds.com do. If we can make our experience as direct as their marketplace listings are, include the transparency that comes with use of benjaCoin, and (this is the big one) offer the purchase of benjaCoin as simply as they do their fiat checkout, we will win. And we will win big.

We’ve promised to do this, and included it in the Development Roadmap portion of our white paper.
Our vendors only represent a small group of a specific segment, but we’re thrilled to bring these household names into cryptocurrency. We believe their willingness is reason to be optimistic about the future of our space, and hope others will find the same kind of success.

With this hurdle cleared, it’s full-steam ahead with our pre-sale event and plan to convert the entire Benja network in the middle of 2018.

See you there.

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"How We're Getting the NFL to Buy Cryptocurrency," just published on Hacker Noon:
 https://hackernoon.com/how-were-getting-the-nfl-to-buy-cryptocurrency-2938c03a647a

Thank you!

Thank you!

It's been done, but not with partners like we have (Nike, Under Armour, Patagonia) and real revenues. I think we're in a very strong position.

1b total supply, 500m available today on Orderbook.io.

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Also, I've updated the white paper link. Thanks for the tip!

After the initial sale, yes. For now, we like the transparency and simplicity of keeping everything in one place.

Any requests for exchanges down the road?

BenjaCoin is now LIVE and available at Orderbook.io!

The SEC has not formally stated that - they have offered guidance around how to evaluate this ourselves and we based on that, we believe that we are in the clear.

The SEC is just doing their jobs and there are some very problematic ICOs - especially those that go on to invest in other assets (digital or otherwise) and pay a dividend. Those are clearly securities and it's a big problem that individuals think they can issue a clear security and not deal with any of the regulation.

I also don't think that the SEC is the end of the road here. Even if no US-based companies and no US-based individuals were involved in ICOs, I'm sure someone somewhere would pick up the regulatory slack... I just think they're waiting for the SEC to be a first-mover.

I'm just here sharing my experience, that's all. We're not waiting for a clearance or certificate, we're launching tomorrow but we think that we're in the clear based on their guidance.

Follow up to the article, our letter to the SEC that documents why we're a pre-order, not a security: http://benja.co/blog/2017/7/31/release-benjacoin-ico-event-a-pre-order-not-fundraise

There are some instances where this is very obviously the case - especially with tokens that promise to pay dividends or invest in subsequent projects (especially things like real estate, etc.). ICOs/tokens like this fail the Howey Test right off the bat.

Tokens that have a utility, like those where it's necessary to use have tokens to use a service, are on the other end of that spectrum. The buyer motivation is function, not investment or gains on the value of the token.

In light of the DAO news earlier this week, we contacted the SEC for guidance. They called back:
https://medium.com/@andrewjchapin/the-sec-called-about-our-ico-i-answered-8cbbd31568ec

A lot of you know that I'm working on launching an ICO early next week.

After the DAO news earlier this week, I sent an e-mail to the SEC to check in and see if they had any guidance. I didn't expect to hear back, but today they came calling.

I wrote about it on Medium, think that the community might find this interesting: https://medium.com/@andrewjchapin/the-sec-called-about-our-ico-i-answered-8cbbd31568ec

Our Telegram channel is now open, four days until we go live on the Orderbook.io exchange: https://t.me/joinchat/Gh_TwkM_EdmnGbxwiFVscA

Hope to see you there!

Newbie poster, yes. benjaCoin is not a scamcoin.

I'm happy to share our credibility and skills - we're staking our three-year old adtech business on this move to blockchain, something that no other ad-based tokens are doing. We're bringing our partners (including Backcountry, Under Armour, Patagonia, Bloguin, Barstool Sports) along with us, something that no other ad-based tokens are doing.

We're doing things right - no paid promotion, exchange availability from day one (on Orderbook), no founder stakes. We're the type of people that the community should want on board - not the type that you should be bullying.

Benja Responds to SEC Initial Coin Offering Investigation: http://benja.co/blog/2017/7/25/release-benja-responds-to-sec-initial-coin-offering-investigation-benjacoin

We're bringing the Benja ad network to blockchain. Our merchandise ad network works with brands like Nike, the NFL Shop, and Patagonia to sell their excess inventory across a number of interactive and personalized ad channels. By introducing blockchain, we're going to fight ad fraud, offer verifiable analytics, and simplify billing on our way to solving a $38 billion+ set of problems in advertising.

Quick Links
Homepage: benjacoin.com
White paper: https://www.benjacoin.com/s/benjacoin_EN_072917compressed.pdf
Twitter: https://twitter.com/benjacoin
Facebook: http://facebook.com/benjacoin

About Benja
Benja is a merchandise ad network that works with top-tier brands like Under Armour, Sperry, and Ray Ban to sell their excess inventory. We do this through two primary channels:

• benjamin: sixty-second deals (iOS). Think Tinder meets personalized shopping. One personalized offer at a time, with sixty seconds to decide whether to buy or pass.
• Our network of interactive online display ad units. Each unit is an interactive widget that replicates the mobile app experience inside of an ad -- you can pass and buy all without leaving the page that you're on.

Additionally, Benja has an engaged e-mail list of more than 20,000 bargain hunters and is exploring other areas including SMS. The company operates with a cost-per-milli (CPM) business model rather than the (deals space) industry-standard commission or fee. On average, Benja out-performs Google and Facebook in sell-through rate in multiples thanks to our user-experiences which shrink the sales funnel and bring the two parties (advertiser and end-user) closer to the transaction.

The company has done more than $1m in cumulative revenue and is currently operating at a $1m revenue run-rate. The company has signed insertion orders from existing partners and plans to scale ten-fold in 2018. Benja was founded in 2014 by Andrew J. Chapin and Tommy Goode.

Meet benjaCoin
The Benja merchandise ad network is executing a token issuance under the name benjaCoin (BNC).

The benjaCoin will serve as a revenue-generating mechanism for the Benja merchandise ad network. These funds will be leveraged to develop Ethereum and blockchain technologies to support the function of our advertising platform and business.

Blockchain will be incorporated in the Benja advertising platform with the goal of addressing transparency issues in advertising. Real-time bidding platforms and their manual counterparts offer limited (or, in many cases, no) information about advertising bids. An advertiser has no method to verify if they are paying a fair market rate. Additionally, publishers have no verifiable way to confirm they are receiving a fair price for traffic. Ad networks and platforms provide their own dashboards for reporting, which can be manipulated to highlight top-performing metrics while avoiding others. This is a business-side information asymmetry (and ethics issue) that can be addressed with the transparency of a blockchain solution.

Further, there is operational bloat in the existing ad networks in regards to billing process. The use of benjaCoin as a means of buying and selling advertising, as described in our white paper, shrinks the billing cycle.

Issuance, Plan, Terms, Participation
The benjaCoin token sale will commence on August 1, 2017 at 13:00 UTC and it will run for a period of 30 days or when the cap is reached, whichever occurs first.

During this period, individuals can purchase tokens through the Orderbook.io exchange at https://orderbook.io. Tokens will be offered at a price (in Ethereum) that is equal to 0.025 USD per token at the time the sale commences. Twenty-four hours after the conclusion of the pre-sale, benjaCoin will be available for trading on Orderbook.io. We may agree to work with additional exchanges in the future. The source code of the benjaCoin smart contract will be available at http://benjacoin.com.

EPHE Corp. offers rights to benjaCoin token holders, as the organization recognizes token holders as key non-investor stakeholders. This means that token holders will, as a group, receive:

• Early access to beta versions of blockchain-based products the organization produces.
• A seat on the Board of Directors. We will hold a closed election by external token holders in the first week of each year for a one-year appointment on our three-person Board of Directors. The purpose of this process is to ensure that the token holder interests are represented in strategic company decisions. Tokens held by employees, Benja, EPHE Corp. do not have a vote in this process.
• Access to a quarterly update on business and technical operations, which will be published at http://benjacoin.com.
• Access to a quarterly live-stream by EPHE Corp. employees where we will offer a qualitative update and host a question and answer session.

The token pre-sale is capped at 500,000,000 benjaCoin tokens and ends after 30 days or when the cap has been reached, whichever occurs first. There are 1,000,000,000 authorized benjaCoin tokens. No additional benjaCoin tokens will be created after the token sale ends. These limits were fixed in the smart contract at token creation and cannot be changed during or after the pre-sale. The remaining 500,000,000 authorized benjaCoin tokens are to be held by Benja and introduced to the market only in the event of an illiquid market when the performance of the Benja ad network relies on an advertiser’s ability to purchase tokens. As is noted in the “Terms and Token Holder Rights” section of this white paper, the Benja organization also intends to buy tokens back (at market rates). Benja’s holdings, both present and future, will be used to ensure the smooth operation of the Benja ad network once it has been moved to our blockchain-operated platform.

Further, EPHE Corp. commits to using 50% of net proceeds each quarter to purchase tokens on the open market at market rates. EPHE Corp. will use its holdings to facilitate advertising activity on the Benja ad network, offering tokens to advertisers and buying back from publishers. This is an instrumental part of the ensuring the liquidity of the Benja advertisement marketplace and is not to be received as guidance as it relates to the future price of benjaCoin.

Localization
Our white paper is available in English at https://www.benjacoin.com/s/benjacoin_english.pdf. Additional languages will be made available in the coming days.

benjacoin.com