UPDATE!

Last week we have received confirmation from the AFM (Dutch SEC) that Retailcoin has been classified as Utility Token. We are proud to announce that this means that under Dutch law (Retailcoin and Digital Retail Foundation are structured under Dutch law) will not receive AFM oversight for the emission of Retailcoin!

Hmm.  Very interesting idea.  I know here in the US, having rewards programs are beneficial to customer retention.  I'm curious to see if you plan on going global with this idea, or just keeping it to Europe?
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Interested in how this project is going!  Do you have any updates?
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Hi Frumjanet,

Yes we have some quite exciting updates!

1. My first child has just been born! Sorry for the delay in response, you can imagine the hectic time. An amazing cute little girl.
2. We have finalized the Digital Retail Foundation, the non-profit organization, lead by one of the former Directors of the National Police and one of the former Directors of Microsoft.
3. We are still going strong on the sales side for retailers and improving the awareness around Retailcoin in brick&mortar stores
4. We have reached an agreement to create the first city-app with Retailcoin integrated to support 200+ retailers
5. We are waiting on official approval from the Dutch AFM (SEC) for confirmation of Utility classification
6. We are updating our whitepaper with more and more clear information, which will be published before the end of next week
7. We have had the opportunity with lot's of media attention including national radio (BNR https://www.bnr.nl/nieuws/ondernemen/10338843/de-retailcoin-een-digitale-zegel-voor-alle-winkeliers), national magazines (Emerce https://www.emerce.nl/achtergrond/retailcoin-blockchain-koppelen-spaarprogrammas), online shows (Fast Moving Targets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQYuQ3lG40Y&t=3s , ColoringCrypto Podcast http://coloringcrypto.com/index.php/2018/02/25/25-a-healthy-blockchain-disruption-of-loyalty-programs-with-retailcoin-architect-hugo-leijtens/)
8. Our Telegram group will be online this week!

And as a bonus: we are very happy to announce that in our ICO/pre-ICO there will be 0 free coins available!! Our pre-ICO is going fairly well (although we could still use some support!) and no coins have been provided through airdrops or bonus coins or anything like this. We have created some partner coins which will be locked for 3 years and some employee coins that will be locked for 5 years.

If you would like to support, please visit the Early Bird: https://retailcoins.eu

Absolutely! We have discussed this with all of our current customers and everybody will start using it. They really like what we are doing on the innovation side and believe in the concept that we are introducing with Retailcoin. These are smaller retailers. We are also partnering with different larger platforms including: http://newblack.io and offering Retailcoin with their customers.

We currently rely on channel marketing, on which we educate the retailer to stimulate adoption among consumers. At the moment we see about 30% - 50% of the retailer customers downloading the loyalty app they have in place today. Some retailers achieve a higher adoption rate, some a little bit lower. We believe that once the integration is finished, the ability to save crypto-currencies will accelerate adoption.

Consumer adoption is great to do 'in-store', but we also focus on consumer education and hype once we have delivered Retailcoin for production.

Hi SirDanW,

Thank you for your feedback! I agree it's not convenient to make payments with bitcoins, and it's much to expensive. At the same time, if we can find a currency that is usable, it would provide more trust towards making crypto a valid payment options. And at the same time I can definitely understand your point. Let's move forward with the fiat option first, as adding crypto later isn't the biggest technical challenge!

Today I had a really good talk with a Payment Service Provider in The Netherlands about Payments and Crypto. They have a patented wireless payment system for Europe with a strong customer base in The Netherlands and they are in possession of a Bank License. We discussed if it would be possible to integrate crypto currencies payments in our app, next to our Retailcoins Loyalty program. Enabling not only crypto-payments inside our Retail apps but also fiat-payments, would be in my opinion a nice feature, especially if it's possible to split the payment between a bit of crypto and a bit of fiat payments. Recently I received some questions from a local retailer if it's possible to integrate our Dutch crypto payment: NLG https://gulden.com/ but up to now it has only been one retailer.

May I  ask your opinion? What do you think of integrating crypto payments combined with crypto loyalty? Would you like to be able to use crypto for payments at phsyical stores?

Wellicht een goed punt dat het maar 1.2% is. Dat is gewoon niet veel, zeker niet omdat je eerst een belastingvrije voet hebt.

Een ander punt van aandacht is minen! Valt minen niet gewoon in box 1?

Hi Giselleny,

We would love to, while keeping our business goals real :-) it makes no sense to overpromise and under deliver.

And to tell you a small secret: we are way ahead of our roadmap :-) but we don't want to communicate that broadly yet... :-) it gives us a bit more time to test thoroughly and make the best technology available. I'm sure that we can start distribution of our Tokens well before the communicated deadlines!

Hi Pendul,  thank you! We've spend a lot of time to make the economics as clear as possible, as this is what actually drives the value of Retailcoins after the ICO. Through the economics scheme we create demand on several levels within the loyalty program, besides the fact that Retailcoins have an actual usage. From all the excitement we see here now in Europe, we see that we have a working model, that holds tangible value and creates a steady flow of demand for Retailcoins!

Hi supermario64,

Thank you for your question, let me try to clarify! Yes, you can take a reward from Walgreens and apply them at Stop&shop (if those two companies would join our program of course). Walgreens can decide if they want to collaborate with Stop&Shop. When they decide to do so, they can also decide how much of the Walgreens loyalty will apply to Stop&Shop (for example: 75% of the value of the Walgreens loyalty will be applicable to Stop&Shop, but this can also be 50%/50%). The retailer has the choice with whom they want to collaborate, and with whom they don't want to.

Scenario: a user shops often at Walgreens and saves up RC. Then the consumer goes to Stop&shop and redeems the product. 75% RC will go to Stop&Shop, 25% of RC will go to Walgreens. If this user would redeem his product at Walgreens, he would be rewarded 100%.

In the retailer app, we will show in real-time how many RC the consumer needs in order to redeem te product. This will change in real-time, based on the value on the crypto-exchange, and based on the RC they have in their wallet, saved up by the different retailers with the different.

We are also investigating to integrate BLOCKv technology in our mobile technology. This would provide the option for a consumer to trade the reward after he has redeemed it with RC. This would help the consumers to get the rewards that they want, even if the retailer doesn't specifically wants to collaborate with another company.

Does this clarify it a bit more?

Thanks,

Hugo

Hi Frumjanet, sounds great! wish you a great weekend!

hi SeveralQ,

I've registered at your website, and will fill in the info! Your tool looks great!

p.s. what do you think about our ICO?

Thanks,

Hugo

Hi Gabe,

That would be great! Your podcast http://coloringcrypto.com/ sounds awesome! I would love to come into your podcast and tell a little  bit more about Retailcoins!

Hugo

Hi Frumjanet,

Thank you for your interest! Although we have our initial market on Europe (we are an European company), we are definitely not limited to the European market. For example, we are now discussing to enter the Iran market. We definitely want to get into the US market, but as I've seen a lot of ICOs saying that they can conquer the global market, I don't think that is so easy to actually do so. We will focus on the European market and accelerate our existing business, while creating an API HUB platform that allows retailers across the world to integrate retailcoins in their customer retention solutions. We will definitely move into the US market, but that will take a little bit of time to ensure we have enough body in Europe to expand into the US! For sure, we will make sure that we will be the leading blockchain loyalty program in Europe!

Regards,

Hugo

Hi guys,

I would like to introduce our Retailcoin ICO. We have an existing business with an existing product that we now use to integrate blockchain. A working product with live customers today, and growing very rapidly with 15 new customers per month: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2686472.0 ICO is still runing!

Hi,

Zelf ben ik bezig met een ICO voor te bereiden (we zitten nu in pre-ico) en daarvoor ben ik pro-actief met de Rabobank gaan praten over de regels voor het omzetten van bitcoin naar fiat geld. Daarnaast is mijn vrouw fiscalist. Daarom deel ik hier mijn ervaringen en onze inzichten:

Crypto naar Fiat is erg lastig voor de bank. Ze zullen deze transacties al heel snel als 'verdachte transactie' aanmerken. De regels voorheen waren: boven de 10k is er een meldplicht voor de bank voor de transactie, maar dat geldt niet meer. Het blijkt dat er een heel scala van punten zijn om een transactie als verdacht aan te merken. Bijvoorbeeld: indien je regelmatig transacties naar je bankrekening zet, maar dan in 1x een groot bedrag, dan is dat raar. Indien je vanuit het niets een grote transactie op je rekening krijgt (dus zonder voorgaande transacties) dan is dat ook raar. Ook als dat minder is dan 10k. Het is dus niet alleen de hoogte van het bedrag, maar ook het gedrag van de transacties op de rekening. Zo zijn er nog meer zaken waar zij rekening mee houden, maar niet bekent maken.

Belasting technisch is het als volgt: je moet de cryptos wel opgeven op je aangifte, in euro waarde van het vermogen. Dit is inderdaad box3 inkomen, tenzij je bijvoorbeeld crypto hebt gekregen als loon. Zo hebben wij medewerkers die een klein gedeelte tokens hebben mogen krijgen voor hun 24x7 inzet. Dat is dus loon en box1 inkomen. De waarde stijging op dat inkomen is box3 vermogen. Dus als je de token krijgt voor zeg 1 euro, en die token wordt 10 euro, dan is 1 euro inkomen (box1) en 9 euro waardestijging (box3).

Uiteindelijk weet je pas wat er met de transactie gebeurd op het moment dat het op je rekening staat. Indien de bank het normaal vindt, gaat alles gewoon door. Indien de bank dat niet vindt, bevriezen ze de transactie. Dan kun je eventueel nog wel dmv de publieke ledger uitleggen dat er niets aan de hand was. Indien een bitcoin door de mixer heen is gegaan wordt het vanzelf weer raar.

Zelf ben ik geen belasting specialist, maar als je vragen hebt kan ik ze wel even aan mijn vrouw vragen.

Disclaimer: ik werk niet bij een bank, dit zijn mijn persoonlijke ervaringen.
Hugo