Hi Opurum,

Please join our bounty telegram channel for support questions. https://t.me/icoreward

They are running our bounty campaign for us.

Hi MishaSER sorry for the delayed reply. No it's not necessary. Any bounty questions can be asked here https://t.me/icoreward

Hi appraiser, thanks for your question. Sorry I'm not quite sure what you mean with basic assurances, could you explain?

Thanks!

Hi haggercody,

It's a small snap sale lasting for several days only.

Acorn has some private/institutional investment at a discount already. We want to be fair to our public community and offer a limited opportunity to contribute in a similar way rather than treating the institutions preferentially. We’ve decided to do this at a rate of 70%, but have limited it to a total of ETH 200 only, which won't be a large proportion of the final token numbers.

There will only ever be a discount during the pre-sale, whose cap, in turn, is also not a substantial number of the final token supply. These discounts compensate for the increased risk of early contributions and the fact there are no refunds for pre-sale participants.

Hope that explains it a bit, let me know if you have any other concerns!


For others that are interested in participating in this snap sale, please join our telegram community (see our pinned post) for more information https://t.me/joinchat/HI_eCBG0fCRCl1ja-d5JDg

Well, we're running an ICO to fund our own platform, but this crowdfunding platform itself will be more like Kickstarter/Indiegogo, in the sense that our target projects are traditional, not necessarily tech-related projects that do not need their own digital coin or run an ICO by themselves. Hope that makes sense 

Thanks for answering maurobiasolo.

Yes, we're incorporated in Gibraltar, for the reasons listed 2 posts above =)

Thanks for the positive feedback maurobiasolo. Let me know if you have any more questions!



Sure. The first reason is the token allows people to use our platforms, which include the crowdfunding hub, a secondary goods & services marketplace, a point-of-sale payments app and also campaign support services (for project founders)

Of course, on the other hand, we expect the main reason for most tokenholders will be token value appreciation, which we hope will be robust thanks to our Token Growth & Stability Mechanisms mentioned above or in the whitepaper/one-pager. Feel free to ask me any quesitions about it though!





For the legal and banking clarity that Gibraltar can provide.

It is one of the few jurisdictions in the world currently where there are clear rules and where the financial regulator, with help from our Gibraltar legal advisors, is willing to work with ICOs to obtain official confirmation that our token is not an investment security and therefore fully legal to run. This means don't have to worry that we will be prosecuted afterwards for selling unregistered investment products or that our funds are frozen afterwards.
- we have full banking services at a private bank there, ensuring that we can actually deposit our money in a bank account and use it, after we convert the ether into fiat currency.

Also, in the future, they are working on crowdfunding legislation that we hope we can fit into, so that we can base our crowdfunding platform there and operate with legal clarity for that too.

Hope that makes sense!

Let me know if you have more questions. Thanks and happy new year!

Hi maurobiasolo,

We're speaking to several startup accelerators & incubators in both developed and developing countries. (Organisations that take startups under their wing and provide investment, resources and mentorship. Usually in return for some equity).

With developed and emerging markets, I mean, among others, Ghana, Kenya, Romaina, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Brazil, UK, Germany.

Through this, we hope to:
- gain access to the organisations' networks of ventures and entrepreneurs, to see whether any of their projects would like to crowdfund on our platform
- learn from actual founders and organisations the specific issues that startups face in their respective regions and cultures, both in terms of funding but also just in general. And hopefully helping them to solve some of these with our services
- gain insights on how to design our UI/UX, keeping in mind most users in these countries speak a language other than english and may only be using a mobile phone instead of a computer
- Providing localised Acorn support services (one of our features that gives project founders campaign assistance) and a local presence in the respective countries, both as customer support and also for marketing

Appreciate your questions maurobiasolo, please don't hesitate to add more!



Thanks for the positive comments OneUnderBridge!

We wish we could run the ICO sooner as well, however the industry has changed a lot from the days where all it required was a whitepaper and a website, so we still have lots of work to get everything ready before we can run the ICO  . The Pre-Sale will start on 29 Jan and the main ICO is tentatively scheduled for March 2018.

Just to clarify, we do have some private contributors for the Pre-Sale, however the Main ICO is also open to everyone. If you're interested participating in the pre-sale, please sign up to our whitelist here https://aco.ai or join our telegram group https://t.me/joinchat/HI_eCBG0fCRCl1ja-d5JDg




That's a great point maurobiasolo. Yes, actually we do think it's still an issue, getting normal fiat currency into crypto and vice versa. However, 2017 has been an amazing year for crypto and the more mainstream it gets in the coming 2-3 years, the easier this process will become.






I copied this from another question earlier:

There will be other competitors who are:
- the traditional crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo
- blockchain based crowdfunding platforms, like fundyourselfnow and kickico. KickICO is a bit different, as they also focus on running ICOs instead of just traditional non-ICO crowdfunding campaigns.

Here's why we're better (taken from our whitepaper)
- We want to make crowdfunding free - Other platforms charge between 4% to 10% in fees.
- The crowdfunding market is still in its infancy, with a potential to reach anything from USD 90B to 1 trillion per year by 2025 (World Bank, 2013; MyPrivateBanking, 2015). We’ll allow virtually all legal projects to list on our platform irrespective of where the project originates from and irrespective of each Founders’ project goal. Project types could include but are not limited to commercial, creative, research, charity and personal causes. -
- We wish to expand project exposure in new markets where previous access and competition are low, such as emerging markets <-- there are HUGE untapped markets for crowdfunding
- Goods from successful projects can automatically be listed and sold on the Acorn Marketplace with no fees for campaign founders.
- Subject to the success of our ICO, we have designed Token Growth & Stability Mechanisms intended to increase the value of ACO starting after token distribution. These mechanisms include:
a. The Project Incentive Fund will seek to provide generous starting bonuses to incentivize early adopters and reward recruitment of founders, backers and token users into our ecosystem. This can be a double accelerator, not only will the platform be free but it would also reward those generating early traction with incredibly generous incentives. It’s a mechanism to employ a huge marketing budget in an area where it should conceivably allow rapid growth for the platform and token.
b. Our Liquidity Reserve is intended to mitigate ACO price fluctuations related to large campaign payouts.
c. Subject to obtaining the required license or establishing a relationship with an existing licensed insurer, we intend for backers to have the option of buying Project Backer Insurance. For an additional fee, they could insure themselves up to the full value of their commitment against the possibility of project failure. We hope this will lower some of the objections to pledging funds.
d. Affiliate Rewards system: If implemented, this would provide rewards for anyone who can successfully recruit new users to participate in our platforms and therefore use ACO and our ecosystem
e. Frictionless ACO Purchases: We intend to connect with the APIs of exchanges and popular wallets to integrate them into our platform, creating a frictionless transaction environment.
f. Partnerships: We intend to actively explore partnerships with campaigns created on Acorn Hub as well as 3rd party platforms to integrate ACO and increase its utility

All of the above features and systems are intended to generate demand for the ACO token in the face of a permanently fixed supply.


tl;dr version
- free-to-use platform
- open to any legal project and any country
- fixed supply token --> more users mean higher token value
- project incentive fund: proportion of the ICO will be spent on incentivising early adoption of our platforms, meaning early growth of token demand
- tokenomics: crowdfunding on Acorn Hub; post-campaign sales of good/services on Acorn Marketplace; purchase secondary services on Acorn Support; point-of-sale transactions in local communities using Acorn Local. All use ACO token for transactions, meaning a continuous and circular flow of our token and a lot of utility



Hope that answers your question? Let me know if there are more!



Thanks for the question Marahunter. Sorry we won't have that kind of feature. Our platform is designed for traditional crowdfunding projects (much like those on Indiegogo or Kickstarter) instead of a platform that runs other ICOs.

We love the idea of incentives and have plenty for new users to obtain tokens and enter our ecosystem (what we call "Token Growth and Stability Mechanisms in our whitepaper/one-pager), however there won't be direct profit-sharing with tokenholders or anything along those lines.

Hope that answers your question? Thanks!

Hi Alzav, sorry for missing this question:
The bounty will last until the end of the ICO, which tentatively means until late March.



Hi maximing
It's a fixed supply token, meaning there will be no new tokens created, as long as we reach our ICO funding target. Currently, we've set it as 1 ETH = 250 ACO, however that was when Eth was still $375. We will adjust the exchange rate to better fit our USD funding targets before the ICO starts. You may get more summarised information on our one-pager on our website https://aco.ai. One pager

The bounty program has been allocated 150,000 tokens



Thanks cjmoles, absolutely agree with you! 

The exchange rate will be adjusted just before the ICO starts, as these rates were decided when ETH was $375. The Pre-Sale will always be at a 50% discount though, we will adjust it accordingly and keep the ratios the same. The main aim is to ensure we achieve our USD funding targets. Hop that answers your question? 



I suppose you mean if we don't reach the minimum funding target? In that case, we will just try again with another ICO in mid to late 2018. We have the necessary funding (we'll tighten our belts) and will have more time to grow awareness and continue MVP development. If we don't reach it this time, we are confident we'll definitely reach it on the second try, after we have released our MVP and have a working product, real project pipeline, real users and revenues. For what it's worth though, we're at a stage now where we're all quite sure we can at least raise the minimum funding level now =)

Yes, no refunds for the Pre-Sale phase is risky. However, I hope we can demonstrate with our team and our performance so far that this is a serious venture and, even if the first ICO fails, we will proceed to a second ICO. The token will be exchangeable via the Bancor network in the meantime and will still count towards a second ICO should there be this need.

To your second question: Yes we are in touch with private investors and have some already. However it's not enough to fill the Pre-Sale cap (~USD 5M) and that's fine, as we want to give the same discount opportunities to public ICO participants.

Thanks oioioi!

Thanks for the support everyone! We really appreciate it


Yes, it is quite a big bonus. First of all, to clarify, the reason we have a larger bonus is
1. There are no refunds for pre-sale investors as these funds will be going directly towards continuing development of our MVP and doing marketing for the Main ICO. As such, there is a larger risk when buying the Pre-Sale and we want the price to reflect that.
2. We do need that funding early on to ensure the success of the Main ICO. Again, it's to make it more attractive.

That said, we have considered it carefully and don't think it poses a critical issue for token value, especially in the longer term:

1. In the short term, to be frank, we expect there will be dumping by initial ICO participants. However, this is something quite common among many ICOs, whether they have a large pre-sale bonus or not, and is not something in our immediate control.

2. We expect the MVP to be ready by late Q2/early Q3
- We maintain active outreach with the community and demonstrate active development occurring to show people that the coin isn't dead, even though the price may have taken a dip
- Release our platform only a few months after the ICO, giving the token real utility and recruiting actual users into the token ecosystem (and thus generating demand for it)

3. The pre-sale token cap of 7m ACO is not a huge percentage of the overall pool
- Max supply is 90m ACO, if we reach the hard cap
- If we just reach our standard funding goal, there will be ~45m+ ACO)
- The bounty program has been allocated 150k ACO

4. We have designed token growth & stability mechanisms which should further limit the impact of dumping and ensure adoption and growth of users entering the token ecosystem at an early stage
- more info on this can be found in our one-pager and whitepaper

In short, yes we expect there will be some dumping and there's nothing we can do to prevent it completely, however I do think the way we've designed it and plan to move forward with Acorn's platforms and mechanisms a short time after the ICO completes can minimise the impact of dumping and make sure it only lasts a short time.

Hope that answers your question?

Sorry, we're not really looking for Italian. Appreicate you offer though

Hi peloso, please PM me your email address and I can take you off our mailing list

Thanks a lot for the support everyone. We're getting some really good social traction!! To stay updated with our announcements and what we're doing, I suggest you join our telegram channel https://t.me/joinchat/HI_eCBG0fCRCl1ja-d5JDg

Thanks everyone!

Sorry, we don't need Italian for now. Thank you for offering

Thanks 

"open to any legal project and any country"

We have two main requirements for project approval:
1. Projects that are legal according to the laws of Gibraltar (the location of our company) and the EU
2. Projects that are ethical and do not cause direct harm. I understand this is possibly a contentious subject, but we will have an ethics board and community voting for projects that are legal, but possibly questionable from an ethics point of view.

We don't want to judge based on subjective criteria such as their category (whether it's a commercial idea or a community project or a charitable project or science/research), how innovative or creative the project is, the perceived business viability, level of pre-existing social traction, whether you have a prototype already.

We want to open up our platform to projects from all categories and also all stages in their life cycle, whether it's just a cool idea, a meaningful socially beneficial project, a research project or a validated product/service with existing customers.

Let the community decide with their wallets which project is worthy of support and which should be left to fail . Who are we, as a small company, to decide which projects can proceed or not and which have the potential to change the world?


With any country, we mean all countries unless they are on a US sanctions list (i.e. North Korean, Iran, etc)


Hope that answers the question? Keep 'em coming, happy to discuss.

Also, we'd love for you to join our Telegram channel too if you're interested https://t.me/joinchat/HI_eCBG0fCRCl1ja-d5JDg

Thanks for your questions!

Good question, thanks.

There will be other competitors who are:
- the traditional crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo
- blockchain based crowdfunding platforms, like fundyourselfnow and kickico. KickICO is a bit different, as they also focus on running ICOs instead of just traditional non-ICO crowdfunding campaigns.

Here's why we're better (taken from our whitepaper)
- We want to make crowdfunding free - Other platforms charge between 4% to 10% in fees.
- The crowdfunding market is still in its infancy, with a potential to reach anything from USD 90B to 1 trillion per year by 2025 (World Bank, 2013; MyPrivateBanking, 2015). We’ll allow virtually all legal projects to list on our platform irrespective of where the project originates from and irrespective of each Founders’ project goal. Project types could include but are not limited to commercial, creative, research, charity and personal causes. -
- We wish to expand project exposure in new markets where previous access and competition are low, such as emerging markets <-- there are HUGE untapped markets for crowdfunding
- Goods from successful projects can automatically be listed and sold on the Acorn Marketplace with no fees for campaign founders.
- Subject to the success of our ICO, we have designed Token Growth & Stability Mechanisms intended to increase the value of ACO starting after token distribution. These mechanisms include:
a. The Project Incentive Fund will seek to provide generous starting bonuses to incentivize early adopters and reward recruitment of founders, backers and token users into our ecosystem. This can be a double accelerator, not only will the platform be free but it would also reward those generating early traction with incredibly generous incentives. It’s a mechanism to employ a huge marketing budget in an area where it should conceivably allow rapid growth for the platform and token.
b. Our Liquidity Reserve is intended to mitigate ACO price fluctuations related to large campaign payouts.
c. Subject to obtaining the required license or establishing a relationship with an existing licensed insurer, we intend for backers to have the option of buying Project Backer Insurance. For an additional fee, they could insure themselves up to the full value of their commitment against the possibility of project failure. We hope this will lower some of the objections to pledging funds.
d. Affiliate Rewards system: If implemented, this would provide rewards for anyone who can successfully recruit new users to participate in our platforms and therefore use ACO and our ecosystem
e. Frictionless ACO Purchases: We intend to connect with the APIs of exchanges and popular wallets to integrate them into our platform, creating a frictionless transaction environment.
f. Partnerships: We intend to actively explore partnerships with campaigns created on Acorn Hub as well as 3rd party platforms to integrate ACO and increase its utility

All of the above features and systems are intended to generate demand for the ACO token in the face of a permanently fixed supply.


tl;dr version
- free-to-use platform
- open to any legal project and any country
- fixed supply token --> more users mean higher token value
- project incentive fund: proportion of the ICO will be spent on incentivising early adoption of our platforms, meaning early growth of token demand
- tokenomics: crowdfunding on Acorn Hub; post-campaign sales of good/services on Acorn Marketplace; purchase secondary services on Acorn Support; point-of-sale transactions in local communities using Acorn Local. All use ACO token for transactions, meaning a continuous and circular flow of our token and a lot of utility



Hope that answers your question? Let me know if there are more!

Thanks for the offer. We will consider a Hindi translation and PM you.


Thanks for the support Elgrown!

Thanks for your offer Nokaskill and imyashir. We will PM you.