Hello World! I am Alex Kundin, CEO of the non-profit organization IntlCoin Inc. I want to hear your opinions on our project, IntlCoin (
https://www.intlcoin.io) – a stable cryptocurrency with its own infrastructure.
It’s no secret that at the moment, most cryptocurrency users are speculators. But we believe that cryptocurrency has a potential that’s incomparable to the Forex. People can use cryptocurrencies for purchases, transfers and savings. What prevents them from doing this now?
1. Unstable rates. No one will buy a burger with Bitcoin because the value of the currency may double tomorrow. You won’t invest all your savings into Ethereum because the crypto-bubble could burst at any moment, and you could lose everything.
2. Bad infrastructure. Ok, so let’s say you really want to buy a cheeseburger with X cryptocurrency. How can you do this? Of course, your favorite snack bar does not accept X cryptocurrency. If it’s particularly trailblazing, maybe it accepts Bitcoins, but if X cryptocurrency is not Bitcoin, you’re almost certainly out of luck. And, ok, maybe X cryptocurrency is Bitcoin – then what? There is no Bitcoin credit card or PayPass terminal. There are thousands of not-always-compatible wallets and it can take ages to confirm a given transaction. The faster the seller wants to serve the buyer, the higher the risks. Therefore, he is forced to wait for minutes, or even hours...
3. Input and output problems. Ok, so you found a pioneering snack bar and your X cryptocurrency is Bitcoin. How do you buy Bitcoins? Let’s say you have a $5 bill in your hands. In order to convert that into Bitcoin, you’ll have to transfer that $5 to a bank account, then to some e-wallet, then to the exchange which (might) convert your money into Bitcoin. You face hours-long waits for each of these steps. And those awful commission charges! Wouldn’t it be nice if you could connect your smartphone with an ATM and instantly have the cryptocurrency in your wallet? Now, imagine something went wrong. The snack bar ran out of cheeseburgers and now all you want is to get rid of your Bitcoins and get your $5 back. Believe me, the food chain of middlemen will be even worse. For a system that prides itself on rising above the middleman, don’t you find this a bit contradictory?
There are more problems, but these, I think, are the major ones. And our project is aimed at solving each of them. You can read our Whitepaper (
https://www.intlcoin.io/#whitepaper) for details, and here’s a summary:
1. IntlCoin is linked to an index of a large number of stable currencies. The majority of these currencies are fiat, but we’ve included some particularly stable cryptocurrencies as well. It’s impossible to mine or forge our cryptocurrency from nothing: every token is backed by units of the index, and purchased with fiat money. The US dollar and the euro account for the largest portions of the index. By virtue of the proportions and diversity of constituent currencies, out index is extremely stable; it could fail only in the event of a global economic collapse (although even in this case, the index would remain propped up by cryptocurrencies). This link to the index and full backing with fiat money are key features of the project. The price of one IntlCoin will vary little with time. It’s a bit like Tether, which is linked to the US dollar, except our cryptocurrency is more reliable. We also surpass Tether in technical and infrastructural aspects; we learned from their mistakes.
A negligible amount of our costs will go toward company capitalization. This is necessary in order to get a good start on our ICO, and to foster subtle but consistent growth of the currency over time, comparable to the way savings accounts gain interest as time passes. This also solves the inflation problem, enabling users to keep their savings in IntlCoins.
2. We will create simple and effective tools that can be utilized by end-users and merchants alike, as well as by other financial sector players. We are developing apps that will make it possible for a buyer to simply touch his or her phone against the merchant’s phone to make a purchase. Our goal is to create something akin to Apple Pay for the cryptocurrency world. But our apps are not only for money transfers. We will develop smart contracts so users can sell digital content securely and automatically, without any middlemen. And real goods can be linked to digital tokens too, with physical marks, for example. Combined, all of these factors will streamline the purchasing process and slash transaction costs. Furthermore, thanks to our Graphene technology, each purchase will take milliseconds.
3. We will work with local financial structures in order to simplify fiat money input and output to the extent possible. It is our goal to make it possible for IntlCoin users to seamlessly utilize ATMs and banks. No need to convert the local currency to the US dollar, then to Bitcoin or Ethereum, then to IntlCoin. Users can just make purchases with their preferred currency on our site to buy INTLCOINs directly. Also, it will be simple to withdraw IntlCoins in fiat money. Of course, we have a ton of work to do to make this real, but we have a team of seasoned financial specialists who have no doubt we can accomplish this.
Now, I will provide you with a few real world examples of how IntlCoin could change the game: In the series of examples below, the subject is Bob, a guy who doesn’t know much about blockchain technology and who lives in country X – a country that struggles with currency volatility and has taken measures to limit the flow of international currencies within its borders.
- Bob wants to buy a book. That book has never been published in country X, and it is sold only by the author himself and several authorized resellers from other countries. Some of them accept IntlCoin and have access to the author’s digital token, enabling them to sell the book via a smart contract that will initiate transparent transfers to the author and reseller accounts directly from the buyer’s funds.
- Bob has already amassed some IntlCoins in his wallet. In fact, he prefers to save with them since country X’s own currency is pretty unstable and country X’s government is unfriendly to other countries’ currencies. Fortunately, Bob can easily buy IntlCoins using his local currency, directly from his bank card. His savings gradually grow, so he no longer fears inflation, but he didn’t purchase IntlCoins as an investment, so he can spend freely from his wallet without worrying about compromising future gains.
- While doing some online shopping, Bob clicks on the “Buy with IntlCoin” button. The Chrome Extension connected to the blockchain receives the reseller’s smart contract address and verifies his or her right to sell. It is already familiar with Bob’s wallet and has access to his private key. Bob is absolutely confident in the Extension’s security since its source code is open and Bob’s programmer buddy, who knows a lot more about this stuff than he does, has assured him it’s impenetrable. The Extension displays a prompt in a separate window, where Bob should enter his password to unlock his private key. The instant that he does, the transaction is complete.
- Thanks to the logic of the smart contract, three actions are performed at once: the reseller gets paid, the author gets his royalty fee and Bob gets a special token proving his ownership of the book. This right is assigned to him permanently and does not depend on the reseller or the platform. The book instantly appears on his iBooks, Google Play Books or on any other e-book reading app, because – so long as the user is ok with this – the token is public with the same level of anonymity as Bitcoin transfer.
- Bob can also opt to pay a little more to register his intention to obtain the paper copy of the book. That sum is recorded on a smart contract. When he goes on a business trip in a country where the book is published, Bob can visit any bookstore that sells it and obtain a paper copy. He doesn’t need to pay or present any documents other than his IntlCoin wallet. His token contains information about the book’s ISBN and his paper copy payment. The shop then attaches a special transaction to the token, blocking a future paper copy claim, and receives its payment from the sum listed on the same smart contract.
While our key features are related to our financial and infrastructural solutions, our technological underpinnings are also worth highlighting. We don’t plan to launch our own blockchain: instead we are designing a cryptocurrency with smart contracts via the Graphene-based blockchain EOS (
https://eos.io). Why Graphene and not the more popular Bitcoin or Ethereum? Graphene uses Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus, which provides fantastic performance: tens and hundreds of thousands, even millions of transactions per seconds, according to tests. No alternatives can rival this performance, and it’s a key feature for mass currency. Also, Ethereum smart contracts are over-low-level, and it can be difficult to create and understand big projects, whereas EOS smart contracts are high level with “batteries included”, and ascertainable to non-specialists, which is crucial when it comes to fostering user confidence. EOS is incredibly promising, and we hope to become one of the first major projects using it, and also to become one of its delegates.
In our name IntlCoin, Intl stands not only for International, but also for Intellect. And I hope by now it’s clear to you why this name felt right. I will be glad to read all your comments, answer any questions and dispel any doubts! Each of your voices is invaluable for us. And I want to thank everyone who has read up to this point.
IntlCoin is currently offering a pre-ICO campaign, and at the moment, anyone can buy our future tokens with a huge discount. We are grateful to each of our investors. We believe this project will have a monumental future, and with this article I hope I have also instilled this faith in you.
You can view the pre-ICO campaign and participate here:
https://awesome.intlcoin.io
