[ANN] Lykke - Trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, FX and Digital Assets

[josegines]

@LykkeX, yesterday I bought some Lykke with a card, all pretty fast, without checking my identity or residence.

I have a question, at what point should I check my identity and residence?

[roguetrader]

Do you only answer questions that are not to be found in the public documents? Knowing this criteria would be very welcome for investors, so they do not ask these questions in this forum.

... I don't think we have an obligation to answer to impolite requests. ...

i read this entire thread and i didn't see a single impolite question, there are some tough ones but not impolite. If you trying to attract investors you should give proper care to all questions post in this forum which is one of the main tools (if not the most important) for start-ups in ICO situation. There are a lot of unanswered questions and other incomplete ones. Just some examples :

unanswered :
1.1) I am sorry but i have to disagree, dilution is negative for minority shareholders always. But by your answer i assume there will be Coin increase in the future. Is there a specific policy for it ?

3.2) I looked at all the documentation but didn't see any cash-flow projections that explain the 0.05 price, can you be more specific ?

from titan20 -- I don't understand. Are you just a volunteer that is trying to do his/her best or are you part of the Lykke team that is trying to attract investors?

Incomplete:
Yes, there is one dedicated expert with risk-management background. Who is he ? What is his background ?

I really like the concept of your idea, as i financial market professional i see all the huge potential of it, but right now i am under the impression that you don't have the expertise to run a project of this size because the way you are answering the questions give the impression that you are hiding a lot of information or simple don't know the answer.
There 's a gigantic difference between running a FX Trading platform from a complete service exchange, and from your answers i am under the impression that you don't realize this difference.
It's a pity the potential is really there, but right now i am out. Feel free to reach me if you want to prove me wrong, as i said i have from 5 to 20 BTC to invest.
 

[LykkeX]

There are a lot of unanswered questions and other incomplete ones.
Just some examples :

unanswered :
1.1) I am sorry but i have to disagree, dilution is negative for minority shareholders always. But by your answer i assume there will be Coin increase in the future. Is there a specific policy for it ?

Capital stock increase is not always negative. If you want to argue about corporate accounting we can do that, but which company has the same level of transparency and distributed ownership? No corporation that exists yet. Some DAC's have been tried, but overall they have not been success. Lykke is doing something new. Yes, there is a policy and the company is managed accordingly. If the people in the community disagree with policies the company will react. We are trying to build the project and the community, which requires constructive feedback.

Please keep it professional here. Yes, all polite questions will be answered in due course.

[LykkeX]

@LykkeX, yesterday I bought some Lykke with a card, all pretty fast, without checking my identity or residence.

I have a question, at what point should I check my identity and residence?

Maybe your identity is connected via the credit-card? Will check on it - thanks! Usually people deliver proof of identity at the beginning.

[josegines]

@LykkeX, yesterday I bought some Lykke with a card, all pretty fast, without checking my identity or residence.

I have a question, at what point should I check my identity and residence?

Maybe your identity is connected via the credit-card? Will check on it - thanks! Usually people deliver proof of identity at the beginning.

and if I buy with Bitcoin? I need to send my residence and identity documents or just send the necessary BTC?

[tempus]

I had the same questions like some others and that's why I contacted the team and even had a conversation on phone with Richard Olsen, the CEO of Lykke. He is a very kind man and explained many aspects of this projects. And it's indeed different but also very fascinating and a great chance in my opinion.

I would like to give something like an overview how I understand it right now:

The vision behind

Maybe it can be described as "decentralize everything". In other blockchain-projects that is often a headline as well, but with focus on the technical side - Blockchain. In Lykke it's also meant regarding the persons who contribute. Of course, there is a core team of professionals with expertise in many different areas, which can be seen here:

https://lykke.com/leadership.php

...and who takes a look at the fundamentals (technical development, also business-side) will find out that they've already delivered a lot what is just a promise in other projects.

Regarding public relations it's different to other projects. But the goal is to get more and more people involved who understand Lykke as project more as a dynamic movement. While other projects have a marketing strategy, Lykke starts to go step by step into the public with people who are not necessarily marketing-professionals but Contributors who understand the vision behind and explain it in their own way and autonomous.

Richard Olsen told me, that he would like to see a dynamic which will show what Lykke is about step by step and over time without pressure and without dominant leadership regarding it's external representation. He is aware that this can't happen with "one hit", but convinced that it will happen over time - a dynamic process, maybe even faster than one may assume.

I personally already recognized some hints on that approach because I found this very fascinating speech of him when I started to do some research about Lykke:

The power of the small world phenomenon | Richard Olsen | TEDxZurich
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKzjwV_N68I




Financial Side - ICO - Investor perspective

I personally was surprised to see a project like this with fundamentals like Lykke already has it doing an ICO, but without much PR and marketing. The reason is: Lykke wants to build a base, also on Investor side, but they are not focused on selling the ICO now. It's more a way to make first steps into the public and getting more people involved.

I've also asked him if Lykke will issue new LKK for other funding rounds and the answer is yes. Lykke will act as company and the way they do this is usual for companies. Future money they'll raise will increase the value of Lykke so it's not necessarily the case that the price would go down because of that. And since previous Investors are in line with the vision of Lykke it also has not to be much of a concern that there will be "profit-dumping".

With other words, of course this is a risk but it's also a chance, because who does some deeper research will recognize that they are ahead regarding the fundamentals and that is very well thought out and as far as I can say: They have an already working (semi-) decentralized exchange. The tech is already building trust if more and more people will use it.


And I personally believe that's the key-point. While I believed, priority would be selling the ICO the real priority seems to be more to get people involved and to use what they already offer and will offer in future and that will be a lot. Richard Olsen was very open about many things that will come and I would be even allowed to write about it. But, to be honest: That were too much information in too little time, so I'm not able to write it down in a proper way. But...


- It was about the technical side and obviously they are moving fast on that front
- The same regarding business-side

(He also told me some things about economic principles but I'm not even close to understand it. A little bit as if Einstein would explain me physics.)  


In general the public side can be seen as a translation of principles Crypto is about. Of course, Lykke is a very professional company but with a clear focus on fairness and building up trust over time. And like they didn't rush out the tech they are not in hurry to do a marketing campaign to build an Image of Lykke out of nothing in a short time. It will be more like bringing proof out of itself. And my personal opinion is that I have no doubt that the people behind this can be trusted. With other words: Typical concerns everybody in Crypto has, whenever it's about the question "to buy or not to buy" into a new project may play a role for this ICO but I would be surprised if that will be the case for long.


Who has the question: Buying into this or not? My advice is doing research and downloading their App and try it out: https://lykke.com/lykkewallet/

I personally believe that what they are building will be a key-point and like already said: It seems that they are far ahead when it comes to building a decentralized asset-exchange. And since it's already high quality I have not that much doubt that it will find an increasing number of users.

[tempus]

@LykkeX, yesterday I bought some Lykke with a card, all pretty fast, without checking my identity or residence.

I have a question, at what point should I check my identity and residence?

Maybe your identity is connected via the credit-card? Will check on it - thanks! Usually people deliver proof of identity at the beginning.

and if I buy with Bitcoin? I need to send my residence and identity documents or just send the necessary BTC?

With Bitcoin it's not needed to give further infos. Like a usual wallet/exchange.

[roguetrader]

There are a lot of unanswered questions and other incomplete ones.
Just some examples :

unanswered :
1.1) I am sorry but i have to disagree, dilution is negative for minority shareholders always. But by your answer i assume there will be Coin increase in the future. Is there a specific policy for it ?

Capital stock increase is not always negative. If you want to argue about corporate accounting we can do that, but which company has the same level of transparency and distributed ownership? No corporation that exists yet. Some DAC's have been tried, but overall they have not been success. Lykke is doing something new. Yes, there is a policy and the company is managed accordingly. If the people in the community disagree with policies the company will react. We are trying to build the project and the community, which requires constructive feedback.

Please keep it professional here. Yes, all polite questions will be answered in due course.

Ok you have a point. I didn't made myself clear, you are correct, capital stock increase and the correspondent dilution is not always negative when used with diligence and on behalf of every investor interest which in my experience is hardly the case, but when not properly used it can simple hurt the small investors, and in worst case scenarios they can be diluted out  from a company without having the tools to fight against it.
Please don't take my questions personally, i imagine you will want in the future to go institutional with your platform, and this type of questions will be recurrent on Due Diligence process.
 

[eye4bd]

Win 50 CHF Every Day During the Lykke Crowdsale

https://lykke.com/city/blog/2016-09-13/twitter_contest

Who was yesterday's winner?

Hi
I'm little a bit to answer. But  for clarification_ it was me! I won that day. And after sending my lykke sign-in e-mail the coin arrived almost instantly in my wallet.
Still feeling bad not able to hold. I was purchased btc from lykke built in exchange and cashing them out. The total journey was super simple.

Thanks!

[Johnny00]

What is the point in owning these coins? you aren't an investor of Lykke. what are the coins really used for?

[tempus]

What is the point in owning these coins? you aren't an investor of Lykke. what are the coins really used for?

I had the same questions and others as well and like already stated in my previous post I had contact to Richard Olsen. He allowed me to quote him in this thread. I'll quote the most important parts of his mail. You'll find the answer to your question in the last lines:



Richard Olsen - CEO of Lykke:


"The wholle Bitcoin Movement is inspired by the vision to replace human decision making with software algorithms. Algorithms are better, because the cannot be manipulated.

Nick Szabo gave an excellent talk at our Zurich event, where he explained his long-term vision of mapping the subtelty of the legal system that has evolved over thousands of years into software code. Nick highlighted the diffuculty of this task - a good legal system is highly refined and we cannot easily create software code that has all the subtelty of our legal system. The short comings were clearly visible in the DAO event.

I am approaching the issue in the following way:

Lykke follows a really big vision - I want to disrupt financial markets and create a fair playing field accessible for everyone. This is much more than just a matching engine with a user interface and an interface to blockchain - we talk about creating legal entities around the world, complex financial engineering, building a brand, hiring people, all the pushbacks from incumbents that want to make our lives difficult...a long list.

We have to kick off big projects that are essential for the project to fly - I will highlight just two projects: we need to build a open access publication platform for news stories in different channels...a transparent financial market only works in context of independent high quality reporting. Today, the news industry is highly monopolized and starved from independent reporting - I plan to create an open access publication platform, where prizes are available for the best contribution of the past hour, past 6 hours, past 24 hours, past 1 week, past month, past quarter, past year - the prize cascades have a dual function - they reward the author and his editor...it is easy to win an hour prize...more difficult to win a whole cascade. The prizes are good ranking tool of the quality of reports and incentivize the contributors. We plan to create many different news channels. I want to build a truly independent news reporting platform with Economist-like channels, a long list.... To evaluate companies and other assets with all the financial instruments - in depth reporting is essential.

Another big project is a bigdata information system - we live in the world of 'digital data', but there is no global informaiton system with real time forecasts for all the digital data that is being collected. In weather forecasting this is standard - big data models collect the meteorological data and then generate detailed weather forecasts around the world. The same has to happen with all the digital data that society is collecting. I dream of a Wikipedia for big data - the real time information system then feeds the risk management system, which are then used to price financial instruments, etc. Today, there does not exist a big data information system - central bankers continue to rely on ad hoc collected data, excel spread sheets, etc.

Sorry to say - it is just crazy how the financial world today functions. I want to clean up the mess and introduce highest quality standards at all levels. I have a very clear vision of how I can make all this happen...it is an exciting journey, but much more complex than a simple software code that tells us, if this happens, then do this....we are in a hugely multi-dimensional space.

Any investor, who buys Lykke coins runs a big risk - he depends on the judgement of the Lykke team, its core investors, my own capabilities...to increase the likelihood of success I am building Lykke to be extremely fragile - all our software is open source, if people are not happy with what we are doing, they can just copy the code and start a competing company that does better work. There are not sharholder agreements that prevent people from selling...this is good, because anyone can sell when he wants, i.e. voting with his feet...this sends an immediate signal to everyone and forces Lykke to regroup...

In building Lykke I am inspired by biology - I try to implement subtle mechanisms that bring Lykke back into its dynamic equilibrium.

There is another question: strictly speaking the Lykke coins are an entitlement to Lykke shares - they are a digital representation of Lykke shares. To become a full shareholder, the owner has to reveal his name to Lykke - this is a legal requirement from Swiss law. It is more efficient to just deal with colored coins, because then we can take advantage of the full digital efficiency. We will pay dividends, etc. to Lykke coin holders."

[tempus]

This is also something that can give an impression about the potential of this project:







And just btw:

Would be good if this Account would get more followers and retweets: https://twitter.com/LykkeCity

[Geenstijl]

Do we already know the price that the visionary supports had to pay for their coins less than a month ago before the ICO started? Is there a way this can be checked?

[tempus]

Do we already know the price that the visionary supports had to pay for their coins less than a month ago before the ICO started? Is there a way this can be checked?

Yes. It also was asked in their channel and Sergey Ivliev replied:

"In the range of 0.025-0.05 CHF"

[Johnny00]

Thanks tempus. If it's open sourced won't some competing company just come in and copy and replicate?

[Johnny00]

Is it mandatory to update personal information passport and utility bill?

[durrrrdwan]

"LKK research and contribution program (ended)
 
A total of 100,000 LKK (circa 1,000 CHF) has been awarded to contributions, i.e. posing interesting questions or contributing content to the wiki, forum posts, etc. "

your lkk=0.01 chf, but now you sell with 0.05 chf?  Ha, good selling to us, instant 5X profit. 

[durrrrdwan]

The price of the March funding round was 0.015 CHF. So ICO price is 3x higher than the earliest funding rounds, but this also reflects the progress of the company which leads to higher demand. I'll see what we disclose about August round, but ICO price is certainly not 5x from that (price was significantly higher than March price). I'll let the COO answer any other question on Tuesday about this matter.

That(March funding round) was not open to public? Now the token is too expensive. I am still deciding. Well, in other projects, we can see crowdsale is the pre-seed funding. But your ico is post-seed funding, a little difference

[tempus]

Thanks tempus. If it's open sourced won't some competing company just come in and copy and replicate?

That may be a theoretical scenario because it is possible. But in a project like Lykke (and some others as well) it's never just about the code. It's about everything.


Just for example, if we focus on expertise you can take a look at the team here: https://lykke.com/leadership.php

If you do some research about the team it becomes even more interesting. There are tons of infos about Richard Olson, about his financial data-treasury, his data-science and Oanda of course, he is called "Innovator" in some german articles I've read and so on.

Or Sergey Ivliev for example:

Lykke cofounder Sergey Ivliev is Named Best Risk Manager in Russia and CIS
https://lykke.com/city/blog/2016-06-13/lykke_cofounder_sergey_ivliev_named_best_risk_manager_in_russia_and_cis

Btw, a very interesting interview of him about Lykke - a good summary to get an overview:

MR. IVLIEV, LYKKE: “THOSE WHO WANT TO WIN SHOULD BE GRABBING THE OPPORTUNITIES BLOCKCHAIN OFFERS”
https://worldcore.eu/blog/mr-ivliev-lykke-want-win-grabbing-opportunities-blockchain-offers/



But also all the other names. In fact that was the first aspect that really impressed me: The Core-team behind this project.


And regarding the risk of copying code: Another project could try that, but that wouldn't mean much if they don't have the expertise to run something like that. And there are even more points, like connections and so on. Under the line I don't believe that will be a risk. Or, maybe more precise: It could be a risk if they wouldn't move forward. If they would all go on holiday for some months - yep, in that case the risk would maybe increase. ;-)


But one look on their roadmap - no holidays any time soon:

 
 Margin trading (Q4 2016)
 Regulated retail FX (Q4 2016)
 Offchain settlement scalable to 100’000+ transactions per second (Q4 2016)
 Ethereum support: multisig wallets, interblockchain atomic swaps (Q1 2017)
 Payment system provider (Q2 2017)
 Regulated institutional FX (Q3 2017)
 Fixed income products, commodities (Q3 2017)
 1 billion USD average daily volume (Q4 2017)

[tempus]

The price of the March funding round was 0.015 CHF. So ICO price is 3x higher than the earliest funding rounds, but this also reflects the progress of the company which leads to higher demand. I'll see what we disclose about August round, but ICO price is certainly not 5x from that (price was significantly higher than March price). I'll let the COO answer any other question on Tuesday about this matter.

That(March funding round) was not open to public? Now the token is too expensive. I am still deciding. Well, in other projects, we can see crowdsale is the pre-seed funding. But your ico is post-seed funding, a little difference

Exactly that were my initial concerns. But, what is also relevant:

1) Since that time there was a lot of progress. If we imagine a project on Poloniex that started at "level 1" (not much, if anything, to show) at price X,  and pushes something out like the Lykke-team did in the last months: The price would have gone x10. It's no exaggeration because I've seen that in Factom. And that is just one example.  

2) Usually early Investors are true believers/supporters and not just in for a quick profit. This is no shitcoin that was started with some nice design and nothing more but a pump group behind.


What I believe will be the keypoint: Increasing number of users. That's something I thought about a lot since I've learned more about this. And it's never easy to get traction for a new project. But exactly regarding that I expect them to be very good. If we compare:

Would a usual person without relation to Crypto make an account on a crypto-exchange? Nearly nobody. It's very complex for the average person. But Lykke makes it easy. And in future it won't be "just" about the App.

Since I thought about that I'm pretty much convinced, because Lykke can be an open door and a bridge between the worlds at the same time. And that is pure potential.


*************

And btw: There was another concern I had. In relation to it's potential there is a lack of attention in my opinion. But after talking with Richard Olsen it became clear: They've not even started yet. They do this step by step but fast. This ICO is more meant as a first step into the public and I can't say anything about the price after it, because I agree that it may be unpredictable.

But: It's also possible that if the number of users increase just because of their abilities to build a great product (and there is already proof that they are able to do that) and if they start a marketing campaign - and I have no doubt that a project like this also has the ability to push that button - it could very well be that this ICO is an opportunity, especially because there is not that much attention right now.

In Factom it was the same. Very low attention and those who were invested started to complain and just a little later there were the first big news and the price never came back.