FROM THE REDDIT AMA (Ask Me Anything) with MEL GELDERMAN (Founder)
Q. Please tell us about your past achievements and why do you think that I can trust you with my money?A.Past achievements? I’ve set up an algae biofuel company at a young age and did very well with that. I’ve worked in East-Asia (mostly Taiwan) for several banks and software companies, including DTCO and the CTBC (China trust bank).
I’ve worked on several engineering projects: a food processor in the Netherlands Innotec Systems, and at a Geothermal Powerplant in Taiwan (Yankee) where I was designing an Ethereum powered back end.If you want to learn more about me personally I suggest you listen to this (older) interview:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/podcast-mel-gelderman-venturing-into-the-web3On the subject of trusting money. Please realize that when you use a service like the many exchanges or all other card services in the space you are trusting them entirely with your money. We’re building TokenCard exactly so you don’t have to do any of that. Your contract wallet of choice: Ethereum Foundation, Parity, Consensys or our own optimized Token wallet will work.
Q. Is Poloniex coming anytime soon?A. I don’t quite remember who, but someone from another large project told me from experience that once we launch this would be the nr. 1 question in the slack. They were right; and I think we’d do good to at some point silence this question
Q. Explain that VISA situation.A.We removed mentions of the payment network after some mainstream media posts misunderstood how our platform works and misrepresented our project implying that we are directly partnered with the payment network. Crypto is still a touchy subject with payment networks and so at the recommendation of our Issuing Bank we have removed these mentions.
We are working with a brilliant authorised Issuing Bank in Gibraltar; they are the pioneers of RHA (Remote Host Authorisation) technology and are the only ones our next-gen TokenCard platform could work with. On this front please await a large announcement post early next week.
Again, just to reiterate, nothing material has changed about TokenCard. We just don’t want to take unnecessary risks.
Q. What is your relationship with www.cryptoassets.io? Why this relationship hasn't been publicly mentioned?A.The TokenCard team is very product focussed (myself included) so we reached out to Jake Vartanian (founder of cryptodex.io) to aid in managing the community and biz dev. He was recommended to us by another large project in the Eth space. This is great as it allows the core team to focus on the product for now to get it out the door as soon as possible. For partnerships that we would consider formally announcing we would want it to directly relate to the product itself. Ie. Digix, Singular, Bancor or SwarmCity. That being said Jake and Dwight (and a whole bunch of others!) have received us very well in this small, but thriving, crypto space.
Q. Why Monolith Studio website is redirected to Token Card & there is no dedicated section to your team?A.We created Monolith website when we originally announced TokenCard last year. Since then the TokenCard product has seen a lot of major refinements and improvements. The tokencard.io site gives a much better picture of this. The Monolith Site was not updated accordingly as we’ve been the subject of a competitor spying (both inside and out of crypto).
Right now the monolith website redirects to tokencard.io. It was causing some confusion. Once we’ve finished slimming down the Monolith website it will go back up. That being said I am fully aware that people want to see the team, partnerships and press exposure and we will update the tokencard.io site to include this soon.
Q. Why do you have just 7 connections on LinkedIn?A I’ve never had the need or time to set LinkedIn up properly; I also think LinkedIn could do with some improvement and am looking forward to using decentralized alternatives like Akasha. I do believe I have a hundred or so pending invites though!
Q. What is the connection with Bancor?A.The guys at Bancor are brilliant and our projects have natural synergies. We are looking forward to piloting their platform with TokenCard. They recently did a great presentation at CoinFest that I suggest you watch.
Q. How do you make money exactly?A.There are a whole number of ways for TokenCard the company to also do well. Just to name one or two things we will have in-app token-to-token exchange functionality and be a massive harbour of valuable liquidity. There are also some fantastic additional services we’ll be offering (announcement soon).
Q. Will it be possible to use non-ETH based coins in the future?A.There is a chance… but the the Ethereum Economy is the focal point of our Monolith Master Plan. I’d encourage all non-turing complete platforms to issue meta-token on Ethereum so they naturally work with our system.
Just to clarify why this is: the foundation for TokenCard is that you hold your tokens in a smart contract wallet that you control. Consequently only ETH and Ethereum based tokens are compatible. If other projects choose to create their own network that is their choice but we think the Ethereum Economy is a winning formula, and we’ll stick with that. braces for impact.
Q. Will there be a way to set up recurring payments?A.As long as you have enough ETH or tokens in the contract wallet once the transaction processes and the allowance you have set is sufficient recurring payments will certainly work. If you mean to autopay a bill, then it is not planned in v1, but in the roadmap. Pre-auths are also possible, but require some back-end tricks.
Q. What is the difference between Token Card & Mycelium Card?A.The Mycelium card is focused on BTC and colored coins, while TokenCard is focused on ERC-20 assets. And much more... please read the whitepaper!
Q. When is a vlog update coming out?A.Interesting. I’ll consider it.
Q. How can your card compete with TenX, which charges no fees (they say they are paid from merchant fees), vs Tokencard's 1.5% on top of your purchase?
In your materials I see that you are also charging a 3% foreign exchange fee vs. TenX 0% - this seems unsupportable given that the source of funds is borderless cryptocurrency. Plus, their card is out in beta now while Tokencard will be another 3-4 months.A. I'm not entirely aware of what tenx actually do or what they are trying to improve upon. Maybe you can explain. In general from a fee standpoint I am rather confident we will outperform almost all other crypto debit card competitors. Fees listed on websites are often entirely misleading; for example they might claim to have no 'fee' but then take a very poor exchange rate to exchange your BTC for fiat. I'm confident we will kick ass in this department.
Additionally you can drop your fee to .5% if you use TKN itself.
That being said, we are not trying to compete with them. We are here to build a banking replacement for the general public. The Ethereum Ecosystem is a first step and I wish competitors all the best. I implore them to realize the true market is the rest of the world not this subreddit.
Q. Won't the currencies held by tokenholders end up as a collection of the worst tokens as people seek to hold their best crypto and spend away their worst. I can't see spending ETH when I could get rid of some token I bought as a FOMO mistake but can't bother to sell on an exchange.?A. Perhaps. I personally am not of the opinion it will work like that. And there are likely a few orders of magnitude more users that hold ETH than any particular shitty token. That being said we have standards token projects need to meet before we will work to integrate their token with our backend.
So for example, TenX may act like the "0% commission" currency exchanges you see in every tourist city that are exchanging currency at a 15-20% worse rate than the official exchange rate.Assuming TokenCard does a good job filtering the outright scams, I could see tokenholders doing quite well. They could end up with a collection of tokens acquired at the bottoms of their respective bear markets, when nobody likes them but it's actually the perfect time to buy.
Q. As the face of a new project with a successful capital raise, it seems like you now embody something of a contradiction, which is to say you have the investor relations demands of a post IPO CEO, while actually running a brand new startup. This seems like a difficult balance, one which I get the impression you are trying in earnest to navigate to with transparency and enthusiasm. I know this is all new, but it is more complex than you had imagined? Do you have advice for future project leads on how soon or how late to raise money?A.Great observation. And, I really appreciate you looking at it from the other perspective. Truly.
Indeed it is an interesting scenario. Short of financial reports, people expect the same level of investor interaction as a matured publicly trading company would have. But indeed we are literally still building the core platform.
Support from other projects that have undergone similar stages is heart-warming (Digix, Singular and FirstBlood in particular come to mind).
Indeed I only ask people to give us a little time to collect ourselves and get this thing running. The questions will keep coming in regardless of how much you try to answer them. The only thing that will help is actual progress (MVP).
I must say though, I have learnt a lot. And I think the experience of setting up a project like this is very enriching and is unlike anything I've ever done before; I highly recommend it as long as you have the energy and nerve.
I think we had already foreseen how much energy it would cost to engage with the community. Hence crazy 2 week crowdsale announcement to start timeframe. Doing this for months would have killed me. As long as you have a good product, engage people with transparency and a slight relaxed/satirical attitude you'll be fine.
Q. Realizing that a project like this is extremely dependent on ease of use and consumer satisfaction with the initial release how ready will the MVP be when issued and also how long between MVP and Public release?A.As stated in the whitepaper, we plan to release the MVP by early September. However the UI is literally the contract wallet in your Ethereum browser of choice. Quite cool! The general public release will only follow with the V1 launch towards the end of the year.
Q. Will you be targeting cryptocurrency enthusiasts or the actual public (people who have minimal knowledge of crypto assets) for the adoption of your product?A.Both. Initially we will be working to monopolize the existing market in a very short amount of time with a fantastic next-gen product, before moving on to our real market; the rest of the world. More details will become available post MVP.
Q. Finally, being aware of the possible regulatory hurdles in the US Market (I.e Taxation issues) are you thinking ahead on marketing in less restricted areas?A. Yes cards will not be available in the US or India at first. We advise all our users to seek out the relevant local tax regulations. We’ll give you simple to use tools to help you with that at some point.
Q. TKNs retain their value by the tokens it holds and that are being added for every transaction with the TokenCard. These tokens are freed up when holders burn their tokens. They are unlikely to burn them, unless there is an arbitrage opportunity. This would mean that (potentially) alot of ETH and other tokens are locked up. Will TokenCard stake the locked up ETH when Ethereum switches to PoS?A.Fantastic question. Simple answer: not any time soon as staking takes on certain risks and would involve entrusting some party to make staking decisions on your behalf.
Q. Also, if the return on staking exceeds the return on TKN (i.e. possible future inflow of future revenue due to transactions on the TokenCard) and TokenCard doesn't stake the locked up ETH, won't people just start burning their TKN in order to recieve ETH and stake that?A.Potentially, but these scenarios will only play out in the distant future at which point ETH might not be the largest part of the Asset Pool. And you can always sell your TKN for ETH on the exchange instead. But indeed you are correct, it is possible.
In fiat money systems I can spend without a fee. At least no fee which becomes visible to me, only to the seller. I would not be interested in a card which has an additional 1% fee for me (on top of the usual fees for the seller). Why should anybody want to use that?
A.I know I'm not Mel but inflation in the fiat money system is a 'hidden' fee.In the United Kingdom inflation was 1.2% for the year.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/nov2016 - "The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 1.2%", "The CPI 12-month rate (the amount prices change over a year) between November 2015 and November 2016 stood at 1.2%".
Using crypto = no inflation unless programmed into the coin.
In the fiat system quantitative easing gets you REKT. No such thing in crypto, and if there is, you can tell it to fuck off and use another coin...like Doge.
A.That 1.5% is basically a convienece fee for on the fly cashing you out of a commodity into fiat... Coinbase charges you fees to deposit back into fiat and that takes a week to clear you bank. This clears instantly for roughly the same fee or less than coinbase.
Also consider the opportunity loss. I strongly believe that "investing" is something all people should be doing, not just the elite fringe. TokenCard is working towards a future where money itself is redundant as your assets themselves will become the means of pay. This shift will prove vastly more beneficial and far outweigh any service fees we charged.
Q. When you convert TKN to fiat, is this considered a taxable event? Or is the tax somehow baked into the transaction fee of using the card? If it is a taxable event, it would be a huge inconvenience (on behalf of the user) to have to keep all of this information available for tax purposes and might limit adoption (in tax faggy countries at least).A.Taxes are up to you in each respective country. TKN to fiat is just like any other coin to fiat. There will be tax help built in to Tokencard app down the road.
Q. how much personal information will you have to submit in order to get a card?A. Normal KYC/AML information like any credit/debit card
Q. how can you make sure that exchanges rates are correct when using a tokencard?A.We take the actual exchange rate on the exchange the token is most liquid on.
Q. how do make sure that tokencard is not used for money laundering purposes; if I used it, how do You / I know that I am not being accused for money laundering.A.We perform industry standard KYC and AML. Don't use your TokenCard for illegal activities or fraud. If we detect anything suspicious we will cancel your card. Any detected attempt to game our system will also result in a one way trip to Deactivated TokenCard Land.
Q. will the MVP card look different? Will those that got the MVP card receive some slightly different looking card when release is ready? Or will the 500 largest backers only get the same card, just earlier?A. Fantastic question! This is also something I personally care a lot about, so you're good with us. You won't believe the lengths we have gone to make sure we will have the sickest card design in the industry.
Q. Many of these other "card companies" such as Xapo for example have this great looking card on their website, however the actual card that you get is plain gray, no logo or nothing. Will the tokencard card look good irl? Will it be like the one displayed on the website?A.Yes we know. All will be fine. I will refrain from talking explicitly about any competitors. But part of the reason for this is that Payment Networks require the entity issuing the cards to be a European Entity before allowing them to offer comprehensive designs on the card. Naturally most bitcoin debit card services are not registers in an EU country and thus are not allowed any designs. We are working very closely with the Issuing Bank to make our design kick ass! I promise!
Q. Will the MVP card look different? Will those that got the MVP card receive some slightly different looking card when release is ready? Or will the 500 largest backers only get the same card, just earlier?A.Both. MVP users will not only get a special card they will also receive free upgrade cards as we improve the design over time. (Also, I'm dying to tell you something else on this front.... but that will have to wait to the announcement next week)
