Note: There have been a lot of token crowdsales lately that raised tens or hundreds of millions of dollars with little more than an alpha.
We’re aiming to help start the first wave of responsible crowdsales, with a live & revenue-generating product that has thousands of users signed up in the few months since our public launch in April 2017.
HelloGold - Introduction
During the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 90s, Robin Lee (CEO of HelloGold) saw first-hand how “bad things can happen to good people” as domestic currencies were hit by extreme devaluation. People who had worked hard woke up to find the value of their savings slashed overnight, with a devastating impact on how they could provide for their families. The challenges of saving and protecting wealth today are no less daunting. Even in ‘normal’ times, cash savers have their wealth eroded via inflation.
Those saving in gold are protected from fiat currency devaluation; those who hold gold over longer periods can make large profits, especially in local currencies declining against USD (in which gold is denominated globally). But only the wealthier and more sophisticated savers can buy gold in an affordable way, due to high mark-ups. The unfairness of the economics impacts those least able to fend for themselves.
So HelloGold wants to democratise an invaluable savings product for the person in the street by digitising physical gold to a transaction size that is affordable to them.To do this, Hellogold has built an app that allows millions of underserved, low-medium income people from emerging countries to conveniently save in gold instead of their unstable domestic currency, by drastically reducing mark-up prices.
Core Product
Founded in 2015, we have received traditional funding thus far. And after our public launch in April 2017, we’ve already got over 2000 registered users in Malaysia, and have collaborated with Aeon Credit Services (which gives us the potential to reach over 100mil people across Asia). We now plan to expand into other ASEAN countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, plus China.
With the potential of reaching millions of customers, HelloGold is now working on integrating blockchain tech and Ethereum smart contracts into its backend, which will improve the product’s security and transparency while advancing the blockchain industry, with millions of (non-crypto) people using blockchain.
Current HelloGold System
HelloGold Incorporating Blockchain
Ultimately, Hellogold could be kickstarting the implementation of blockchain tech into hundreds of thousands of applications that are built for the everyday (non-crypto) people. In the future, this will provide mass market HG customers with a ‘soft’ entry into the crypto space by allowing them to convert gold held with HG into GBT at no cost.
As a supporter, what’s in it for me?
If you've not noticed by now, most of you guys don't fit the HelloGold core product’s target audience. That's because the app is not built for the crypto-niche. It's built for low to medium income people from emerging countries. This is one of the first crowdsales where you're investing in a project that you wouldn't personally plan to be a main user of.
Aside from its core goal, HelloGold will create a stable coin backed by the existing gold operations called GBT (Gold Backed Tokens). Each GBT is backed by 1 gram of 99.99% investment grade gold.
In order for HelloGold to expand into more markets and integrate blockchain tech, HelloGold Foundation (HGF) will raise funds via a crowdsale. Subject to a successful fundraise via crowdsale, it is envisaged that HGF will give HelloGold funds by way of grant(s) for HelloGold.
In turn, HelloGold will endow 10% of it's annual management fee revenue to the Foundation. This endowment will be converted into Gold Backed Tokens (GBT) in 1g increments.
1 GBT = 1g of 99.99% investment grade gold.
HGF will then decide on the distribution of GBT to HGT holders as a reward for supporting the crowdsale. Both HGT and GBT will be independently tradable on public exchanges. Once the system has been developed, GBT will also be available by opening a HelloGold account and converting gold balance to GBT or by purchasing GBT directly from HGF.
Crowdfunding Structure
We're launching a 3-round crowdsale (with the 2nd and 3rd rounds scheduled for 2018 and 2019) for a live and revenue generating product, aiming to raise a capped $8mil USD each round - just as traditional companies have multiple funding rounds with VCs. The first round is divided into 5 tranches, has a pre-sale to avoid whales in the public sale, and has a KYC process which allows us to limit the amount of tokens that can be bought by each person to $50k/wallet.
300,000,000 (three hundred million) HGT will be sold in each Round. – i.e. a total of 900,000,000 (nine hundred million) HGT will be sold in all Rounds. For the avoidance of doubt, the remaining 100,000,000 (one hundred million) HGT will be Supplier HGT used by HGF to defray any and all costs and expenses arising out of or in connection with the three (3) Rounds of Crowdsale.
Round 1 will comprise the sale of five (5) tranches of 60,000,000 (60m) HGT, at prices that will be confirmed prior to launch of the Crowdsale due to current ETH price fluctuations.
All crowdsale info will be in English and have translations in Chinese.
Proof and Media
Link to Customer Gold List:
https://www.hellogold.com/customers_gold.htmlHelloGold’s Custodian / Gold Storage:
https://www.bullionstar.com/vault/audit/page/192 under account number 7647
Audit Documentation: coming soon
HelloGold has appeared on:
A partnership with:
And is part of:
An incubator supported by UOB and the Singaporean Government
Team
Linkedin
Robin Lee:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-lee-116444/?ppe=1Harith Kamarul:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harithk/ Roger Ward:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerbward/?ppe=1Wykeen Seet:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wykeen-seet-2100824b/Dave Appleton:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-appleton-4893a7/TC Wu:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tcwu78/Manuel Ho:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuel-ho-0a5317/?ppe=1Ridwan Abdullah:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ridwan-abdullah-696a4114/?ppe=1Andras Kristof:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andraskristof/Joshua Ambrose:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-ambrose-04029122/Some FAQs
Why KYC? And what are the requirements for KYC?
HGT will not be available for citizens, green card holders or tax residents of USA and Singapore due to securities regulation, and to implement good faith efforts to avoid money laundering, HGF will be implementing a KYC/AML process for crowdsale purchases of HGT. You will need to provide:
- Name as per passport
- Date of Birth
- Photo of passport biodata page
- Selfie holding passport with biodata page open
- Document with residential address
- Your wallet Ethereum address
Apart from this, the KYC process will allow us to create a $50k/wallet cap to prevent whales from monopolizing the public sale.
Aren’t you guys just like Digix?
While Digix and HelloGold share some similarities, they’ve got some key differences. We’ve covered this in an article here:
https://medium.com/hellogold/hellogold-digix-whats-the-difference-fe633f2b69d8
