I enjoy learning about the crypto currency world and upcoming ICOs. I recently invested a bit more in BTC and LTC, but spared a bit in case I came across another interesting ICO. I mentioned one a couple posts ago, but decided to pass on their pre-sale. Why? Well, after already investing on 2 gaming related ICOs and having one of them nose dive with their price, I decided to diversify my investment (to be fair, I think most ICOs nose dive post token release with all the wales and bonus dumpers, and my investments are for long term … but still, since it was a strong contender it surprised me).
Like I mentioned earlier on, I like to invest on projects I can understand the lingo and that I could actually use the product they are offering, which brings me to Crypterium.
In a nutshell, Crypterium refers to itself as “the JP Morgan of Cryptobanks”. It is an Estonia based company, and from the profiles listed on its website, it seems to have a solid development and management team with a strong background in digital payments and finance (I have yet to check their profiles more in depth though). Their mobile app is currently in the testing and de-bugging stages.
With the recent growth of cryptocurrencies, their idea is to have a cryptobank for everyone, offering a service-payment infrastructure. For me it would be incredible if we get to a point were we can pay in cryptocurrencies in the real world. It is a current problem and they are trying to solve it. They are not just offering a simple cryptowallet or cryptocard (like other banking related ICOs), but a complete ecosystem focused on “future technologies and infrastructure, using contactless payment technologies and creating full-fledged banking solutions.”
Now, at first it freaked me out their total supply of tokens was on the smaller size (300 million), as it felt contradicting to offering a cryptobank for everyone with such a limited supply that could make mass or even high adoption tricky, but per their whitepaper, payments at any POS terminal would be made in major crypto currencies such as BTC, ETH or ERC20 tokens, so imagine all the extra potential. It is exciting.
The other interesting aspect behind it is that while you are paying in cryptocurrency, the service provider or seller would receive their payment in real world currency, also known as fiat (though my guess would be they could also get their payment in crypto should they choose that).
A cryptobank like Crypterium simplifies the entire process of dealing with exchanges in order to finally transfer fiat to your bank account just to make a payment, if you are lucky to live in a country where it is possible to, because if not then you have to first transfer the fiat your received (after the crypto exchange) to a European bank and then finally to your country (and we all know how expensive international transfers are).
No need to worry with the use of the word bank cause they are not trying to centralize cryptocurrency any way, they are just looking into simplifying cryptocurrency transactions, operations, etc. For example, something very exciting about this project is that you won’t need a plastic card, and upon release of their mobile App it will support payment methods such as ApplePay, SamsungPay and AndroidPay through NFC, and you will be able to pay with the application everywhere where contactless payment is available (you just have to set up your payment method in the App, as either cryptocurrency (the major ones such as BTC, ETH, ERC20 tokens) or fiat). Now, this contactless payment method has recently been introduced in my country, so my options might be more limited than yours, but I think this is an excellent move towards cryptocurrency massification (is that a word?).
The merchant or service provider will receive the payment in fiat and the exchange rate will be handled by their own system CrypteriumSX (Smart eXchange), that technically will find the best exchange rate for your transaction.
So you might be wondering, if you can pay with other major cryptocurrencies what is the point of their token then? Why not simply release an app? Well, funding is key as this is a complex ecosystem, their token is the fuel that powers the transaction and according to Crypterium, what makes their token (CRPT) unique is that it is demand based. What does this mean? Per their website it means that “Each transaction in a crypto bank forms a demand for a token, because part of the funds from the transaction go toward its purchase on the open market. This ensures constant liquidity of the CRPT tokens.” So, the token value is likely to increase over time, but if I am being honest, even with the token holder benefits (they have a monthly loyalty fund), I am not a fan of a being charged a “fee equal to 0.5% of the value of the transaction in CRPT” every time I make a payment, and having it deducted from my limited CRPT supply. I would prefer if the fee was applied in the cryptocurrency I choose as payment method. Does this concern me? It does, for 2 reasons:
1. In my humble opinion, the simplicity Crypterium is offering is exactly what the crypto currency world needs to reach the masses, but depending on CRPTs for your payments to work might be what discourages people to use their mobile App once it's launched because they don't have "fuel" and they feel it's too expensive to get CRPTs.
2) Because even though lately most ICOs freak me out for the billions of coins / tokens they will have in circulation, this time around I am worried about them having only 300 million tokens (and destroy whatever is not sold during ICO), a small amount if they want it to be a cryptobank for everyone (and for tokens to fuel transactions).
(Anyway, in the end I think the benefits might outweigh my concerns, and of course we all want our investment (tokens) to be more valuable over time to get better profit in the exchanges (I added this since I decided to invest, so please see my note at the end). If any of you have any comments regarding my concern, I would love to read your opinions).
Tokens The token distribution is as follows (info taken from the WP):
- 70%: Total ICO distribution to the community
- 15%: Reserved funding (Tokens allocated for marketing and loyalty purposes)*
- 9%: Founders and management of the ICO**
- 3%: ICO Advisors
- 3%: Bounty campaign
* "15% of tokens allocated for marketing and loyalty purposes will be gradually released to enlarge
userbase and to fulfil Monthly Loyalty Program."
** "Is there a lock up period for the team and reserved fund tokens? Yes, the lockup period is 12 months." (got this information from their Medium blog:
https://medium.com/@crypterium_io/crypterium-faq-2c3d0d1167a9)
Token Sale started on October 31, 2017 and will run through January 13, 2018 (or until their token issue cap is reached), but with a relatively limited supply I doubt it will last until January. The minimum purchase is 1 CRPT and the price per token is 0.0001 BTC per 1 CRPT, so about USD 0.72 per token at current exchange prices (1000 tokens = 0.1 BTC or USD 722). Even with the token being on the more expensive side (at least for my November budget), they reached their USD 5 million soft cap in just 5 hours, and have so far raised over USD 9.5 million.
Today, November 6th is the last day of their Early Sale (about 11 hours left), and it is when you will get their highest bonus, between 20% and 33% depending on the amount of tokens purchased.
ICO Timeline:- 24 October 2017: Token holder account registration
- 31 October | 10:00:00 — 6 November Early Sale (Extra bonuses)
30 000+ Token purchase amount gives you a bonus of 33%
10 000+ Token purchase amount gives you a bonus of 26%
3 000+ Token purchase amount gives you a bonus of 23%
1+ Token purchase amount gives you a bonus of 20%
- 7 November — 27 November Bonus Sale (any purchase of 1 CRPT+)
7 November - 13 November you get a 15% bonus
14 November - 18 November you get a 10% bonus
19 November - 23 November you get a 6% bonus
24 November - 27 November you get a 3% bonus
- 28 November 2017 — 13 January 2018: Token sale with no bonuses
- 14 January 2018 — 25 January 2018: Token allocation and destruction of unused tokens
- February 2018 — March 2018: Listing on token exchanges
Before investing take your time to do your own research. I am no financial advisor, I am learning as I go and what I think is interesting and good, might not work for you.
If you want to learn more about Crypterium, be sure to visit their official website:
https://crypterium.io/, as well as their Bitcointalk Ann Thread (
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2214098.0), where they answer plenty of questions (from what I've seen the team is very active over there). Check out the team and take the time to read their
whitepaper (it’s on the long side, but it has tons of info).
If you do decide to invest I would appreciate it if you use my
referral link or you can click here:
https://tokensale.crypterium.io/?ref=c4e150c380dca0240a62b41f so that you can get reward amounts to 1% and I can get a reward as well.
And, I can’t close an ICO related post without reminding you that investing on any ICO or crypto currency is risky (as is any type of investment), and there is no guarantee of returns, so never (ever) invest more than you can afford to lose.
(Note: when I first published this article on Steemit a few days ago I was still debating on whether to invest or not. At time of publishing here I had already invested so I have made the adjustments accordingly as well as updated exchange rates and added some additional information that I found interesting as I did some more research, which will be included in my next Steemit post).
