Interesting reading
Will you distribute the profits or part of the profits of CargoX to token holders? If yes, how – buyback and burn, or ETH dividends, or… If not, why should the price of CXO token appreciate?
We believe in building a service that will provide more and more value to its users and we intend to innovatively entangle our token with core interactions on our platform, which are the creation and utilisation of digital B/L documents.
Our token is a part of our digitised business model, a part of our software and we do not believe that destroying assets is the right way to do business.
Our aim will be to minimise the transaction costs of such interactions, to provide better matchings and to provide trust — of course, leading to a bigger and bigger CargoX ecosystem. But this does not mean that we will be passive in regard to CXO tokens — we are planning to use them mostly to actively incentivise the launch of our platform and later incentivise its growth; to provide better and better utility for token owners.
So, the answer to your question is no, we are not planning to distribute profits to token holders, we are not planning to burn the tokens or put in place a mechanism to do a buyback. But we will do our best (e.g. using the substantial part of platform's profits) to grow our user-base and design CXO utilities in such a way that more and more users will be active on our platform.
Please note that both, dividends and promise of buyback or burning tokens to push the price up can do more (long-term legal) harm to the project than (short-term) benefit. We will wait for the regulators to perform proper scrutiny of such practices and will consider their response while designing our incentivisation mechanisms.
What is a Bill of Lading?
A Bill of Lading (sometimes abbreviated as B/L or BoL) is a document issued by a carrier (or his agent) to acknowledge receipt of cargo for shipment. This document is used in the sea-freight industry. Bills of lading ensure that exporters receive payment and importers receive the merchandise.
Why is it important to reduce shipping time for B/L documents from weeks to minutes, if the container cargo on a ship is travelling for many weeks anyway?
There are also faster and shorter routes where a container needs only a few days. But in general that is true. However, a B/L is issued when the vessel / container departs (usually within 3 days), and in a perfect scenario the importer would get the B/L before the arrival of container (with high express courier costs). In many cases this is not how it goes. There are payment delays due to bank transfer, sometimes the importer needs few days to get the money, there are holidays in between, etc. And each day of the container waiting in port will incur additional costs, not to mention other issues which might arise due to late container delivery.
What are the barriers in accepting your service as a legal equivalent of an actual paper Bill of Lading?
Going directly to carriers (Maersk, MSC, CMA,...) would keep things slow. But we have done it it differently.
We will approach logistics companies who can accept this without any issues, as long as they are certain that the one claiming the goods is the only one with this B/L token. And this is easily done in blockchain. Just like sending eth from one address to another. So the exporter will send ‘B/L token’ to importer once he gets paid. At that moment he will no longer have it, only the importer will. And it is archived for a certain period of time – a benefit available to token holders.
In second phase, we aim to address that “once he gets paid” part, as currently this action is clearly based on trust. Once we integrate onchain payments, the B/L smart contract will detect payment, and change ownership of the B/L from the exporter to the importer automatically. No need to trust anyone, and no need for expensive escrow like L/C (bank's letter of credit).
How long has the CargoX team been together?
Some of the core members know each other and have worked together for more than 15 years, but most of them more than 10 years. The founders worked together at K+N, so have a long history together.
What do the shipping companies need to do or know in order to use CargoX smart B/L solution? Do they need to have a blockchain expert employed just to use your service?
The process will be quite easy, they will either need to register/login or EDI/API connect with our Smart B/L dApp. Once the B/L is created, it is stored in a decentralised storage – there are already the public addresses of the importer/exporter in that document. All parties will just need to do KYC, so we know who is who, as the B/L can not just be issued by anyone. No other knowledge will be needed. If they use online banking, they should be just fine. There is no need for any development on the part of our partners or logistics companies. If you print a B/L today on paper, you are good to go with our dApp.
Will you implement atomic swaps for the B/L tokens?
Atomic swaps will enable cheaper, faster and safer exchange transactions between different crypto currencies. The technology is still in the prototype status and we are monitoring it closely. Since our token will be an ERC 20 token, we will rely on the capabilities of the Ethereum network, especially the Raiden network.
We are confident that it will be crucial in the future to eliminate any friction in exchange to and from several other crypto currencies, tokens and fiat. Hence, we are following the progress made by other development teams (e.g. altcoin.io, ace-platform.com, tokens.net). Since our primary innovation is in the shipping industry, we believe in establishing long-term partnerships with projects that are developing customer friendly solutions, that will enable fast, secure and user-friendly exchange and will in future take care for adaptations to the newest exchange technologies, like atomic swaps.
Aren't there a lot of companies who use e-waybill already (e-waybill is a B/L but just sent by e-mail)? The biggest shippers like Maersk, MSC, China Shipping do that a lot. What is CargoX's advantage over e-waybill?
E-waybill B/L can not resolve the trust issue. If you have a B/L that means importer has paid for the goods from exporter... If the importer doesn’t have the B/L, there might be many reasons behind this and in the worst case the exporter can claim the goods back from the logistics provider...
There are several versions of this document. There is also the seaway bill (and others) which doesn’t need to be presented physically. However, the B/L is the only guarantee the exporter has that he will get paid for goods produced.
Having the B/L on the blockchain means that it cannot be stolen or lost, its ownership and authenticity is 100% verifiable by anyone, meaning that it can be highly trusted (emails can be spoofed on the other hand). Also, it means no more scanning of documents, thus it is time saving.
And we don’t even focus on shipping lines: our target group are freight forwarders, which issue more B/Ls than shipping lines.
Why such a low cap of only $7 million?
Lately, more or less every ‘hairdresser‘ has an ICO looking for at least $16 million. We calculated that $7m is enough to develop and implement our product. Additionally, we have reserved 25% of tokens for future development. With a low hard cap we are forcing ourselves to do make smart and calculated decisions, which we believe is the only way for a business to succeed. Also, this way, there are more benefits for ICO contributors.
What is the total supply of CargoX.io CXO tokens?
The total number of coins will be known after we have locked the USD/ETH ratio, which will be done the day before the public, no-limit ICO officially starts. Since our hard cap target is in USD, we need that ratio to calculate the maximum number of coins for investors, and with that also the total supply.
More at
www.cargox.io 
