[KOBO] Kobocoin - Mobile Money for Africa

[TheTribesman]

UPDATE:

We are being added to Cointopay (https://cointopay.com/) in the next 24 hours.
 

Merchants who integrate Cointopay on their sites can be paid out in FIAT. This is a great step forward. Once we're listed I'll be chasing down the online merchants we discussed.

I'm also looking into the possibility of the Cointopay service helping with the remittance service we're planning.

[TheTribesman]

UPDATE:

We are now on Cointopay
https://cointopay.com/integration.jsp

Twitter announcement
https://twitter.com/Cointopay/status/623601879151452160

Time to offer crypto integration services to African online retailers. The companies below are where we'll start.

Jumia
Kasoa
GoShop
OLX
Konga
Kaymu

Any more suggestions?

Also, last night I was contacted by a bitcoin news site (I'm not telling yet!). There should be an article on kobocoin coming out later this week. I'll post a link if/once it published.
 

[th00ber]

Hi everyone

As you could see if you search, I'm in this coin from february.
Buying some more when possible and to help the coin to keep on Bittrex.
But with the summer holidays and some car troubles ... I had to get some cash quickly.
And the only answer I have, is to sell my KOBO

I don't want and I'll never dump them on bittrex to destroy the growth of this coin (good old times, when buying some kobo for 90 to 150 satoshis).
The work done by TheTribesman deserve to continue.
If a kobo believer from this thread is interested, I can sell 250K kobo @ the current market price (700 sat  => 1.75 BTC)

PM me if interested

[opticoin]

opportunity to get a huge block... anybody with spare BTC should grab this chance

[TheTribesman]

Sorry for the lack of updates. Had a few issues to resolve last week. I'm going to spend this week contacting online retailers and other services. I'm hoping I'll at least get a reply from one or two. I'll let you know how I get on.

[opticoin]

while the one-man dev team is solid,  might it be time to bring in someone to handle the financial and business side to unlock the economic potential of Kobocoin?..
   At this time, it would it be a good step forward if we are now showing real-life transactions already even in small amounts...

I'm really puzzled as to why traders are largely ignoring Kobocoin ... This should be up there in the top 20..

[TheTribesman]

while the one-man dev team is solid,  might it be time to bring in someone to handle the financial and business side to unlock the economic potential of Kobocoin?..
   At this time, it would it be a good step forward if we are now showing real-life transactions already even in small amounts...

I'm really puzzled as to why traders are largely ignoring Kobocoin ... This should be up there in the top 20..

It would be great to get some help with those things, but people don't work for free. Making changes doesn't necessarily lead to an increase in trading volume. Trying to second guess the exchanges is a frustrating exercise.

Look at ArtByte (formerly AppleByte). Been around for over a year now. Great founder and dev (2 roles, 2 people), great media coverage (because they're dealing with the music industry), currently No.5 on CoinGecko for community (https://www.coingecko.com/en?sort_by=community_score), they have a twitter tipping bot, and a massive list of followers on social media (who are tipping each other regularly). And, it's also still mineable. And yet ArtByte market cap is less than Kobocoin at this time.

We're up there with some good names. I know we're not top 20 (yet) but we've steadily moved up the ranks and I'm hoping we'll continue to do so over the coming months




Most 'overnight' successes have actually been around for a long time when you research it. Even Darkcoin (now DASH) spent some months languishing before it experienced the kind of growth that I believe you're expecting from Kobocoin.
 

[TheTribesman]

UPDATE:

Our first article. Hopefully more to follow:

http://us.newsbtc.com/changing-africa-remittance-with-kobocoin/

 

It would really help if you could share this via twitter or any other social media you're all using.

[TheTribesman]

UPDATE:

Our first article. Hopefully more to follow:

http://us.newsbtc.com/changing-africa-remittance-with-kobocoin/

 

It would really help if you could share this via twitter or any other social media you're all using.

Good article Felix  Love this project, can't wait till it is plugged in into the real economy, keep up the good work! 

Thanks. We're getting there. I'll do all I can to make it happen.

[th00ber]

Good job !
The article is really nice

[opticoin]

good article... thank you for the update Tribesman... we'll be with you all the way to Kobo's $1-mil market cap!

[TheTribesman]

Firstly:



I'm talking with Cointopay on exactly how the integration into merchant sites works and getting a good sales pitch together. The online stores aren't exactly falling over themselves to 'join the revolution'. There's an investment in integrating crypto into their websites, and also administration that they have no training on. It's a very hard sell.

Cointopay can also be used to facilitate the remittance service. It all needs to be ironed out.

I'm also speaking to First Swiss cards (https://www.firstswisscard.com/) about a KOBO card. This might be something for the future. We're probably too small at the moment for the transaction levels they require, but they seem to like the concept.

There's other stuff going on as well. Discussions and negotiations take time, so please bear with me.

[TheTribesman]

QUICK UPDATE:

Were close on Coinpayments.net. We'll be in there soon.

[TheTribesman]

Apologies for the lack of updates.

There's been positive things going on in the background. I've had to give myself a crash course in our APIs and how to integrate them into other services. There's a possible partnership opportunity brewing that should be interesting (if I can get it finalised).

I've changed the website a bit so that merchants and services interested interested in kobo can see our APIs without having to contact me directly (it's happened twice now). http://www.kobocoin.com/Tech.html - I'm no API expert but I'm getting the hang of it.

It's also the start of the summer holidays so I have to devote time to family as well.

[TheTribesman]

It's very lean times in the crypto world right now. Apart from the launch of Ethereum trading, most of the crypto world seems to be on holiday, or just twiddling their thumbs.

Unfortunately, 37coins is closing. It was an SMS remittance service. A real shame.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-remittance-startup-37coins-announces-closure/
https://medium.com/@37Coins/thank-you-59baedb13c50

It's not an easy sell.

Kobo has no external funding so there's less pressure in these lean times. I am making headway and speaking to the right people but it's slow progress. I'd love to have big news every week for you but sadly it's not the case. Doors are opening and there seem to be possibilities, but it all takes time.

Rest assured that I'm not dissuaded in any way, and Kobo is here for the long run. I am pounding that beat daily. We're now 6 months old (as of August 7th). It feels like a lot longer, for sure. We are getting there, and we will get there.
 

[TheTribesman]

Probably like everyone else I've been watching the the Ethereum trading launch with great interest. It'll be interesting to see where the price and marketcap goes from here. I'll also be watching closely for the promised apps (and how to use them!).

Has anyone else noticed that overall crypto market cap has dropped from about $4.7bn to now $3.9bn over the last two weeks? I've also been watching the debate with BitcoinXT. All interesting stuff. Personally, I've observed that when an altcoins' price drops substantially that the community normally cries out for a hard fork (or sometimes forces the issue). I'm a bit surprised that bitcoin fell prey to this (maybe that's a naive and simplistic view of what's happened - who knows - it seems like a pattern to me).

At the moment, the only development to talk of with Kobocoin is that I've been chatting with the 37coins team. I'm hoping that KOBO will soon have an SMS wallet available using their technology. I'll keep pushing through this weird time to get more real world tech on the platform. It's all about what's necessary for the future. Marketcap and trading hasn't been positive over the last few days (I guess Ethereum is the talk of the town right now), but ups and downs are part of the industry.

I think this has been a VERY interesting month for cryptos in general. I do think the loss of almost $1bn in market cap is significant but I'm not sure what it's signifying. All will be revealed in the coming months!

To those who got into Ethereum in the last few days, I hope you made some gains.
 

[TheTribesman]

Well, I guess the world and crypto economies appear to be stuttering for now. Please be aware that KOBO may soon be delisted from Bittrex. Get ready to withdraw your coins. There's been no real activity (I can't even call it volume) since 21st August. As I said in previous posts, I'm just grateful for the YoBit listing. If I had money to throw at Bittrex I would, but I don't.

The network infrastructure is still up and running very efficiently. Android wallets are still sync'd. Unfortunately there's been no real forward progress in the last few weeks as everything appears to have dried up. People I'd been talking to seem to have disappeared (maybe on their holidays). It appears that a lot of interest has left the crypto industry recently and a lot of projects are just sitting and waiting. KOBO network is still ultrafast compared to others I'm happy to say.

We already have a sidechain for private messaaging. I'm looking into what other features sidechains can offer us. Also still waiting to hear back from 37coins regarding an SMS wallet for KOBO.

[vince232]

any updates here?

[TheTribesman]

Hi everyone, sorry for the long delay. I've had to find some paid work (bills need to be paid). I've semi-relocated from London to Edinburgh (Scotland) and started working full time again, so my time had been really limited.

I have to be honest with everyone here.

There's a few issues that are slowing the development of things with Kobocoin. We've got to a certain point but things have stalled. As I've gone further into getting Kobocoin out there into the public domain, there's 2 challenges I've faced that seem to be impacting on how things can go forward from here

1. Cryptos as a whole seemed to have stalled. Over the last few weeks there's been a marked decrease in interest from the wider public with newer cryptos. Some might say that the Ethereum trading launch has taken interest away from the smaller projects. Maybe.
2. Kobocoin lacks the exchange volume to sustain a payment gateway or remittance model. There needs to be a lot more volume on the exchanges. It's a tough one to admit, but it needs to be recognised. There's no point getting people to use Kobo if they can't redeem it at this point in it's development. A full currency (non-redeemable) model like FIAT seems like a long way away at the moment.

I've been thinking about how to move forward from this point. It's a tough one. My current thought are to start developing the wallets to do a lot more than just perform transaction processing/recording. I'm really looking at taking wallet development forward to encourage people to use it, and maybe not just for mobile money.

There's more that's possible but that's where I am. The lack of exchange volume is a really serious issue. I was thinking of giveaways, but all that might encourage is more dumping. I'm being a bit philosophical about how to get things moving again with Kobo. I'm trying to be more creative.

The network is still fast (that won't change as I've got servers online ensuring the integrity of the network), but I'm having to rethink how I get to market. It's not an easy task.

Again, sorry for the lack of updates.

[opticoin]

 i agree with b1007. .. in the posted SWOT analysis, one major weakness of KOBO is dependence on one person , the dev... This could be fixed with second person doing development work so the coin can always move forward, adding incrementally adding  features to cope up with new coins ..  maybe, a  display of real-life application... or a change in main goal (global instead of Africa-centric)..  or even a change of name , if warranted... investor/trader interest drives up the price.. if there are no updates or developments, the natural direction will be downward...
 
   Technically, KOBO is one the best coins out there, mainly because of the dev, but it lags in terms of marketing/PR/business strategy .
 
 it's unfortunate that KOBO  lost the upward momentum when it was hitting the 0.000008 level a couple of months ago, but   it can easily return to  0.0000050 to 0.0000060 if there are exciting news or developments..    posted seller volume is thin anyway...    it just needs to attract the interest of more players/investors.

 .