ICO Review: QASH Token (Part II)

yeesypeasy (33)in #blockchain • 7 years ago

Introduction

This post is to discuss the NEW ANNOUCEMENTS that was released during the #AMA with Mike Kayamori (QUOINE CEO) on 1-Nov before the ICO and my thoughts about it.

These NEW ANNOUCEMENTS were by far groundbreaking and really threw off the strategies of some investors. I personally felt that these set of changes raises more questions than answers but Mike Kayamori was very concise with his message and managed to address most of the concerns.

The official summary of his #AMA is available here.

Screen Capture of Facebook Live Post

#1. QASH Token Sale period will be shortened to 3 days only, from 6–8 Nov

QUOINE has made a very bold move to significantly reduce the $QASH Token Sale Period.

We will shorten the QASH Token Sale period to 3 days only from 6–8 Nov, ahead of the hard fork around the 15th of November.

This effectively reduces the ICO period from a maximum of 1 month to a just 3 days! This also means that all $QASH buyers are eligible for the 20% discount.

We’ve also know that all investors from the private sale were subjected to a 30% discount off the token price. With QUOINE private shareholders and management taking up 20% of $QASH supply and $QASH public buyers taking up 25% of $QASH supply, this would bring the average discount rate of $QASH to be around 23%. This would mean that the average ICO price is lower and subject $QASH to an early dump upon listing, though I do not believe this would happen.

$QASH can be purchased with $ETH and $BTC during the ICO. Mike Kayamori has made a very wise move to end the token sale before the hard fork. This is NOT because he will end up with 2 coins after the fork ($BTC & $B2X), but there would be so much complexity and volatility during the fork (Block 494,784). It would be difficult to estimate $QASH conversion rate as well determining those borderline purchases when $QASH is purchased on the exchange just before or after the fork.

The QASH listing date will be tentatively Dec 1st.

Please #savethedate!

#2. The Public Sale cap will be reduced by half from 500m QASH Tokens to 250m QASH Tokens (or 250k ETH)

Mike Kayamori went on to announce the reduction of the amount of publicly offered $QASH Tokens.

Because our QASH Token Sale period is only going to be 3 days — we will reduce the cap by half to 250m QASH tokens or 250k ETH.

This brings down the amount that they seek to raise significantly from the region of $120M -$150M to just $60M (a 20% to $75M).

Since 250m ETH will be available for sale, only for 3 days, our QASH supply could be oversubscribed, so we will ensure it will be prorated if you purchase within 6–8 Nov.

I just invested in another unnamed ICO with a Telegram Group of almost 4,000 members and the ICO was under-subscribed with it trying to raise $75M over a period of 1 month.

While QUOINE has a firm belief that this ICO maybe oversubscribed. I am of the feeling that it may prove a challenge for QUOINE to raise $20M a day over a 3 day ICO. No doubt, it is unfair to compare an Apple with an Orange as the pool and general profile of advisors and investors are different. (Edit: $QASH ICO concluded with 60M USD raised in 20 hours! Well done! There seem to be a fair bit of institutions invested in this)

What backing is driving QUOINE management confidence into stating that this ICO will be oversubscribed. That, I will definitely be looking at this ICO with interest!

#3. What will happen to the remaining 250m QASH?

— it isn’t enough just raising from public markets alone. We will keep the remaining 250m QASH as liquidity reserves and allocate it to strategic partners who will add value to the LIQUID platform.

I believe that this is where Mike Kayamori came up with a very well-thought solution to QUOINE problem with making up for the shortfall caused by the reduced public $QASH token offering.

The nature of our business is Liquidity. Because we are connecting with >15 exchanges and we are required to put deposits in each exchange (e.g. $10m per exchange = $150m total)

Here, Mike Kayamori discusses on the assumption that QUOINE management has made upon to come up with the magical number (150M) for ICO fund raising.

Over time, remaining 250m QASH will be sold to institutional investors / long term holders at market prices with a slight discount.

Revised Token Allocation Chart

These institutional purchasers and strategic investors are long term holders of the QASH Token and are completely aligned with our vision to build liquid crypto markets. Total supply will be the same. We will distribute 1bn QASH. Because of the hard fork, we will only offer 25% in circulation.

This is where Mike’s masterstoke is elaborated.Have you (prospective investors) ever wondered what would a company do after it runs out of funds obtained thru ICO? Yes, such things happen if they are not profitable or they have underestimated the cost of development of the product they are pitching.They have the following options:

Release a sub-par product with much lesser feature trying to recoup some returns which will lead into development of other features to make the product more complete and closer to their initial vision.
Come out with a secondary token, a series B, with a different purpose and a different rewards to these set of token holders that will not affect the existing rewards payout to the original set of token holders. This is tricky.
Hold a secondary ICO releasing more tokens into the circulation. This will seriously frustrate existing token holders. Though token holders are just token holders, not equity holders, dilution of the token pool is highly frown upon and will cause token holders to lose interest of the stated project! This dilution will also cause the value of the token to drop as it has not been previously announced during the ICO.

Mike Kayamori was able to pull this off nicely while taking the 3rd Option. He was able to convey the announcement confidently before the ICO. Stating that these amount will be offered to strategic investors and institutional purchasers.How does he do it?

The amount of $QASH to be offered to these parties has been declared clearly before the ICO and hence the market would be able to this in before planning. The amount of circulated $QASH will also be remained unchanged.
Institutional Purchasers and Strategic investors (who could be one of their partnered exchanges like Binance) have the profile of being predominately passive who focuses on the long-term price target rather than doing swing trading. Any tokens offered to these institutions and investors would also typically come with a lockdown period to ensure that they stick committed to the project.
Any $QASH token will be offered at a slight discount to the MARKET RATE at that point of time. Assuming that $QASH price appreciates due to over-subscription and favourable market sentiments, QUOINE will be able to raise a even larger amount of funds than selling them in 1 public ICO. Assuming the value of $QASH depreciates, QUOINE would be able to time the market right by choosing the optimal time to offer these $QASH tokens to these potential investors. This will be totally different ball game compared to the R3 and Ripple legal battle.

We will have Bitfinex, Binance, etc to list QASH on first day of trading. Tokens will be sold at market price (by that time, QASH token will be listed) with a slight discount.

Prospective holders will be pleased. Binance, another top exchange, will connected to Liquid Platform and list $QASH upon listing. This will drive up the awareness and demand of $QASH.

#4. Please be aware of scammers who offer QASH at deep discounts

We are very different from other ICOs that require people to offer deep discounts to sell. Please do not worry that we need to give deep discounts to sell QASH. We do not have to do that.

I have participated in many ICOs where you buy their ERC-20 token with your ETH. And they will just transact you the ERC-20 token from the address that you have sent your ETH from. This is a setup that left the buyer in severe security risk.

The buyer is unable purchase the new token by transferring ETH from an exchange or a ETH wallet that does not support tokens. This is not supported and may end up with the token being lost.Many ICO first-timers do NOT read and fall for this.
There is abundance in phishing sites that designed and built to mimic the ICO web page with a different send-to ETH address. Prospective Buyers on Telegram would also often be contacted via DMs advising them to purchase the tokens with the WRONG send-to address. This has misled many buyers.

$QASH token sale do not have deep discounts as even the private sale was capped at 30% discounts.My colleague has a saying, “If you pay peanuts, you’ll get monkeys” Certainly, if something is too incredible to be true. It must be a scam or there must be a BUT somewhere.QUOINE has several reasons for holding the token sale on their own Qryptos platform:

Ensures KYC of the Token Buyers
Encourages Token Buyers to Sign up on their platform hence promoting the usage of their platforms
Providing ABSOLUTE Security to the Token Buyers as they will not be subjected by the tricks mentioned above.
Controls & Monitors the Sale of Tokens, the $QASH tokens will be pro-rated in the situation of a over-subscription so having a control over $QASH token enables this.

#5. The bounty program will go on until December 1st

Even after the QASH Token Sale, we will continue the Bounty Program. I want our community to be the best in the world and most qualified, having great discussions about crypto.

This is music to my ears, I generally like covering on an ICO especially when they have an interesting and ambitious plan like QUOINE’s. To be able to get my opinions heard is wonderful while obtain a small token of appreciation is a sweet by-product.

Maybe Katherine Ng can relook into revising the YouTube portion of the bounty. I was just done making the slides for my video presentation before doing the actual video recording when the 1 week before ICO deadline occurred.

A promotional video needs to be short, creative and appealing to capture the attention of mainstream audience but on the other hand having a longer streamlined video into TOP 5 reasons in QASH would also help. (I had 7. :) )

Marketing and Promotion doesn't just stop after the ICO. It needs to be a continual effort constantly promoting Quoinex and Qryptos platform usage. Market adoption (something which I stress a lot) is key to $QASH price appreciation.

I strongly believes QUOINE sees the value in this.

We are also looking to integrating our Telegram community with our trading dashboard, so stay tuned for that.

This will be a welcome distraction and a reminder to some of an exchange’s (OK, it’s Poloniex) Trollbox. I believe policing a Trollbox or Telegram will be of too much of a hassle. CMs will need to be involved constantly maintaining a healthy environment of the discussions there. This will take away much needed personnel away from Troubleshooting and Support.

Having a Trollbox will also encourages Market Manipulation. This is a double-edged sword.

Pump and Dump crew members will be posting fake news on the trollbox to incentivized a Pump before dumping it.
Short traders will be flooding the trollbox with FUDs.
Doom and Gloomers will flood the trollbox with every sob stories of their trade losses.

Is this a really healthy thing? I am willing to give my theory a go.

QUESTION #1: Does QUOINE have plans to make $QASH and Altcoins pairs? These days with Bitcoin forks happening so frequently, a $QASH-based currency pair will provide a stable alternative to consumers exploiting a perceived instability of bitcoins.

I felt that this question is absolutely relevant. $QASH’s ability to be traded with other currencies pairs will enable its demand and value to grow.

Absolutely YES!. Starting with our own exchange, $QASH will be a co-currency for trading pairs.

Mike Kayamori went on to give examples that there would be pairs like QASH/XRP, QASH/LTC, etc. These will at least happen on Quoinex while the other exchanges will be more subjected to approvals.

Panda Crypto (One of the Outstanding CM)

Before this #AMA, I was toying with Panda Crypto, one of the CMs on $QASH Token Sale Telegram Group with a silly but apt question. “Is $QASH going to be listed on Coinbase?”

A $QASH to FIAT currency pair will increase liquidity significantly. This will benefit $QASH token holders by providing a direct path from $QASH to a FIAT currency, something that they are able to liquidate and withdraw when the value is right.

However this is probably going to disrupt their operation model.

We already know that $QASH is going to be primarily a utility token and if used to transact, $QASH token holders will get a 5% discount off the trading fee. QUOINE also intends to extend this offer to the other exchanges connected thru World Book.

Hence with a floating $QASH / FIAT Currency pair, would it make it more difficult for QUOINE to dictate the trading price?