Spectre Review

Background Information

These are all the boring, easy-to-find but useful-to-know facts about Spectre.

According to CoinMarketCap:

It has a market capitalization of $2.5 million (approx.), which is actually very tiny in the cryptocurrency world.

It also has an 24H volume of $2,065 USD, which essentially indicates that this coin is not really being traded at all at this point in time.

The total supply sits at 42,980,365 and the circulating supply sits at 24,529,558 of the $SXUT token specifically. We’ll get more into the dividends of the token later in this piece.

It’s top exchanges (in order) are:

• Bibox
• EtherDelta (ForkDelta)
• Bibox
• IDEX

Here are some screenshots of that data so that you can visualize it directly too:

Something That Drew My Attention

A little over four months ago, there was an exponentially higher volume of trade and the market cap was 4x higher than where it is now.

What’s most alarming though is how much the amount of trading for this token declined.

It went from $14.684 million in exchanged volume over a 24-hour period, to barely cracking $2k.

Spectre Dividend Token

This is another listing for Spectre that I saw on CoinMarketCap. It has a market capitalization of $16,869,801.

This market capitalization is slightly better than what we see for the initial Spectre.ai token, but it still pales in comparison to what you would expect from any project that has actual buzz behind it that’s been trading for longer than a month.

The 24-H volume is sitting at a super low $11,523 USD.

Total Supply = 140,270,691 $SXDT

Circulating Supply = 82,073,519 $SXDT

The only markets that this coin is listed on are EtherDelta and DDEX.

Here is a visual of that information:

What Sticks Out With This Spectre.ai Dividend Token Markets

As you can see on the chart here, there was a point in time where the market cap was at $35.6 million and the 24-H volume was $251,036.

For all intents and purposes, it looks as if the project were thriving at one point in time and now it’s dead.

This prompted me to go check out the ICO Information to see what the team raised, because this project appears to be on the very cusp of death itself at this point and often times what happened in the ICO can paint the picture of what more than likely happened to the project.

Or, it can give us clues at the very least.

ICO Review for Spectre

So, the first site that I went to for ICO information about Spectre.ai’s token was icodrops. Right now, I just need the basics.

The specific link is here: https://icodrops.com/spectre/

From the pictures above, we can see that the team failed to reach its goal of raising $30 million. Perhaps there were fundraising issues (who knows at this point). They instead were forced to settle for $16 million. Which is still a great raise in my opinion and it definitely doesn’t tell the tale of why the price and volume fell off a cliff the way it did.

There are a few more facts that should be enumerated as well though, in my opinion.

1. They did successfully sell $6.5 million worth on their presale.
2. They are from the United Kingdom. So, I don’t think the team is trying to hide (based on that information). I’d expect something entirely fraudulent to be set up in the Cayman’s or somethign like that.
3. Their token sale ended on December 10th. So this was right around the height of the bull rally for 2017. The fact that the token sale only hit 50% of its purported goal despite being launched in a time when crypto fever was at its highest is worth noting also.
4. The team doesn’t have an absurd allocation (although a goal will be to dig up what exactly happened to the tokens that didn’t get sold).

Here’s a Chart of Their Token Allocation:

So, nothing inherently fishy here either. I’m still baffled as to why the project died.

Social Media Hunting

Given the subpar financials on this token(s) ($SXD and $SXU), I decided to go hunting on social media to see if they were even still active and whether I would get any leads/guesses/suggestions that would show why Spectre went from promising to virtually non-existent.

First Stop: Telegram

Their Telegram channel is: https://t.me/joinchat/FlBl_UORqQZo-FbiPkHikA(Yup, just a join link; Exclusive!)

I went in there and immediately shouted for an admin.

My request was answered pretty much right after I got in there. I noticed that there were individuals in there and they were conversing with one another pretty actively. I scrolled up a little bit to see what the conversation was like.

The folks in there seemed to be genuinely content with the project from what I saw at the time. There weren’t any individuals that were complaining in there or expressing dissatisfaction with the team’s efforts. So, I took that as a good sign.

There were only 5,000 individuals in the chat, but I don’t think that’s a deficit given the project’s size. That’s healthy.

As I said before, once I first entered into the chat, I called for the admin and I was addressed relatively quickly (in under a minute):

This is the individual that I spoke to originally.

He was a little defensive at first. I can’t blame him. I think he thought that I had come there to shit on their project. That definitely was not my intentions at all.

Once he saw that was a legitimate investor that just wanted information, he happily obliged.

Below is the Transcript of Our Conversation (me and the admin of Spectre’s group chat on Telegram)

This was the screenshot where he addressed some of my primary concerns with the volume.

This answer actually sounds fairly reasonable to me. I’m a fan of this response. He does have a point too when he mentions that the coin has beaten the benchmark of other ICOs.

Also, it is the weekend and the volume for the entire crypto market is abysmal compared to what it was (although Spectre’s had declined substantially more so).

So, this is where I found out about the plans for them to go ahead and launch another exchange. This, too was useful information to gain because it looks like the team already has a firm strategy in place.

What he said in this message is absolute gospel. This shows me that this project lead is someone that is actually intelligent and has an intuitive understanding of how the crypto market works.

I’ll have to ask him to elaborate on this ‘family office’ comment that he made here. I don’t disagree with anything that he’s said up to this point or the strategy. He seems like someone that genuinely cares. The community is active and it exists.

So, you know based on this information that they are planning on launching a new exchange. I’m not sure yet if this has been publicly released because the admin conveyed to me that he would like to sign an NDA before really continuing further. This is something that I obliged to.

I sincerely appreciate the fact that he invited me to ask the token holders directly their opinions on the project. That is something that is profoundly different than what I’ve ever seen any other administrator do before in my life.

I had to give him credit for that, for sure.

The rest of the conversation after this point is pretty irrelevant in my opinion. So, I redacted that.

— — — — —

Twitter

Team Spectre (@SpectreAI) | Twitter
_The latest Tweets from Team Spectre (@SpectreAI). The world's first broker-less trading platform that removes the…_twitter.com

Above is their Twitter page and it appears as though the Twitter page is active, which is a positive thing.

Their last tweets are pretty positive. Not hype, but accomplishments — which is always worth something.

There are a pretty underwhelming amount of followers on the page (for a crypto project) and it seems there is small, tight core of supporters that has not expanded in recent months.

This project’s biggest hurdle (from an FA perspective and from what I see) is marketing.

Ethereum Enterprise Alliance

Another accomplishment that the team boasts on its Telegram is the fact that they are part of the ‘Ethereum Enterprise Alliance’.

If you’re wondering what the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance is, check this out:

Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
_The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance connects Fortune 500 enterprises, startups, academics, and technology vendors with…_entethalliance.org

As it states on their front page and in the previews,

“The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance connects Fortune 500 enterprises, startups, academics, and technology vendors with Ethereum subject matter experts. Together, we will learn from and build upon the only smart contract supporting blockchain currently running in real-world production — Ethereum — to define enterprise-grade software capable of handling the most complex, highly demanding applications at the speed of business.”

There are a considerable number of members in this group. You can see some/all of them on this page here:

Members - Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
_The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance connects Fortune 500 enterprises, startups, academics, and technology vendors with…_entethalliance.org

This seems like a legitimate connection/networking sort of platform where ERC20 tokens can liaise with one another.

Now, let’s check out the website itself.

Spectre AI Website

This is what you’ll see when you visit their site:

Now, we can start really digging into the premise of this project.

If you look at the screenshot of the main page above, it seems obvious that you’ll be allowed to trade on the platform immediately. So, they’re definitely live.

The primary premise/goal of this project is the creation of a broker-less financial exchange.

And from what they have stated on their website, it appears that they were able to succeed in doing just that.

This is also iterated in the ‘About’ section:

What I’m most interested in is this DALP system that they speak of. I believe that this will be truly interesting if it checks out.

Here are the key points to take away here:

• By creating a broker-less exchange, Spectre AI asserts that it has finally curated an exchange solution based on blockchain technology that achieves “govern all trade transactions, outcomes and payouts. 100% transparency, pure trading, no fraud.”
• You don’t have to deposit directly on the exchange, you can trade straight from your wallet, which is useful or from a “secure private-smart contract on Spectre.ai”. According to Spectre, this does not entail them having explicit access to your funds.
• Their blockchain verification allows for a public record of trade that can be audited. From what I’ve seen described on the website, the process seems legitimate and viable.

Here is an additional portion on the main website:

There are a couple things worth noting here:

1. Smart Options- If you do not know what ‘smart options’ are, check this website out here:

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/broker-less-trading-platform-brings-perpetual-liquidity-smart-options-to-bitcoin

Smart CFDs

1. ‘Smart-CFD’ — This is the smart contract version of CFDs; CFD stands for ‘contract for differences’.

More information about what this is at its root can be found here: https://news.bitcoin.com/cryptocurrency-derivatives-cfd-marketplaces-revenues/

This is an article that promotes another project, I believe, but it covers the lucrativeness of these contracts and how they have been used in exchanges.

This article, however, is much better at explaining all facets of how a CFD operates:

Trading Cryptocurrency with CFD Instruments Vs. Trading on Exchanges
_Most people trade cryptocurrencies through cryptocurrency exchanges, there is, however, another option with which one…_hackernoon.com

This portion, in specific, is perhaps the most important bit to check out in my opinion:

So essentially these are akin to futures’ contracts, but they are not necessarily in a lot of different ways.

The major feature of CFDs that’s different than regular cryptocurrencies is the fact that CFDs can be opened and closed at any time. There is no ‘settlement’ of the contract.

Thus, these should be considered akin to perpetual inverse swap contracts.

Essentially, with the system of trading that Spectre proposes, any and all options on any and all assets will be available for trading with a matched liquidity provider just in case there’s no one else on the other side of the trade. And I must admit, that sounds sweet right now at this point.

Here is the system that allegedly provides said liquidity:

My only concern here would be in auditing the smart contracts that are being created to ensure that there are no exploits or vulnerabilities that could be exploited.

I was informed by one of the project leaders that there was no active token bounty in order to avoid unnecessary inflation. So, that does not necessarily mean that there is no dollar bounty that have been put on these contracts, but I have not seen evidence of such yet. Therefore, I feel that it would be imperative for these contracts to be audited before a substantial influx of money is placed on this platform.

Once again, this is another awesome feature of the coin here if it holds true. I haven’t gotten a chance to try the actual platform out at this point in time.

This is definitely something that is targeted toward more hardcore and sophisticated investors that are looking for more financial instruments to use in their crypto trading journey.

Here in this picture we can finally see a definitive use case provided by the company behind the ‘U-Token’.

Apparently owning the Spectre token allows individuals greater privileges on the platform itself, such as the ones described in the picture directly above.

This is fair, in my opinion. Especially if you are going to provide a broker-less exchange.

Contracts on the Exchange are Tied Directly to Ethereum

This is a wise idea, in my humble opinion.

Here’s the excerpt on the main page attesting to that:

What is written above is pretty explicit and unambiguous, so I won’t go into any detail on that.

However, one thing I’m curious of is how they’re going to be able to settle the underlying price of the contracts themselves. Because there is no concept of an exchange traded price on the actual Ethereum chain.