Feb tether madness explained

Here are my thoughts whats going on with the market and it all revolves around tether.

What is tether?  Tether is a crypto currency that was developed in 2014.  It is a pegged cryptocurrency that is suppose to be 1:1 to USD.  The idea is that each tether is redeemable for 1 USD.  Why would anyone make a cryptocurrency like this?  Well its extremely easy to manage and transfer around the world USDT (Tether) rather than USD.   Instead of wire transferring or moving another crypto like BTC or LTC, you can move your USD in the form of tether between exchanges very easily like you would move any crypto currency.

So whats the problem?

Two things. 

1.  Tether said it wasnt associated with Bitfiniex (one of the biggest exchanges) but when the paradise papers came out, info showed that there was a relationship.

2.  Wells Fargo (tethers official bank) broke ties with them in April of last year.  They said they wouldn't put anymore tether into circulation until they setup a new banking partner.

Since April (especially in Dec), they have created a significant amount of tether (400m total in Oct to 2.1B total in Jan).  On Dec 4th, they were subpoena by the US.  In Jan the auditor that was working with them, cut ties.  They have promised an official audit but have yet to do one.

So what do people think is going on?

Well the issue is that people don't believe they have the USD to back the tether and they have been printing it without collecting USD.  People think they are doing some form of fractional reserve banking.  On the other hand, some people think the reason they haven't showed the bank accounts or any detailed information is for security purposes and could be related to not wanting their USD freezed.  The business model they have makes significant revenue so for them to be a bad actor in the space hurts them as much as it hurts the crypto prices.  If your company was subpoena'd would you keep doing something that may be illegal?  ramp up?  They ramped up significantly after they got subpeonaed which you could make an argument that they would be out of their minds to continue being sketchy.

So why are the prices falling?

A bunch of reasons but uncertainty and fear is one of them.  If tether doesn't have the USD it says it has, then exiting crypto to USD will be very difficult.  There are several people around examining the creation of tethers with explosion of BTC price.  Someone was showing that every $1 tether created, BTC would increase by $10.  Right now in the last couple days they have not created new tether which A. means that no one is buying BTC because they are afraid or B. they know the game is up.

What do I think?

Well I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.  I also am thinking they should be significantly concerned about their security.   One thing that could be happening is they are collecting USD but from anyone (including bad "businesses") which is why they dont disclose their banking partners.

If they come out clean, we will see a 1 Trillion total market cap very quickly.  If they dont, we will probably see another 50% decrease.

Insights network

Insights insights.network 

Category: decentralized survey system

Telegram: 16K - 2018-01-28

Sentiment – Queit

Geography – Global

Recent news – Quantstamp security audit

White paper -https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/insights-network-public/InsightsNetworkWhitepaperV0.5.pdf

Telegram - Quiet

Website - Very good explanation of the tech, and what it does. 

Bounty program :  Doesn't seem to be one

Team:  Nothing noteworthy.  CEO/CCO/CFO of different companies I've never heard of.  One poker player also.

35% to crowdsale.  22,000ETH cap

75M total cap

  3.7M Presale

  22.5M to team and advisors

  22.5M to data providers

  26.25M crowd sale

What I like:

   Idea is interesting.  I don't really know if there is alot of value in surveying (something I should research).  I would assume alot of tracking info that google and other providers use to targeted advertising which is basically automatic by analyzing your surfing patterns is much more accurate and desirable.  IPSOS which is the leader in market research is worth 1.43B.  Insights is suggesting they are worth 5% of IPSOS (not sure how I feel about this).

What I dont like:

   Team isnt great, nothing solid created by the founders.

   I dont see any big VCs backing them.

  Twitter and social channels are really quiet

Suggestion:

 I would watch this sale and see how quickly its reaching its goal and decide on that.  Product, team, idea is all below average/average.

Medicalchain ICO

Medicalchain medicalchain.com (ICO Feb 1st)

  Category:  Medical data storage
  
  Hype:  High

  Telegram:  42k @ 2018-01-27

  Sentiment – Pleasant with sense of urgency

  Geography – Global - founders from Europe

  Recent news – ICO launch mainly

  White paper -https://medicalchain.com/Medicalchain-Whitepaper-EN.pdf

  Telegram - Pleasant.  Very active because of 42K people.  Lots of questions recently on bonus structure.

  Website - Well done

  Bounty program:  Can't seem to find one which is surprising with this much hype on this project.

  Background on team: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2590651.msg27667348#msg27667348

  Comparables:   https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/patientory/  30M market cap

 Token quantity:  500 million tokens being issued at .25ea - which is 125M total
  42.52M TEAM  (12% vested 2 years, 12% vested 4 years)
  38.75M for community development vested over 4 years
  43.75M crowd sale
        of that 19.75 M pre sale  and 24M public sale
............Thats 65% to founders basically...

  Overview:
  
   The basic idea of this ICO is to deploy a storage mechanism for health records.  The coins give access to this storage/data.  The idea is a interesting idea, one big database of medical records that is secured to a individual.  What this would allow is doctors to be able to remote assist individuals by looking single point of truth for the individual's records, as a patients moves from doctor to specialists the data is easily accessible so each doctor is seeing the same data and not missing any crucial data.  I think the most useful piece of this is the data mining that could occur once a centralized location for all medical data is established like they are proposing on this block chain.  People can give their data to researchers and research can pay the users for the data.  The research angle is really interesting to me.

What I like:
The hype is high!  Telegram numbers are high.  Momentum is high.  This ICO has all the right amounts of marketing.


What I dont like:
The link above from bitcointalk.org has a user do some extensive background checks on the team.  CEO has been trying to create many different companies a bunch which have now shut down.  This isnt a bad thing, means hes got drive but I don't see him being able to deliver on this tech.  I see alot of doctors on the team which is great to make the connections in the industry but there is no product or strong emphasis on team members that would be able to accomplish the technical part.  Mostly MBAs, MDs, and a couple self taught programmers.

This is a major initiative.  They are going to try to disrupt organizations that are significantly slower to take on technological advances than more industries.  I have a hard time seeing this ICO actually making a impact anytime in the near future.

Im sure they must have thought about this question and maybe they are solving it by suggesting a secondary method of accessing the files but what happens when you really need the records?  E.G. you are in a coma after a heart attack?  Who opens your records?

My Suggestion:
Its just a big DB to hold records.  Its boring tech wise.  Team isn't strong. The hype is really high.  Closest comparable currently has a 30M market cap and medical chain is raising 125M.  This isnt an ICO i would stay in long but it has all the right boxes checked for a few X short term return.

NapoleonX ICO

NapoleonX www.napoleonx.ai  (referral code ODNPVLBP for additional 5%)

  Category:  Creation of a decentralized Fund Manager - AI bot

  Telegram:  4k @ @2018-01-20

  Sentiment – Pleasant

  Geography – Global - founders are all in France

  Recent news – ICO launch mainly

  White paper -https://www.napoleonx.ai/static/pdf/npx_white_paper.pdf

  Black paper - https://www.napoleonx.ai/static/pdf/npx_black_paper.pdf

  Telegram - Pleasant and really helpful. A couple fanbois but ended up answering alot of questions I had.

  Website - Looks like it was recently redone (well done).  Watched a few videos of older website that looked sketchy.  CTO actually answered a couple of my questions on the website chat which was pleasant/strange.

Bounty program (106 pages)  -  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2169237.0

Overview:
What this look to be is a trading bot platform.  My impressions were that they would raise capital and use those funds in their platform to maintain an autonomous decentralized fund.  which would be impressive.  Reading into this it seems that the “DAF” is actually what will be created from the funds.  The DAF would a fund manager bot that trades.  The tokens give you access to the signals the bot sees that you can use for your own trading.  The more tokens you have, the faster you receive the signals that you can use for programing your own bot if you wish.  The second phase of this is that you can fund the DAFs to trade on your behalf…. SAY WHAT!  So at first im thinking, ok not a bad idea, i toss it a couple ETH and it trades for me.  Stepping back a second i realized that this is going to significantly reduce friction for alot of big wigs in the industry to trade using the DAF bots.  Basically instead of funding a fund with a fund manager, there is no fund manager, its all AI.

Benefits of token:
Token holders get access to signals the trading bots get.  More tokens, faster you get your signals and you can use them in your own bot.

Token holders also get the “fees” the bot would charge to trade on someone’s behalf.

Once the bots are created, anyone can access them and sign a smart contract with their funds to let the bot trade on their behalf.

Team:
Two from BNPP.  Large bank out of Paris. Fund managers.  Team seems to have the connections to pull this project off.  What i wanted to see was a large fund managers but also the key to pulling this off is if any of them have worked with bots or have created any intelligent bots.  Their CTO work as a Data Scientist which is great.  Looks like he's been working in big data field.  This coin is only as good as the algorithms that are at the heart of it.  If the algos dont produce, then coin is worthless.

Incubators:
It looks like or its misleading that they are apart of station F  http://napoleoncapital.com/
“Napoleon Capital also benefits from the support of StationF, the biggest startup campus in the world!”
Not sure if that means they are just in the area so they benefits from it or if they are in the program.



What I like:
This is a real dApp.  At first glance I thought it was a security which I believe would make it hard to get on the exchanges but I don't think it classifies as one.   I like the idea of the creation of the DAFs (fund managers).  Once they are created anyone can fund the bots to have it trade on their behalf.  Great idea.

They have the brains of the bots already starting on page 8 of the black paper:    https://www.napoleonx.ai/static/pdf/npx_black_paper.pdf

These look to have been created by the company for use in the traditional markets already.  They date back to 1994 with good returns.  DAF 9 is a BTC DAF.

The other thing I like is that this looks really low key, hush hush almost.  It’s not a TRON with lots of glitz and glamour and tons of marketing.  They aren’t promising the world.  This is completely doable and within reach.  It’s not a leap.  There is not alot of stakeholders that need to get on board, there isn’t mass adoption or a network effect that needs to be triggered.  Once the DAFs are created, they begin work for whoever wants to use them.  If intending to use the DAFs, which im very keen on, then this is a good coin to have.


What I don’t like:
I don't know if enough info is available on crypto asset trading to allow for the creation of bots.   Do they act the same as traditional markets these guys have had success with their current traditional markets?  DAF 9 is a BTC bot trading since 2010 doing average of 100% better than BTC.  It looks as though it traded very well when the market was quiet but when the market was more volatile it doesn't to do “as well” but still profitable.  Also it seems they have a strategy to fund traditional markets but looks like alot of bureaucracy needs to happen for that.

WePower.network ICO

WePower.network

  Category:  Renewable energy investment

  Telegram:  35k @ @2019-01-19

  Sentiment – Very Pleasant but quiet (barely any negativity)

  Geography – Sun/Wind markets – Big push in Australia for their service

  Recent news – LOI from minster of energy in Lithuania – Startupbootcamp admission in Australia in Feb

  White paper - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_OW_EddXO5RZjhuTlgwNkQtSEU/view

  Bounty program (YES): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2213411.0

Overview:

WePower has very positive media coverage and social media presence.   I had a more difficult time than most ICO finding negative press on them.  One of the bigger news stories on this team is that they are being backed by SBC (Stratup Boot Camp) in Australia.  SBC is giving them access to Energy Australia (owned by a Hong Kong company), Spotless and DiUS.  Energy Australia and DiUS make sense but I’m not 100% sure what the Spotless collaboration adds.  They look like they are contracted by power providers to do preventive maintenance, meter readings, etc.  In their videos/marketing they mention that producers would be inspected and maybe that is the reason for Spotless or maybe some software integrations.

What like:

I think the most powerful aspect of this is the Australia connection.  They are in a transaction from dirty energy to clean energy.  They are rich in coal/gas but you have probably seen in the news they are stumbling and running into blackouts.  They pay some of the highest rates in the world right now at almost 45cents kwh.  You probably also have seen the Elon connection about the 100 day power bank build.  If they can make something happen there, they would get some healthy coverage.

Their team looks solid.  Connections in Estonia’s major power company through Kaspar Kaarlep (CTO).  Equivalent of BCHydro CTO that deployed the smart meters project.  I put a lot of weight on these connections.

What I can’t understand:

I’m having a hard time understanding how a producer is audited and how they deliver the energy.  It sounds like WePower will fund energy producing projects and these producers must accept WPR as a currency for their power.  I’m really having a hard time understanding this.

What I don’t like:

This is an infrastructure project similar to Envion, returns in my opinion seem low currently compared to holding ETH.  If im doing the numbers correctly, expected to sell 270million WPR @ 4000 WPR per ETH which is ~75million raised.  Year 1 they are looking at donation of energy of ~2m.  So approximately 3% annual return?

If I’m reading their whitepaper chart correctly, it’s actually .9% (not even 1 %!).   $171 Euros per year if you invest 10ETH.

Suggestion:

I want to like this.  Overall customer sentiment is positive.  Team looks good, and it looks like they have customers/partners in Estonia already and the Australian StartupBootcamp connection is a huge bonus. 

I think this is at least a good flip maybe more. 

Comparable:  $POWR PowerLedger (10x in 60 days from being listed on Binance)

ENJIN Cryptocurrency

ENJIN

  Category:  In game transactions

  Sentiment – Pleasant/quiet

  Geography – Easter markets (Lots of activity from 2am to 10am)

  Recent news – About to be launched on KuCoin (Jan 12th 22:00 UTC +8)

  White paper - https://enjincoin.io/enjincoin_whitepaper.pdf

 

Overview:

     Gaming is becoming a major juggernaut.  With the explosion of esports the gaming/entertainment market has been really exploding in the last 10 years.   One of the trends in this market is free to play with micro transactions.  Big players like Riot, Blizzard, Zynga and EA are moving away from buy to play and subscription based services to more free to play with in game micro transactions.  ENJ is approaching the space in more of a community approach by using ENJ to launch forums, bots, etc.  They are launching Unity (major engine for games) SDK in Q1 2018 and the mobile SDKs in Q2.  It looks like they have already launched the Minecraft Plugin and Mobile Wallet which is great.  Minecraft has a huge userbase.  The team has no one that is in the game industry that I can tell.  They all look to be gamers though so they understand the industry from only one side of the equation.  I do not see how they will be able to approach the major game companies (if this is going to be their approach) to utilize ENJIN.  The big companies are printing money through in game purchases and that is the major source of $$ to offset development costs.  To be apart of the ENJIN economy they are releasing their control and creating frictionless switching cost to their players to move to other (probably competitors) games.  Right now if you are a gamer playing a free to play game with micro transactions, the more you play the and the more in game items you purchase the less likely you will want to leave your in game items to move to another game.  With ENJIN (I believe) you could easily move your items with you which is amazing for the gamers but that makes me think the developers will not like it.  This could also create a weird situation that you start losing dedicated die hard gamers from your communities as a developer.  Communities are what makes a game.



Suggestion:



My suggested targets:  Collect some profits on the KuCoin launch and wait for the hype to take off on the Unity SDK launch and close the position.  The Unity launch is probably going to be a big deal.

Arcblock ICO

Category:  Off chain transactions

  Sentiment – Pleasant/quiet.  Extremely low negativity currently.  Looks to also have significant twitter marketing (lots of similar retweets, bounty program, etc).

  Geography – Evenly distributed across markets

  Recent news – Lots of KYC / Whitelist

  White paper - https://www.arcblock.io/file/whitepaper/WhitePaperEnV2_en-US.pdf?v=3

Overview:

Took me a bit to figure out what these guys were trying to do.  Their video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXMol2EjAwA#action=share) has soooooo many buzz words its almost like it was a parody! I thought maybe they were trying to make a joke with this video for the first minute.  I understand this is to get the non techies excited about this but it put a bad taste in my mouth to start because I just wanted to understand what they were trying to deliver and the video just made it foggier.  The whitepaper however was much better in describing what they are delivering.  So basically if im understanding this correctly they are literally trying to do what the lighting network is trying to accomplish.

Info on lighting network:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network
https://lightning.network/ ← long video but good technical info.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpfvhiqFw7A ← good short video on lighting network.

If what they are describing is what I believe it is (another version of the lighting network), it is the future and I 95% believe it.  The problem is there is about 3 companies that are much farther ahead and haven’t done an ICO.  https://blockstream.com/ is one of them which you probably have heard of – Adam Beck is on their team. https://lightning.engineering/ is another one – Elizabeth stark is on their team.  To really simplify it, they are basically building a dApp that mimics an exchange.  This allows you to trade off chain between chains like LTC to BTC without taking on the transaction costs of on chain transactions.  It’s a system of IOUs that after x time get aggregated up to the main chains.  Banking 2.0.  Big deal here and I would currently keen in finding a way to setup a major lighting node.  So what arclbock is describing seems to be what lighting is trying to solve.  These 3 companies have come up with “basics of lighting technology” AKA BOLT which is a shared protocol so these different companies can “speak” with each other.  That’s important because if it really takes off this year, Arcblock would be left behind.   The opposite would be also true.

Suggestion:

The tech (if I understand it correctly) is a big deal.  Who is going to come out on top, LN or Arcblock?  I think whichever one makes it frictionless for users.  Overall the sentiment is pleasant, very little negative info on Arcblock.  I’m 60-80% if I would go in on this ICO.  The community needs this type of tech.

Notes:
This is all my assumption after reading the whitepaper and what they are describing in it, I could have read it with a basis lens and incorrectly associated to LN.