Most of you, at least once heard of blockchain technology, or know that with this technology you can safely work with assets on the global Internet, write everything in the public registry and let users be anonymous.
Because people started actively using cryptocurrency, If they were previously traded on the stock exchange, now we can buy various goods and services from each other, pay in store, this blockchain is called blocking block. This technology has become very popular, and thanks to that, intermediaries such as banks or payment systems are excluded.
Menapay is a very interesting ICO, it is very ambitious and broad in scope. It has similarities to other projects the most prominent being Omisego. It is a little more focused on a specific geographic location, the Middle East and Africa. It’s looking to be the payment gateway for 420 million people across 18 countries in that region. Menapay has an ace up it’s sleeve in this regard as it is a 100% Islamic compliant non-bank digital solution.
MenaPay token will be an ERC20 token so it has the stable Ethereum network to exist on and will have immutable and viewable transactions to build trust with the people and the merchants alike. The current advantages of the MenaPay token are:
- 75% profit sharing will be paid to MenaPay token holders
- Fast secure and inexpensive payments across boarders
- Desktop and Mobile Wallets
- 100% Islamic non-bank compliant
- MenaCash USD tether
- Face Recognition for Secure Transactions
REMOVING THE LIMITS
The MENA territory spans 20+ countries and hosts over 400M residents. As you can imagine, from a monetary standpoint, the region is heavily fragmented.
Let’s just say they don’t operate from the same ledger. Numerous currencies spread over many countries mean the area’s payment options are anything but unified.
But despite the fragmentation, a common language exists: Arabic. Well over half of the people living in the MENA region speak the language. That’s exactly why MenaPay chose Arabic for all interactions within its ecosystem.
Doing What Has Not Been Done
Since some of the countries within the MENA region are small or downright dangerous, it’s common for residents to travel back and forth between many of them.
Think of all the scenarios in which one member of a family is working in a foreign country. And a good chunk of their earnings needs to find its way back to the worker’s country of origin.
And now comes the fun part: Fiat exchange rates. Remittance fees can be astronomical, which is a frustrating reality for those who are merely trying to provide for their family.
Paying high fees, sometimes equal to or greater than the remittance itself, can be nothing more than a forgotten, unnecessary evil transformed by the blockchain.
Swinging Skyrocket Vaues
Multi-digit swings — in either direction, and on a daily basis — put a damper on the use of crypto.
If you’ve been in the space long enough, you’re aware of the early Bitcoin adopter who in 2010 traded a few greasy pizzas for what would become millions of dollars in BTC at 2017 prices.
As much as I love my crypto, I rarely get the urge to spend it. The notion of unrealized gains is too strong. The regret would be too much for me if I filled my stomach in exchange for what would one day transform into a life-changing windfall.
Plus, the law of supply and demand is at play here. in the case of bitcoin, only 21M coins will ever exist. And, it’s estimated that a good 4M of the total supply is lost to phantom wallets with owners lost their private keys.
Currently, I view bitcoin as a store of value rather than a means to make purchases.
Tying the MenaCash token — in an ironic twist within the cryptosphere — to USD overcomes this issue.
You may not be a fan of your fiat and its diminishing spending power, but the USD’s years-long losses and gains are nothing compared to what happens on CoinMarketCap every single day.
And when you can easily trade a stabilized cryptocurrency for fiat — back and forth within a DApp — and vice versa, spending crypto is a non-issue.
Profit sharing is always a nice positive in a token I’m looking to invest in. It takes tokens out of circulation and that drives up prices. MenaPay only has a https://www.menapay.io/onepager.pdf available atm so it isn’t completely clear but it looks like staking MenaPay tokens on your mobile phone or desktop will help secure the network an platform and process transactions. Having a mobile wallet is huge for this cryptocurrency recent polls have mobile phone ownership at 75 to 80% of the Earths population. This will give this population of people a secure way to store and spend money they have never had before. If MenaPay is successful this will lead to mass adoption in this local region and maybe even spark global adoption of cryptocurrency in general.
The 100% Islamic non-bank compliance is the big difference for this crypto compared to others. This is taking a huge population that simply won’t use a bank due to their religious beliefs and giving them a Platform and a currency that allows them to save and spend money in a way they have never been able to. If just the people who believe in Islam start using this that would be enough to drive everyone else in the region to start using it.
Token usage, the most important part of any cryptocurrency review. If the token isn’t tied to the platform sufficiently it can never go up in value and thus making it a bad investment. The MenaPay token is the driving force behind this platform. It is the payment medium, it’s able to be staked to earn rewards, it is the payment for P2P transactions. So yes, the MenaPay token is tied sufficiently to the platform and will go up in value as the platform does.
Some good and some average things to say about this token distribution. 64% in the token sale along with 15% bounty is very very good. That’s 79% of the tokens going into decentralized hands and should help make this token more stable once it becomes publicly traded. 16% to the Team and Advisors which is a very fair amount, the only problem here is there isn’t a vesting period stated for the Team or Advisors (hopefully this will be addressed and added in the full whitepaper). Unsold tokens will be burnt is always a good thing, less tokens means yours are more valuable.
The hardcap of 25m is a little high atm. I don’t want to go to negative on this because the ICO isn’t scheduled to happen until November which is 3 months away. If the MenaPay ICO was to take place today I would be hesitant to invest because a 25 million dollar cap would put MenaPay at 218th on CMC. While I believe this project has great potential I like to see gains right out of the gate and that might not be possible in the current market climate. Now this all goes out the window if we have some growth in the next 3 months. The Desktop and Mobile app will be live when the ICO happens so people will be buying into a working and usable product (very rare).
If we see an uptrend or better yet a bullrun in the market this is an extremely good ICO to jump into. ~400 billion marketcap should see this token give a 3x to 4x return from ICO prices. With a working platform and the advantages it has with the region it’s targeting, MenaPay should quickly crack to top 200 on CMC very quickly after exiting it’s ICO.
Couple last notes. This region in general has very poor banking options (for those that would even use them) many many different currencies. Having one secure and easy to use currency would make life better and easier for the people there. The MenaCash USD tether is a big thing to remember as it will help keep volatility down. You will be able to trade 30 major cryptocurrencies for MenaPay tokens on their platform (They haven’t listed them yet, hopefully in the full white paper). They are already working on integrating APIs and SDKs into their platform hopefully those will be live by the time the ICO finishes.
Looking at the project’s roadmap, next month will bring the ‘grand’ launch of the project’s DApp. That’s a refreshing approach within the ICO space — lots of ICO projects are nothing more than a grandiose idea.
My theory is that before collecting funds from contributors to the project, the MenaPay team wants to give participants a home for their soon-to-be-minted tokens.
At the end of the day, absolutely everything hinges on the MenaPay DApp. If merchants are to begin accepting their token and the MENA population is to start transacting with a custom crypto, the platform must be absolutely stable.
TEAM
Link to MenaPay one pager: https://www.menapay.io/onepager.pdf
Link to MenaPay homepage: https://www.menapay.io
DISCLAIMER - This article was created in exchange for a potential token reward through Bounty0x
BOUNTYOX USERNAME - Tcrypton