I’m not an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) type of investor. Really, I’m not… As a matter of fact, as of late, I started to hate this irrational ICO hype. The Bancor or Status ICO made me sick to my stomach… not to mention what should have been the OmiseGo ICO (in the end, it turned out to be a black-boxed opaque crowdfunding).
Yet I get it… the teams behind these ICOs aren’t at fault, WE ACTUALLY ARE! We who start sending transactions hours before the actual ICO start, we who basically act like hackers trying to DDoS the Ethereum network because of… you know… FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). YES, we who missed out on an ICO and wait till the token hits the exchange and start rewarding the whales and the dumpers - who don’t even care in what they invest in – giving them crazy profits (just take a look at the BAT ICO fail and what happened afterwards on the exchanges with price surging to almost 10x the ICO price).
Yes, our irrational behavior is to blame, I get that. I like to think myself as a rational investor and before thinking of investing in anything I try to do a thorough research about that particular crypto-project. Maybe that is why I try to stay away as much as possible from all ICOs. Some of the ideas behind the ICOs are very interesting indeed but it’s a looong way from an idea to a functional system that adds value to the market. Just to throw out a number out there, 90% of startups fail in the fiat-based economy, according to a Fortune article several years old; I don’t really know the updated numbers as of 2017 but you get the picture. ICOs are made to fund startups and guess what? Most of those startups will fail unfortunately - 
Maybe that is also why I don’t like to invest in ICOs, because I don’t like my odds. However, thus far, I DID invest in two ICOs I admit: one of them is HUMANIQ. The team behind Humaniq has a very interesting project that tries to help banking the unbanked in the third world. Praiseworthy no doubt but they still have a long way to do that (their ETH-based DAPP is coming soon by the way, should be very interesting to see how the project develops).
My second ICO investment was made earlier today: the project is called Primalbase.
What The Heck is Primalbase?
For those who don’t know, Primalbase is where real estate meets the blockchain. OK, but what the heck does that mean? With the funds raised from the ICO that has just finished by the way, Primalbase wants to establish office hubs in five of the most attractive business destinations in the world: Amsterdam, Berlin, London, New York, and Singapore. If an investor bought 1 Primalbase Token or PBT, he would have full access to a shared aka hot office. If he has 4, he can use a separate office. The interesting proposition Primalbase is putting on the table is this: A PBT holder can be a tenant obviously and use an office from those five locations, a landlord (YES, you can rent the token for others to use using WAVES), and also more or less a ‘shareholder’ who can have a say in the project’s general direction.
So far, only the Amsterdam hub is open for business with Berlin coming up in September, London in December, and New York and Singapore in 2018. Bear in mind all those hubs will be giant SHARED workspaces (up to 2,000 sq meters) for freelancers and entrepreneurs. The idea of shared workspaces is not new, you can check established sites like WeWork to have a glimpse at the market.
Why Did I Invest In Primalbase?
So why did I choose to invest in Primalbase and not in some other project?
- First of all, I very much like the idea of a token based on a tangible thing, in this case an actual space in a shared office hub. I endorse such projects and hope to see more of the same in the future.
- Since we are pledging some of our hard-earned money in an idea, we obviously expect a profit or some kind of a positive ROI. Primalbase project got my attention immediately well… because we are talking about real estate here!!! The real estate business is always booming in these crazy times even though there have been heavy corrections in the past. IF everything goes to plan, the token should be a stable store of value at least but since I predict the freelancing market will continue to grow exponentially and the traditional working market will slowly fall apart, the demand for such shared workspaces should increase in my opinion. Thus the value of such hubs, thus the Primalbase Token.
- Another interesting aspect is the unique opportunity to have a passive income with this token. You can rent the PBT using the WAVES platform for anyone who needs a workspace in those five destinations. By the way, you can’t just rent the token for a day or a week, the minimum period of leasing is 3 months.
- Last but definitely not least, this project is all about the community and sharing things. Unfortunately, Mr. WhalePanda failed to take this into consideration in one of his articles here about this evil called Ethereum. I don’t know about his hidden agenda is – I frankly do not care – but in this article, he said about Primalbase: “Why would a shared workspace need its own token? It doesn’t, it really really really doesn’t.” OK, but isn’t Bitcoin built upon the idea of COMMUNITY and a SHARED ledger we call blockchain? The same thought process could be said about Bitcoin in 2008: why in the world would anyone need a digital currency when the world has fiat? Oh wait, we wanted to get rid of the centralized party and make a currency 100% based on the free market rules where demand meets supply. Can’t we just think about Primalbase this way?
Did any of you invest in the project? Would you invest in it? Why and why not? Opinions are always welcomed in my blogs, especially coming from those who completely disagree with me. Let’s learn something from one another.
Cheers!
Florian G
P.S. This blog isn’t an investment recommendation nor paid by Primalbase. I am just a humble investor who decided to take some risks and endorse a project I really believe in, that’s it. Obviously, I may be absolutely wrong, nobody knows for sure, that’s how an ICO goes. Only time will tell.
Image Credits: Primalbase Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/primalbase/