I've been using the open Beta version of the Crypto Ping App for part of the ICO period, and it's an interesting concept that some may find useful, especially if you are planning to trade crypto coins on an intra-day basis.
I was curious about the ongoing cost of using the bot after it is released as a subscription based product, and also what the developers are offering by way of a discount for investors contributing during the ICO period.
The answer to the first question can be found in the FAQ section of the Crypto Ping website :-
https://cryptoping.tech/faq/subscription
So, the recurring monthly charge is 0.01 Bitcoin, and with bitcoin currently sitting at $2710 US, this equates to just over $27 per month.
Then I looked at the reward for subscribing during the ICO, and was a little surprised to discover that you need to deposit 100 Bitcoins to obtain a rather modest bonus of 15%
Hmmm
So if I invest the threshold level of 100 BTC = $271000, I'll get 15% extra tokens worth $4,065. That's 271 thousand dollars I would need to effectively risk !!
Whilst this may appeal to some folks, I'm not quite that well off to invest $271K US just now, so I'm not going to get the bonus if I participate in the ICO.
Next, I was wondering how much the average investor has actually contributed during the ICO period. The answer to this can be found once again on the website
So 4258 people have invested a total of 880 Bitcoins, (worth 3.75 Million dollars). Dividing 880 by 4258 we get an average investment of 0.2 BTC per person that will allow them to continue to use the post-launch version of CryptoPing for 20 months at a subscription cost of 0.01 BTC per month
The ICO Offer proposes that the token price should grow, and remain high, as they 'burn' tokens with each new subscription, so this may tempt some to invest :-
Finally, how to actually make money using the bot ? The developers state that the bot should not be used as a signal service :-
So, if your expecting buy and sell signals, this is not going to happen.
Since using the bot, I have only seen positive signals - i.e. increasing volume and price signals.
Whilst this is very useful, if you don't have a trading background, just blindly jumping into a buy without proper technical and fundamental analysis could see the value of your investment fall, as well as potentially rise.
This is partially mitigated by the fact that we appear to be in a booming crypto currency market just now, and so the risk of losing money would appear to be less than the risk of making gains, especially if you spread your investments across a basket of crypto currencies.
The great news is that the developers are kindly offering a continuing free version (although with somewhat less features than the subscription version) and this will undoubtedly be worth having as an investor / trading tool.
As to whether to subscribe during or after the ICO period ends in a few hours is really down to each individual.
The way I'm using the signals is as an alert, which then prompts me to open up a detailed chart where I can apply some extra decision making as to whether to purchase that currecny or not. Typically, this will involve technical analysis similar to that which is applied to stock or forex price charts.
I'll be monitoring the progress of the subscription and free versions of the Crypto Ping Bot and will update the community with my findings after the end of the ICO period.