So, I was unable to invest on the previous ICO I liked. Unfortunately for me, hard cap was reached too fast, since they raised most of the funding during Pre-Sale (the minimum investment was a bit high for my budget, so I was waiting for the second week of the ICO). This meant I could still invest in another ICO so it was back to “research mode” and to be honest, even if I already had a list made, most of the ones that excited me before started looking … meh. I don’t know if it is because it feels like the same project over and over again, or if I don’t find much use for them in my life (after all, I want to invest on something I could use … not just HODL tokens to sell at a higher price).
Anyway, I haven’t mentioned this on any post before, but I love traveling. However with traveling comes the inconvenience of currency exchanges and banks (unless you feel like carrying a whole lotta cash if you are lucky to be able to exchange for a not so popular currency in your country). The bank I use at home has a good alliance with other banks worldwide, so you can always withdraw cash from their ATMs without paying an astronomical fee and a decent exchange rate. Unfortunately, you don’t find branches for the banks they work with everywhere you travel so sooner or later you have to deal with exchanges or other ATMs that charge higher fees and have worse exchange rates.
This is what made me look a bit more into Globcoin.
So, what is Globcoin? Per their website they are “The currency of the global village” and “Your tokenized currency basket.”
(just in case you were wondering what a currency basket was, like I was as I was reading their whitepaper)
Regarding the team, they seem to be very strong, with actual experience in the business. This is not a project that was launched in the last few months to take advantage of the crypto currency boom. Globcoin has sister companies, and one of them was founded 20 years ago in Geneva Switzerland (Overlay Asset Management by Helie d'Hautefort in 1998). Then in 2012 key members “decided to take full advantage of the new technologies and offer innovative currency management services”.
This means that Globcoin already has a platform, and the reason they are carrying our an ICO is to improve it (the platform) by “taking advantage of the best blockchain technology” and expanding both the use of their platform and currency baskets to pretty much everyone. After all, part of their mission is to: “provide the cryptocurrency community with the best solution to ensure not only wealth preservation of their portfolio in fiat currencies terms, but liquidity, stability and safety at a small cost.”
If this sounds a bit confusing, think of it as a way to diversify your portfolio by combining Fiat and cryptocurrencies (while being able to lock the value of your crypto currency portfolio, because you decide which one works best for you).
Yes, I am all about projects that are looking into disrupting conventional banking and making crypto currency available to the masses (I think we are past the time when BTC was so secretive and exclusive, now people want to be able to spend their crypto currency! (or at least a portion of it)), and even though having a tokenized currency basket sounds great (there is some “stability”), I am more excited about their Multi-currency payment card because I just think it is a great resource for travelers, and people who are not experienced crypto-holders, who need an easy, safe and affordable way to convert their money into a currency they could use anywhere in the world without paying exchange commissions, and if you need to withdrawy money from a Mastercard ATM, the first withdrawal is free while any additional withdrawals are Euro 1.50 in the SEPA region). This is something I would actually use on a regular basis.
The name of their token is GCP and it stands for Globcoin CryptoPlatform. It is an Ethereum based utlity token, so if you do decide to invest, make sure you have a wallet that supports ERC-20 standard tokens so that you can receive your tokens and also send your payment from your Ethereum wallet (some of the ones they list on their website are MyEtherWallet, MetaMask and Mist to name a few). Do not send your ETH from a cryptocurrency exchange address.
However, you should take into account that Globcoin has a Dual Token system and their GCP token (ICO token) is different from their GLX Global Currency token.
I was a bit confused about the GCP and GLX tokens, but they do have a great article on their medium blog (https://medium.com/@globcoin_io/the-difference-between-gcp-and-glx-d38858afe9a6)
Their Pre-Sale started on January 8th, 2018 through January 12th, offering a 70% bonus. Actual Token Sale started on January 13th and will finish on January 31st so there is still a bit over 6 days left of the ICO (they currently have a 30% bonus). So far they have raised 250 ETH and USD 1’250,000 in Fiat contributions, but before you get excited about being able to contribute In FIAT, please note that minimum Fiat investment is USD 25K.
As for me, will I invest? I am not sure yet. Their token seems very expensive at current ETH prices, USD 8.3 per token taking into account the 30% bonus (without bonus it is like USD 10.8 per token!), so I would only be able to get 13 tokens as I was planning on investing the minimum 0.1 ETH. I do love the idea behind their multi-currency card, but since GCP is a utility token that will be needed to “exchange it for our currency GLX” I am not sure how far 13 tokens can take me. I also like to invest in an ICO to HODL, so with such a small investment how much profit could I make? To have a crystal ball …
Another concern for me was their hard cap. To be honest, it freaked me out once ETH prices started rising. I was hoping the team would make a new hardcap determination announcement, and have asked them regarding this on their Bitcointalk Ann Thread (you can find me as allycn), so as soon as I hear back I will update. Hardcap is set at ETH 150,000, and back in November 16th, 2017 when the Bitcointalk thread was launched (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2413997.0) that amount might have seemed reasonable as it translated to a hardcap of USD 49.5 million (at USD 330 per 1 ETH). However, at the current USD 1080 per 1 ETH their hardcap is over USD 160 million (when ETH reached about USD 1,338 just last week that meant a USD 200 million hard cap). To me those numbers are insane, considering most ICOs set a USD 40 – 50 million hard cap (at least that is the “standard” amount I have seen in several ICOs).
So I am hoping the team will address these figures as well as those related to the soft cap. What ETH price will they take into account to determine if soft cap was met? Will it be the ETH price from when they published the whitepaper and opened the BTCtalk thread or will it be the current ETH price?
Anyway, even if this might not be the ICO for me as I have some doubts, please remember to take the time to do your own research before investing. I am no financial advisor. I am learning as I go (making mistakes along the way) and what I think is interesting and good, might not work for you. If you want to learn more about Globcoin, visit their official ICO website: https://globcoin.io/ check out the team and read their whitepaper. I would also recommend for you to visit their Medium blog and Globcoin website as you can find even more info there.
Remember that investing on any ICO or cryptocurrency is risky (as is any type of investment), and there is no guarantee of returns, so never (ever) invest more than you can afford to lose.
Happy ICOing!
Links to some of my previous articles: