In this new series 'Altcoins Survival’, I will give you a closer look at interesting altcoins. Let us see if they can survive the wild landscape of the blockchain.
Each episode of this series will give you information about an interesting altcoin. All researched for own investments and interests of blockchain-technology. Being a "bachelor in economics" with 10 years of experience in the investment field becomes handy, but I really like to analyze financial instruments like altcoins. I learned how to research a company and calculate their future value. I use and explain different techniques while making this series. Therefore, you can expect a report from a qualified person that puts his effort in a post, well driven by his interests and try to inform and educate you about the blockchain and altcoins.
In my introduction post, I told about my vision of the blockchain and the reason for my investments.
It was 6 months ago I started my first serious trade in cryptocurrencies. That moment was the start of something beautiful. Because my decisions are based on own investigations I started reading all information I could find about interesting coins. I began to see it in a bigger perspective, realizing cryptocurrencies can drastically change our world in a positive manner.
In 2005 I finished my study in economics, most important I learned is that fiat money is evil. It does not help us but rules us. I know humanity will not evolve to a unity as long as we have an economy based on money. Therefore we should get an economy based on ideas and knowledge. The moment I saw blockchain technology is able to make this change was my eye-opener. I invested in more cryptocurrencies and now I am here at steemit to share my ideas, beautiful moments and all I think is good to share with other people.
I will not give you any advice but would love to share my knowledge with you. Enjoy!
Sether, a Social Marketing Token
This week we are kicking off with the first Part of this series. We are about to discover the mysteries behind the first social media marketing token Sether.
Sether
A social marketing token (tool) with a mission.
What is Sether
First, we want to know some more about this token. Sether is the first intelligence social marketing platform that connects the blockchain and marketing companies, powered by smart contracts, based on "proof of action". They claim it will be the next big thing in the world of social marketing campaigns. However, who are "they"? You are about to find out.
First, I tell you some more about the smart contracts. The campaigns created with Sether are executed by smart contracts. These contracts include all information about a campaign and they are automatically, transparent and safe. They will be used to publishing ads, monitoring the reach of brands, analyzing reach and behavior, studying the competition and connecting with influencers around the globe. Sether, finally giving brands, agencies and publishers access to a decentralized marketing tool.
Sether aims to change the marketing industry by adding more transparency for brands, agencies, and marketers everywhere. Why is this so important? I am about to explain so stay tuned.
Marketing Business
What is marketing? Which tools marketing use to influence the thoughts and decisions of people worldwide? Which role will Sether fulfill in this world of giants? Answering these questions will help us to evaluate the right to exist and the chances of survival, for a new player on this field.
Marketing is an economic science and includes all activities a company performs, to promote the sale of their product or services. Every brand you can buy, the places where you buy, the price you pay for it and the commercials or advertisements of the product of service. A marketing department or company designs it all. These marketers can choose powerful tools to reach their audience. They can advertise in the newspaper, radio commercials, the internet, commercials on television, football- games, etc. While the internet grows, the activity on social media grows massively, so the biggest part of the budgets for marketing purposes is being spent on the internet. This is a very logical shift because people are spending more time on social media platforms, watching their favorite television shows on the internet and buying more on the internet.
So, practically we can say that Internet is the place where the money is. But where does it go? Who is earning all that money? By 2020 in percentage, 71 % of the marketing budget will go to Facebook and Google. With Sether, this does not have to be the case, because this technology enables seamless direct to consumer marketing. In addition, when that happens you and I can get a share of that big pie that is cut into two or three big pieces now.
What the Blockchain can do for Online Marketing
As the blockchain is the better internet you should say there has to be a lot of possibilities to take advantage of? That's exactly what the people behind Sether must have thought.
"The blockchain is the new Eldorado and smart contracts are the new gold nuggets?"
The old or current marketing tools that they use nowadays, like direct mails and referral programs, are depending on the extent of your database. To do all the check-ups and manage the whole operation, you have to pay many people. With big marketing budgets, you will lose the overview of where your money goes to and what its effect. This will affect the analysis for the effectivity of the campaigns. With referral programs, the public engagement is missing, so they do not work. What these current methods miss, are a direct benefit AND a blockchain.
"So marketers need a blockchain for their campaigns?" This is where Sether comes in handy. With Sether, you can run all your marketing campaigns in the blockchain, monitor performance KPI's in real-time, view-independent insights from their analytics platform and automate partner payments based on impact to the campaign. They can offer different very powerful tools not only to marketers, also to consumers, influencers, and politicians. With smart contracts, you can give discounts and promotional offers to specific customers when they promote your brand on social media.
What does this mean for us? How can we take benefits out of Sether? I have a Twitter account with 2000+ followers. I already registered at Sether's website for participants and participated in some campaigns to test how this works. We look at this a little closer by some use cases.
Customer Targeting & Guaranteed Promotions
I can use Sether to get direct promotional discounts. For example, when I post something about shoes I really like. With Sether, it is possible that a shoe retailer using a Sether campaign offer me 25 % discount, for a purchase at their shop within the next 7 days, using a smart contract.
Customer Loyalty
I earn discounts and promotional offers by promoting products on Twitter. For example, I participate in the campaign of a clothing shop. The campaign asks to tweet 2 times on Twitter about the products I bought at the clothing shop. By doing that I earn a discount of 15 % on my next purchase, using a smart contract.
Marketing campaigns
The companies can save time and money by using Sether. The first time they must set clear terms with promotors, enforcing targets and deadlines based on a smart contract. They can monitor promoters and give bonuses based on social activity, public reactions and reach of the posts. All automatically. When a company wants to hire influencers to promote their product, I can participate if having enough followers the company wants to reach. For example, a company asks for 500 likes and 100 retweets and the reward is ETH 0.1. By reaching 250 likes and 50 retweets ETH 0.05 will be paid and the other half when reaching the target.
Ico's & Bounty Campaigns
To promote their product companies use bounty campaigns that are hard to control. To be sure both sides keep their promises a smart contract can be useful. I have about 2000+ followers that all are into cryptocurrencies. As an example, when I tweet 25 times about an ico with a minimum of 100 words ETH 0.1 will be paid to my wallet.
Politicians
During elections, politicians can use smart contracts for their campaigns. Trust is a big issue in the political campaigns for elections and by using smart contracts, the politicians can openly run their campaign on social media.
In fact, when Sether connecting brands directly to influencers and customers you will be able to:
• Receive loyalty offers directly from brands.
• Get rewarded for referrals and contests.
• Receive instant payments for influencer programs.
• Discover briefs or influencers that fit your brand.
Here you can see I already earned some Sether for participating in campaigns.
Who is behind Sether?
If you thought, Sether is just an idea you are wrong. A better term, in this case, will be a need to improve business management of an existing big player. The company behind Sether called "MWARE", a company that is founded in 2012 and after a rapid expansion now has over 50 employees. Three years ago, they moved into the AI and Big Data sector. Their data platform and database are used by key stakeholders worldwide, to gather and analyze structured and unstructured data. They have partnerships with all major big data providers and some of their customers are government agencies, intelligent and defense structures, financials like banks, telecommunication companies and major retail- companies.
So now, we know an existing company with a big database of consumer information used for marketing purposes saw the possibilities and created Sether to take advantage of them. The company management of MWARE has taken action to use the possibilities by creating the Sether platform.
The Team
Ovidiu Orancea (CEO)
A highly educated man with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Graduated from ASEBUSS Kennesaw State University Executive MBA.
Flavius Burca (CTO)
International experience in IT strategy, acquisition and enterprise architecture in the public and private sectors. Broad and deep knowledge of strategy development, change management, enterprise architecture, system integration and the full spectrum of information technologies.
John Mc. Afee (Advisor)
A great businessperson, build up major international companies like Mc. Afee. Also as an influencer, he is very successful. His followers are doing everything he says. Many people are saying he is a fraud and all sort of things. I want to tell them not to believe everything you hear, only when you saw it by yourself or did your own research. When being paid, to tell his followers a coin is the “coin of the day”, he is the smartest of them all, because at the end his pockets are filled. Fact is that he is a great influencer. His knowledge of how things work on social media is very useful for a company like Sether. This seems to be the perfect position for John Mc. Afee and his knowledge and influence will be a value-adding factor.
Roadmap
Ico
At the start of Sether’s ico, there was no soft cap. Because the team believes in their product and do not have to start up a completely new business. They choose to use all the invested money for the following:
- 55 % to research and development
- 10 % to partner enablement
- 20 % to marketing and business development
- 10 % to running and administrative costs
- 5 % to legal and regulations
The hard cap was set on ETH 165.000 and the maximum supply of tokens was SETH 100 Mio.
On January 10th 2018 the ETH- value risen by five times since the start of the ico.
The team decided to lower the hard cap by five times to ETH 33.000 and because a further rise in value the ICO ended at ETH 22.000.
In addition, they distributed 50 % of the company tokens to all token holders.
The total number of tokens was reduced to SETH 20.136.683.
There are 2.000.000 tokens reserved for customers, to use in the platform.
Where to Buy and Trade Sether
Exchanges
At this moment of writing Sether is tradable on 2 exchanges:
Announcements
Not officially announced yet
- KUCOIN The adding to Kucoin is not officially confirmed and announced yet. The management of Sether says they will announce as soon as they got the official confirmation from Kucoin, but they are pushing to get listed this month.
As soon as Sether gained enough volume, they will be listed on the bigger exchanges like binance.
Marketvalue and historical data
I bought Sether in the pre- ico. Including the extra shares of 50% of the company's tokens, I received SETH 146.0275 and paid ETH 0.25. I did because I think the idea of social media marketing is brilliant so I invested for long term. Last month the price range of Sether lies in the USD 1 - 2 range and still decreases. This is a logical movement at this early stage because many investors cannot handle a drop in price when they expected the opposite. For these investors, it was not smart to buy in the ico. If you bought for the long term as I did do not bother the drop. Also, do not find yourself stupid because if you waited you could buy them cheaper.
The big investors cannot wait because the amounts they buy are bigger than what is available on the market at this moment. Big investors want to be sure of their stake. They will not bother a drop at this moment. They are long-term holders. Smart investors with tradable amount lower than 100 K are buying now or wait to see if the price drops further.
Sether‘s value 1 day ago $ 1.28
Sether‘s current value $ 0.68
The trading volume increased from 46.969 to 95.539
The trading volume increased x 2, while the price is - 0.5 what is good. It means all tokens at the market traded four times in one day. This causes more volume and with enough volume, Sether will get listed on more exchanges.
Conclusion
I investigate Sether for 3 months now and I still believe their idea is brilliant. I guided you with this post through this beautiful company. Sether is a part of MWARE that outsourced a part of their technology stack for the benefits of the blockchain community. Like me, they believe the blockchain will have a massive impact on how humanity will evolve and they want to be a key player in the area.
By reading this post, we learned which possibilities social media could offer in the marketing sector. We also know what we need to use these possibilities. Exactly, a blockchain! Sether is about to connect the marketing sector to the blockchain. I think you now understand why this is a brilliant idea. As soon the platform launch, we will see if it also works.
For now, Sether listed on two exchanges but be listed to more and bigger exchanges soon. When Sether launches their platform, they are going to use the reserved tokens for customer campaigns (2 Mio.) what give a boost to the volume. This is what we can say is going to happen in the near future. If the Sether platform works, there will be some very lucky investors. The demand on tokens will be massive and there are not many tradable tokens. Let your brains make the conclusion. On the other hand, if Sether fails you also know what happens. They end up like a minnow in the desert. It is a gamble and investing is always a risk. However, a risk you partially can eliminate by diversification and by gathering more information as other investors. Just try to get smarter every day and make your own decisions.
Hopefully, you enjoyed this post and gathered useful information that helps you with your own research and investments. Let me know if you enjoyed. If you have a suggestion, a question, a compliment, or a request for an altcoin to examine in a future edition of "Altcoins Survival", feel free to leave a comment.
Next time part 2 of this series. Thank you for reading and until the next part!
Links
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors