DateCoin is the ICO of a “pragmatic dating” service. The pre-ICO is over and the company reports that it raised 2213.75 ETH (€1,713,755). In total, they plan to get hold of anything from €3.5m to €34m (there is a scenario for every budget). And then, of course, conduct a revolution in their industry thanks to the almighty blockchain. Let’s have a closer look.

Naming and Website

The name is clear and simple: a dating service drawing an analogy to the gold of the cryptocurrency world. The website Datecoin.io looks like those of Brazzers, BangBros, JulesJordan and other porn studios. Hot girls with full lips look at you from each slide, as if hinting: come on, big boy, invest some crypto or fiat in us and you’ll have a sleepless night.

Following the succubuses are two very informative videos that repeat each other and try to convey the same mantra about the billions of moneys in the online dating market. And about how blockchain will change it and help to solve loads of currently existing problems. And a cryptoblog with inflated view numbers (compare the number of views and interactions) – they’re both lying! This is evidenced by the third video, in which Datecoin CEO Nikita Anufriev takes part in an ICO battle.

We asked our Russian-speaking friend Nikita from the crypto scene to translate it. It turns out that the company expects 95% of Datecoin app users to use fiat currency. And they only need blockchain for investment!

Anufriev says that he launched the “pragmatic dating” service Denim in 2015. Now he has 500,000 users that bring in $1,000,000 a year. He wants to scale up and has been offered $3-4m for 50% of the rights to the service. But this money isn’t enough to meet his goals. And in this case, blockchain isn’t a goal, but a means to an end for attracting investment.

In addition, the CEO was asked a very pertinent question about the buyback of dividend tokens. In the US, they have been given the same status as securities and the DateCoin tokens that the company intends to repurchase from investors in the future would never pass a Howey Test. Nevertheless, Anufriev simply said that the lawyers should deal with this. This was one day before the start of the pre-ICO.

Social Media

The Facebook page is uninformative with 700 subscribers, each post having around 200 likes and reposts. But zero comments. It’s like the fucking Ku Klux Klan. All in hoods with torches and one bot-like face.

Twitter is the same. 1,400 followers, 300 likes and reposts. Again without comments.

Medium – 29 followers, 30 likes on each post. Awful writing. Why even bother?

LinkedIn – three out of the five people mentioned no longer have any relation to DateCoin. But we’ll come back to that.

The Telegram channel has almost 1500 subscribers. There is lively correspondence between potential investors and the company’s CEO. It is not possible to view the post reach.  

Similarweb shows that 27% of visitors to Datecoin.io came from social media, of which 95% from Facebook. Given the numbers we’ve already seen, the amount of traffic isn’t great.

White Paper & Product

The 32nd and final slide of the White Paper contains a disclaimer. Basically, all living beings on the planet can be ripped off and the DateCoin team won’t be to blame.

Otherwise, it talks about the growth and prospects of the dating industry around the world. As well as about its problems: low search relevance and weak cybersecurity. Then the team talk about how they launched Denim in 2015, which quickly became the market leader for dating in Russia. In the reference table, it looks much more impressive than the giant that is Tinder.

The problem is that the statistics don’t back this up yet. Similarweb shows that the Denim/Cinderella Project site is at a whopping 8,268th place in Russia (for comparison, Mamba.ru and Loveplanet are numbers 89 and 447 respectively). The Facebook (with an unresponsive audience of 1700) has not been updated for a long time and the same can be said for VK (3000) and Instagram (2500).

Unlike many similar ICOs, the product has been ready for a while, but the descriptions of different versions in the AppStore are virtually identical. They’ve been promising to add a search for people nearby for a year and have 3.4 stars. The rating on Google Play is 4, but there are many complaints about bugs. One girl wrote that the application made her enter her breast size. In response, she suggested that the men specify their penis size. But the main content of negative comments concerns the constant paid verification that fails from time to time.

The creators explain that cup size is in the questionnaire due to their desire to make the most complete portrait possible of a user. Which, with the help of artificial intelligence, will revolutionise the dating market. The DateCoin team promises to prevent fake accounts and to protect messages in the application as much as is possible. But it is not made clear how. After all, symmetric encryption can also be hacked if need be. So it’s certainly not a USP.

It is planned to stimulate token circulation through the features of the app, which will only be available in return for DTC. In addition, each year the company will spend 20% of its profits on buying back tokens from investors and burning them. The ultimate goal is to burn all of them and return to the fiat money world.

Team and Advisers

As we said earlier, the team on LinkedIn and on the website are two very different things. On DateCoin.io, it includes only 8 people. There is no designer or SMM. Judging by the product and its social media activity, they are not required at this stage of development.

CEO Nikita Anufriev is a very real person who speaks at conferences, replies to messages and gives interviews. Apparently, that’s why he doesn’t have time for his Facebook page anymore, which was previously home to regular reposts of news items about Navalny and Putin, as well as YouTube videos. Only recently have links to DateCoin appeared alongside pictures of expensive cars and suits.

It is unknown what co-founder Alexey Sinitsin did before DateCoin. Neither LinkedIn nor Facebook helped us to find out.

The most fun character in the team is PR man Oleg Gervalov. He only recently graduated as a journalist and criticises the Russian regime on Facebook with a vengeance.

The mystery of the century is what happened to the team members listed on LinkedIn. Who knows who is to blame: the Langoliers? Aliens? Trump? Who knows. It is not certain what happened to the project advisors either. Currently, Chinese lawyer Simon Choi is shown as the only one. A white lie was required to learn more about the relationship between DateCoin and their former advisor Igor Karavayev.

Remember that an ICO is like married life: domestics, fights, constant tension. And the cool, successful experts from DateCoin are more in favour of pragmatic relationships.

Crowdsale and Budget Allocation

The crowdsale will take place in March. Depending on how it goes, the company will choose a development path. However it works out, this is a good move. When you go to the supermarket, you make decisions based on the amount of cash that you have, right? These guys are exactly the same! Another thing is that they’re unlikely to raise any more than the minimum amount for scaling up the project.

The team plans to spend 36% of the proceeds on developing the service and 48% on promoting it. It seems that everything here is smooth and business-like – there’s not much to find fault with.

Rating

4 pieces of shit

The risk score of DateCoin on ICORating is 3.6 out of 5. The uncertainty probably comes from the changes in the team, the departure of advisors and the lack of a truly outstanding product. Anufriev and Co. are clearly lying about their popularity and fanciness, otherwise the website and social media would be in the public eye and have the performance figures to match.

But the worst part is that the project doesn’t need the cryptomarket at all. They’re just trying to make money from the hype. And then, in the best case, they will just slightly improve their average-as-shit product. Men from Tinder will never find out about it, even if they go to Russia to look for “pragmatic” women. As for investors, all we can do is sympathise with them. There’s not even a hint of dividends here.