January 2, 2019

“This is Not Financial Advice”. A real talk with MoneyToken.

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A cryptopawnshop that Roger Ver helped raise $ 38 million opens up a new Shitcoinoffering “Interview” segment.

Long story short. Before the ice melt in the Christmas bourbon, here we are, dropping the new article. And not the basic one, it’s a real interview.

So, how it was. We celebrated Christmas, didn’t touch anyone as one guy from Ukraine knocked at our door, and said: Hey folks, why did you insult MoneyToken, they have something to say about their business.

And here it is, Money Token COO, Alex Fisun, tells how their startup works and why it is quite risky to borrow money from them in a bear market. At the end (after the direct speech) you’ll find our verdict on it. And yes, we are open for the feedback. Message us, we’ll take your thought into account and discuss it later.

(Find the literal translation below):

— Alexey, how did it happen that the people in your Telegram channel thought that you were from London, not from Odessa?

— TBH, we never hid the fact that we are from Odessa. And that Jerome (CEO) lives in Kharkov. You can see that in social media. During the calls with token buyers, we showed the office.

However, because of expediency, the company was registered in London. And in all the documents we specified London address, as the company’s address.

The teams are still divided now: most of them are in Odessa, part of Alex Russ’s team is in NY, legal entities are in London and Malta, BVI.

Here’s the catch. Initially, you judge from the CCCWatchDog words, but this account doesn’t express the chat’s opinion. He never owned tokens, from the very beginning of the project, it seems that his work in the chat was just to say that no one needed our model and made up some non-existing communities))

— By the way. Who are these guys who wrote in the Shitcoinoffering chat that Money Token is a scam? What were they so upset about?

— Well, that’s not even a question. Apparently, there are 2-3 people or accounts that create FUD on an ongoing basis. In the beginning, WatchDog wrote from his account that the market doesn’t need our product because we’re hiding in Ukraine, and this is bad. And he will never buy our token. Then he changed his shoes and was like “I am an investor, and I have a lot of tokens.” In fact, the start of this campaign was to turn to you. I was chatting with him when he threatened to email you. To be honest, I didn’t think that you’ll take it seriously.

— So what are his motives? Why drown Moneytoken on cryptoplatforms?

— People write disgusting things about us 24/7, and I assume, but I don’t claim, that it is possible that someone hired people for this.

At least, I can judge it from the fact that as investors, these people don’t talk to me, but consider the job offers. We don’t hire all the people who write bad things about us. But we made an offer to one person for experiment.

There is one Watchdog out of 50k users. First of all, we pay attention to those who have questions on loans, etc. Only you did react to the Watchdog messages (False – editorial note). On the other hand, maybe Watchdog is an unpaid fighter for justice. But it is odd. Why changing from “I will never buy this token” to “I am an investor”.

And why exactly us? The project that has a product and a working service, and there’s a real market where many companies are already operating.

It seems to me like the projects that haven’t made a product and raised money for WP and projects like Cashbery (famous Russian-based exit scam) should be the target for this person.

— Got it. Maybe he can be related to a bounty campaign? There are posts on Bitcointalk where they say that you left 1566 participants without reward.

— I guess, in this case, he would have said that he is a bounty hunter. There were a lot of bots and cheats that we couldn’t pay equally with honest users who helped us during the tokensale.

We, ourselves, are still sorting out some of the cases and making additional payments, but there are just a few users like this. Even five months after tokensale, we accept appeals and charge extras.

Here’s a beautiful screenshot for you. We do not charge users like this))

Anyway, talking about your question, I don’t think that Watchdog is a bounty hunter. In this case, he wouldn’t spread FUD during tokensale and would appeal about the bounty. There are no such appeals from him.

— If I understand correctly, you have eliminated the negative feedback on bounty and publications? And now you’re working evenly, does the community believe in you and all that?

— I guess the negative is still present. But we are not interested in the negative feedback from the bots. Honest bounty hunters got more tokens, and they are happy. If there is a negative from legitimate users, we’re waiting for their appeals.

— Okay, let’s move on. Do you really keep the cost of the token on your platform at $0.05, as promised?

— Yes, right. Users can spend a token on the platform for $0.05.

— So, I can buy it on some LAToken for 0.0002 and use it on the platform 200 times more expensive?

— It was our promise to the community. And it is economically beneficial for our users.

— Can you explain it to a person who doesn’t understand, how they can make money on your platform?

— I will explain it on the example of one our client. The ICO project, each month, withdraw ETH in stablecoins or USD to pay for office and salaries. The numbers are following. The price of Ethereum was 90, the project mortgageв about 3000 ETH instead of selling, and received a loan. They paid the expenses and repaid the loan with collateral already at the price of 112 in a week and a half. As a result, the project earned on this operation 66K. And they paid us an interest rate of $ 675. The point is that if the client believes that the price of ETH will rise, and he needs the money right now this is an ideal case scenario.

— I think I get it. You give short-term loans for crypto, like payday loans in the fiat world, right? And what if Ethereum won’t grow? Well, as for a whole year mostly.

— Yes, if you utterly exaggerate, then it is kind of a pawnshop or a loan secured by real estate in a bank. But unlike the real estate or gold, we can quickly evaluate the collateral at any time, store it almost without expenses or sell it in a few seconds. Therefore, a person can get a loan very quickly. Such loans are practically risk-free for both, us and lenders. On the security of 10BTC, we can issue a credit of 17,000. That is approximately 50% of the pledges’ value. If the pledge falls in price by 30%, we contact with the client and offer to make an additional pledge, sell the part of the pledge to pay off, or repay the loan and withdraw the pledge. Recently, we propose to convert the deposit into stablecoin (to wait out, like they say). But this is for longer-term deals. If the pledge falls by 50%, so it becomes equal to the cost of the loan, the loan is automatically closed (that means the pledge is automatically sold on the exchange to repay the loan).

— That’s lit. And how much customers have used the platform for a month?

— 2886 active (there are no proofs for now – editorial note).

— This is both, creditors and debtors?

— So far, only debtors. With lenders, everything is at the launch stage.

— In what stablecoin? Tether or IMT?

— Usdt, tusd, USDC. IMT is not a stable coin. Initially, according to WP, we have two coins. IMT – to get discount on the platform and to become a lender. Fluctuating one and MTC. This will be stablecoin. It is not running yet. We wanted to launch it quickly, in the wake of anger at the Tether, but met with the guys from USDC, TUSD and realized that their coins can be a good replacement for the Tether on the platform. Our own stablecoin is still in the plans. Not canceled yet.

— You can still cancel in theory? And who supports the cases of 2886 active users? Amanda (AI, editorial note).

— 🙂 Projects change roadmaps sometimes. If, for example, we’ll become a part of the CENTER network for the release of USDC, then it will be much better than releasing our own.

The system itself is adjusted. The credits are monitored by the algorithm. Opening, closing, automatic messages. This is the part of Amanda, but not all of Amanda yet. Amanda is a newer interface. Chatbot like a employee cryptobank.

— For now, all this works at the expense of funds collected during the sale? And you give loans from them too, right? And in the future, will hodlers receive profit from the platform or the growth of the coin rate?

— On the first question, yes, that’s right.

About the second one, we use utility token, and its function did not include the distribution of profit from the platform. Otherwise, it would have been security. Utility means that its main purpose is the usage on the platform. In fact, those who have token can already profit from it on the platform, as you described at the beginning of our conversation, using it at a price of 0.05.

— That’s good. Then let’s move on to the final pool of questions, and go shopping for Christmas trees and caviar. SimilarWeb shows website ranking in India. Does the TA live there?

— By quantity but not quality. I mean, there’s of a lot of people, but the amounts are small. The main TA is in Asia: Korea, Japan. But there are some important customers, for example, from Israel, Britain, Germany. We generally focus not on quantity, but on quality. We’re focusing on the big business, on ICO and miners. We almost turned off the campaigns at CMC, for example, because it’s expensive and doesn’t bring much profit, and mostly small customers.

— Another question, about the stable rate of 0.05 bucks for IMT. I can cheat the system, buy it on the stock exchange, and then sell everything on the platform with a gain of 20x. Or how does it work?

— On the platform, you don’t sell token, but use it to pay interest. So, to cheat the system, you will need to become a client, take a loan and keep it for several months. And I wouldn’t call it cheating on the system. We are here for such cheating ☺️

— Is Roger Ver in the role of the advisor is “ Like the poor cat i’ the adage”, given his reputation and the latest events related to Bitcoin Cash? What’s his use on the project as the adviser?

— TBH, he is probably one of the most adequate advisors on the market. Most of them simply sell their photo on the website for ETH or BTC. We don’t work like that. Roger not only helped with PR, Bitcoin.com is one of the most effective sources. Also, he hit clients up for loans. We worked in Tokyo for a bit in his office, we managed educational projects there. According to Roger’s reputation, I will say this: you can love him, or you can hate him. But his influence cannot be denied, and we are satisfied working with him.

— Do you still stay in touch after the end of the sale? Does he can call you and say: Alex, what does that bullshit on Shitcoin Offering have to do with you? 🙂

— Yes, we are constantly in touch. He is usually interested in statistics on collateral in BCH. We talked last week.

— Cool. Let’s then finish with the new year wishes.

— I would like to wish to all the cool projects and their holders that the price of project tokens won’t depend on Ethereum, on fakes like “Vitalik died”, on the hype or nocoiner sayings in the new year, and displayed only real business indicators of the product! And then I think we will all move to a new level of trust and development of the industry. Rally to all!

P.S. Editorial opinion.

Okay, let’s start with what we can call a scam.

October 27, 2018

First of all, let us define the fact that a scam is an event, the purpose of which is the intentional misrepresentation of its participants, the fraud.

In the case of MoneyToken, we take our words back and no longer call the project a scam 🙂 (of course, if the opposite is not proven;)

Pros:

+ MoneyToken performs stated on the site.
+ It has a working business model and customers.
+ Business on short-term loans is a time-tested system.
+ The team is ready for the dialog, don’t hesitate to ask questions, and what is most important – answer them.
+ There is a ready system for creating p2p crediting.
+ Project is supported by the big communitis like bcash.

Cons:

– The business system itself is closely aligned with the “gray” payday loans and pawnshops (crypto only).
– In fact, it is not clear why you would need an utility token. Its utility is far-fetched.
– Investors receive profit only from the growth of utility token that is, again, very doubtful.
– To give a project funds for a loan, it is required to use utility token that is absolutely odd.

Our final opinion is that there are certain problems and inconsistencies in this business model but where you couldn’t find one 🙂 Business works and that what it was made for: problems solving and development.

We urge the MoneyToken team to pay more attention to the tokenomics of the project, the possible to reconsider the role and utility of the token. Perhaps maybe even retraining it into security and becoming a scalable p2p lending startup. Nowadays finding the right jurisdiction with the money is not a big problem.

Anyways, it was a pleasure to have this conversation! We wish you development! But most importantly, remember: you are a public company and work at the expense of publicly attracted funds, and therefore you are publicly responsible to your investors. And yes, no more controversy and hidden schemes, we will definitely find out it and punish you.