Tokens went through Initial Coin Offering (ICO) ) in November 2017 and closed it well prior to the set deadline, reaching hardcap at $15 million. The team is confident in delivering an advanced, robust and appealing product that will attract crypto traders and ERC20 token holders to exchange assets on its Tokens.net platform in near future.
In light of the group’s growth and the development of its overall project, Finance Magnates spoke with Tokens’ CEO Damian Merlak about their ICO experience, targets, and global ICO outlook.
Your ICO was a success story. You reached hard cap of $15M prior to the deadline. What would you contribute to meeting this milestone?
We had decided against paying out big money to expensive marketing campaigns and rather focused on targeting the key stakeholders, future prospects and users of our product. The community became alerted of our project, understood the product and accepted the idea, which was vital and it paid off.
On the other hand, the team was sound, timely, coordinated. I can say that it was very professional from day one.
Your DTR token experienced a rapid growth from its nominal value of $0.01 to around $0.24 in a matter of a month, now at around $0.07. What do you attribute to this fluctuation?
I would say the price growth was associated with the overall positive crypto sentiment at the end of 2017, leveraged by major Cryptocurrencies hitting their record values day after day.
Markets have undergone a correction and DTR was not immune to that driver, however looking at the DTR and future demand by the platform, trend will reverse no later after we launch.
We also noticed certain wallets that were adding DTR to their holdings, which could mean certain interest groups have neared their focus on the token - it may not be far from truth to say some are building stock for the future.
Damian Merlak Tokens' CEO
Where do you see the major advantages from holding DTR?
Firstly, anyone trading on the Tokens.net platform will utilize DTR. For any trade done, fees payable will be in DTR, meaning the platform will go to the market and buy DTR for the fee amount or it will redeem trader’s DTR holding, correspondingly.
Secondly, DTR is deflationary, less supply means higher price. So, compared to their competitors one who buys DTR cheap benefits on the long-run when prices increase as his effective fee gets lower and lower over time.
This heavily benefits trading-intense strategies. DTRs price will correlate with the platform’s volume, meaning DTR shall become a natural hedge in times of market uncertainties or price corrections, a kind of “future crypto safe haven.” Lastly, one who decides to sell DTR eventually has the buyer, that is the platform which buys for collected fees, so you cannot end up having no buyer.
Many see ICOs to underperform and miss their roadmaps. What is happening with your project?
We are ahead of the schedule. These days we have set the environment for testing, and the private beta will be on time as in roadmap, April 2018. Functionalities will grow in the future, but already today it outperforms some peers. We are also working on projects that will greatly improve the robustness of whole platform.
How do you communicate with your audience?
We received some questions from the community why we had not been more frequently posting on FB or Twitter like others. I want to be clear on this. In my annual address in early February of this year, I said it was not our intention to hype the community and abuse social media to provide inflating news.
Projects need time and teams need focus. If you are all around, it gets dubious. Then you get lags, you are left behind. From building a project strategy you move to defending and supporting token price strategy. You lose sight and soon you are out. We stick to the strategy to share on delivery not at the crack of dawn so in someone’s eye it may be too few, but once you put the message and the content shoulder-to-shoulder you understand you receive more meat for less pay.
How do you see future ICO landscape to develop and where do ICO backers need to take extra cautious?
ICOs have become a great vehicle to fund projects, globally, and limitlessly. When participating in an ICO one needs to understand the traction, probability to succeed, both timewise and in scope, is the team competent, meaning do they have reference and experience to deliver, and is the budget sought realistic. Any doubt should be set an alarm.
Eventually, certain ICOs will get funded and will become successful and their token holders will need a reliable market to exchange their assets. We are confident Tokens.net will be the market place where ICO issuers will desire to list their tokens and where token holders and traders will have a safe and reliable trading environment.
