A Recap of AMA: CryptoDiffer x Finminity on 12th October, 2020.
MODERATOR QUESTIONS:
Can you introduce yourself to our community?
@shaikhamdan @Raanngin
@Raanngin — Glad to be here. Thanks for bringing us to your community.
@ShaikHamdan — It’s a great privilege to be here with this amazing community
@Ranngin — My name is Ron. As a management consultant for 20 years working in PwC, IBM, Cognizant, and Atos and then being a serial entrepreneur and in Blockchain for the last 3 years, I have seen both sides as an investor and entrepreneur. This knowledge has given me the belief that I am a problem solver who would like to take away the burden of disadvantaged entrepreneurs.
We wanted to make venture financing decentralized, democratized, and open to normal investors through new generation de-fi technologies. This belief and passion have made me & Shaik (my co-founder) to build this venture Finminity.
We have been working on this for the last 1.5 years. We have built the platform and made it live in www.finminity.finance.
Before Finminity, we had a successful exit in our earlier company called Qlikchain.com (a Netherlands based Blockchain Impact Startup under the auspices of Government of NL accelerator World Startup Factory) which we sold off and moved to this new journey.
Now our goal is to make a Decentralized Investment Services (like an Investment Bank) for Start-ups and SMEs so that good entrepreneurs can get funds from crypto investors during the 2nd-3rd year.
@Shaik and we come a long way from 2012. Shaik and I came to know each other during my PwC days (2012) when Shaik was PwC’s channel partner for selling CRM services in Middle East and Africa.
Here is my profile — www.linkedin.com/in/raanngin/
Here is Shaik’s profile www.linkedin.com/in/hamdan/
I sit in a few companies board as an advisor, I am part of fintech evaluation panels, and write a lot in Medium and LinkedIn
@shaikhamdan please talk about your rich experience of running companies for the last 12 years
@ShaikHamdan — I am in the IT business for the last 25 years and have been associated with Ron since 12 years
For me, I am ahead of technology and due to that, I could introduce a lot of innovative solutions in this region.
First e-commerce website to Blockchain solutions.
Now we are excited with Finminity.
@Raanngin — We are the right mix of Dreamer, Doer, Believer who has solid execution experience.
Can you briefly tell us what is Finminity in 3–5 sentences?
@Raanngin — Finminity is a rewarding, transparent, and flexible token sale platform for startups and SMEs to make Venture Finance democratized. It has been made in such a way that investors’ hard-earned money is not conned and as an entrepreneur, he gets the benefit of crypto ‘crowd’ VC to grow and build momentum.
Finminity brings all of these following functions into a single platform -
*Making Fundraising affordable for Startups and SMEs through (DeFi) and Blockchain. Finminity is enabled by a DeFi Token Engine That Tokenizes Your Investments, Embedded With The Requisite Compliances, be it Utility Tokens or Security Tokens!
*Taking Care of Investor Risk & Rug Pull by Companies through smart contract-driven milestone-based payment release
* A decentralized Investor Services Platform powered by Finminity DAO for permissioned community and investor voting for resolutions and statutory obligations.
*P2P Crypto Marketplace for the community to do P2P trading between themselves
There is no need for constant pitching by the companies to the investor in different times, you pitch in Finminity once through the templatized webpage, Investor KYC to be done once and then the investor can go on investing without any further checks, configurable token engine for companies to deploy smart contracts and even do Events within the platform. Investors are engaged and Companies’ burdens are reduced
You can see our Pitch in https://www.finminity.finance/company-details/43 and how the platform works in a transparent manner.
@shaik do you want to add something?
@ShaikHamdan — I strongly believe with our experience we can be the leader in Decentralized Finance platform
Q) You have told us that Finminity is starting their Token Sale on 16th October. What is the pricing and how would our community take part in the sale?
@shaikhamdan @Raanngin
Yes, we have just closed our Finforce — Early Supporter Round and now starting on to Finstars — Round 1 through In App Offering form 16th October. We have only 300 members’ slot.
One important thing for our supporters to know is that even if you have sold FMT tokens or flipped it, as our supporters we are going to provide you a long-term benefit. The current round that will start from 18th is FINSTARS
Investors in this round get lifetime access to all future companies raising funds through Tokens in Finminity at 7.5% discount. There is a Club Membership NFT token which is given to identify you even if you have sold all your FMT Tokens and made gains.
So the next Decentralized Robot Mining & Services company (sample) that comes over, if the price is 10, a 7.5% discount is applied on top of the offer that is going on at a particular round. And this is for all companies after. This is how we look after a community who supported you at first. In the real world capital markets and investment banking, this is quite prevalent.
As an investor you see how the platform is through our In App Offering and buy the tokens. You will get confident that you are backing something that is running live.
The app is superb, runs in Azure Platform, with Alibaba Database, immense scalability. We are in Ethereum Testnet already. In our next release we move to Matic.Network sidechains to optimize and save from network congestion. Otherwise the platform is ready — our job is now to bring world class companies that will make money for themselves and its token investors.
No promises like delivery coming up next quarter or 2021, this release and that release that we know of from crypto token raising companies 😜😄
COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
Q) How will FTM really “make the internet a safe place”? simply through smart contracts and recommendations for new platforms and projects?
Answer: FTM is the future bank and we provide transparency using Bockchain. We believe this will help the investors and investment community to work with confidence
Q) Each project has interesting stories before it is created. So can you tell people about the story that gave you the motivation to build and develop a great project like your?
Answer: This is interesting and answering these will give you a nice perspective of our vision.
We see ourselves as a problem solver who would like to take away the burden of disadvantaged entrepreneurs. Who are these entrepreneurs? They are bright, first generation entrepreneurs who come from an average middle class ‘non-business’ background, technically competent but don’t have the right connections to get funding and lose the prime time of their lives running a promising business catching up with earn and burn. Why? Just because they never got a backing at the time they needed. My goal is to bring financial Inclusion to startup investing and make venture financing decentralized, democratized and open to normal investors through new generation de-fi technologies.
This is very important
We believe that Finminity can help a settler from Bangladesh with only brains or a Syrian refugee in Netherlands asylum or middle class eastern European tech grad with a great software but no money (better to say underdogs and dreamer) doesn’t die an entrepreneur’s death!
So we wanted to build something for them using a mix of Token (ICO/STO), DeFi, Crowdfunding, Compliance and help the world of entrepreneurs who are in severe fund crunch after Covid. The entrepreneurs of the world need decentralisation, DeFi, democratised venture finance.
With Crypto even the small guys can play big, its where you can pull a punch 1000 times your size.
Q) Do you have support from the government or Start-Up in your country? What is the regulation on governing the Blockchain?
Answer: We are regulated from Dubai Financial Regulators and we follow the strict guidelines of the regulators
Q) Where is FINMINITY road map now? Are all targets in accordance with the current road map? and what are the next steps that will be taken in the future?
Answer: The most important thing is that we have made our Application Live on Microsoft Azure and Alibaba with the Dapp Token engine on Ethereum Testnet. In addition we have got our presence in the Middle East and Europe so that we can get a marketing advantage of bringing good companies with due diligence.
*Now our work is to get our Public Sale Successful through In App Offering. Through this Finminity will get good investors for the companies that come in later to raise funds through Tokenization.
While our platform is live, we are now finalizing the Centralized Exchange where we will launch our tokens.
We are in the process of getting our smart contract validated by a prominent security audit company so that we will deploy the contract after token sale.
We are in the process of finalising the companies that will come over in our platform for funding. As of now these are the possible candidates -
1. Decentralized robotics company and its coin (this company made $1 MN this year selling robots) and
2. A Personal Data Tokenization and monetisation company using Blockchain and Data Privacy..
As said earlier, we have partnered with Matic.Network and in our next release we will move to Matic Sidechain to optimize the transaction cost and congestion of Mainnet.
Q) Many investors hit and run in the sell and sell session after listing on the first exchange. How did Your project prevent early investors from selling their tokens and what benefits would you give them?
Answer: (Shaik) We are providing this round’s investors lifetime discount using Membership NFT tokens
(Rangin) It’s upto them but investors will be investors. We would suggest investors to hold on to some portion of their tokens so that they can get appreciation as these tokens will be used as fees, resolution posting, voting and will appreciate in the middle term also. Do a bit of flip and keep some part for later flip 😄
Q) Do you have support from the government or Start-Up in your country? What is the regulation on governing the Blockchain?
Answer: Yes. We are regulated by Dubai Financial Regulators.
Q) How Finminity brings the Blockchain technology to the real world? Can we consider Finminity to be a brigde between DeFi and traditional finance?
Answer: Super question — While Finminity is Token Sale and Token Engine with Investor Services built in — in the next year 2021 we want to extend Finminity to do security token offering also, through our regulated entities in EU and Middle East.
If we get that we can really bridge the gap of DeFi, NFT, Crypto and Crowdfunding and real world capital needs with Crypto world.
With Covid, we think the acceleration of Digital finance will be more and we see more decentralization and DeFi. We think that Finminity has the right framework of the Token and DeFi world in Crypto and can easily do a strategic pivot when needed ahead.
Q) Many projects only issue tokens but there is no specific use in real-world cases for these tokens, projects must have a utility to prove it can be used in the real-world cases.
So, what are the uses and functions of the $FMT token, and what role will it play in the Finminity Ecosystem?
Answer: Super question. There has to be clear Tokenization use case within the platform otherwise the token value will depreciate. So these are following use cases of FMT Tokens
COMPANIES WHO ARE RAISING FUNDS will pay their fees through FMT Token for
*Onboarding to the Platform
*Token creation & associated smart contract configuration
*Dividend Distribution
*Putting Investor Resolution to Vote
INVESTORS WHO HAS TOKENS
* Gets early access to token offerings of the Platform
* Can do voting in the resolutions and earn more tokens given by the company for their work
* Receive Interest + Dividends
3rd PARTIES and Ecosystem Partners
* Use FMT Tokens to create alternative products like Funds out of tokens
* In the P2P marketplace within Finminity, where these Tokens are traded, the commission or transaction fees can be paid by Finminity tokens.
This is a diagrammatic representation of the use cases. You can see that in our White Paper and Pitch Deck available on Finminity.com
Q) Partnerships are an integral component of any project’s journey. Which types of partnerships Finminity has already attained and what are the plans on this front moving forward?
Answer: We are already in touch with traditional crowdfunding companies. Apart from that many companies are also in touch with us to associate with them as we are the first licensed, DFSA regulated blockchain platform in this region
Q) Can you explain the advantages of ERC-1404? And honestly, the most common type of token is ERC20, do you consider that your token based on ERC1404 can be successful? What plans do you carry out to make it so?
Answer: We are seeing NFT tokens getting hot. Crypto investors are getting cozy and have started believing in that. As time progresses and regulators believe that crypto is a parallel mainstream that needs to be merged, ERC-1404 tokens will see more adoption. If you have to really get a long term benefit of your money, getting ERC-1404 is good as it is almost like a share and can be converted or sold off when the company is bought by an investor or when M&A happens. It needs 1–2 years time to come into mainstream. EU regulator has said that they would like to use this ERC-1404 for Equity Crowdfunding and we are going to get that license soon. 💪🏼
Q) Will it really be possible to crowdfund from any country when the platform goes live? Or will there still be restrictions?
When a creator wants to start a project, what kind of documentation will they need to provide? Is it also a KYC/AML process? Or less intense?
Answer: This is more for Equity Crowdfunding. The company that raises funds needs to come from the regulators geography — say a Finland company has to use the EU crowdfunding platform. Investors can be from anywhere (other than sanctioned countries) if its Security Tokens and it is regulated by a regulator.
For utility tokens this is far more relaxed. Just that ideally all investors should be KYCed and US investors not taken as SEC compliance is tough.
The company that needs to raise funds need to go through a small due diligence and do a Know Your Business (KYB). We wouldn’t support anon companies even if the smart contract is water tight.
Q) What mechanisms does Finminity use to ensure that companies cannot “run away” with investors’ money, and how do you ensure the safety of users’ funds?
Answer: We have a milestone and voting based payment methodology and it will safeguard the investors investments.
Q) Can you tell us about the motivation and benefits for investors to keep the Finmity token in the long run? What plans do you have to help drive the demand and scarcity of the Finmity token?
Answer: The tokens will be used by the next in line companies as fees and needs to be procured and given to us for burning. As we have Finminity as a Token Sale Platform in Europe and YourVC as Security token platform in Middle East which uses Finminity Token engine, our Tokens have a nice hedge.
1) When the Capital Market is good, and more real-world companies come into our platform to get funding. The more they come, the more our platform is used, automatically our tokens are used and demand goes up. Even in a dull crypto market our FMT tokens will provide value.
2) If the capital market is down, we normally see the Crypto market is up. When the Crypto market is up, the wave will automatically take our token up because the token holds value in the near future.
So, our FMT tokens provide a hedge so that it appreciates and holds value to our token holders in all seasons :)
Q) Why did Finminity choose CryptoDiffer community to be made as a place for AMA? Is this community good? And whether in the future will hold another event in this community?
Answer: Yes. We found this is an amazing community to interact and get support.
Q) The market today has a lot of development projects on the Blockchain platform. One of the factors that makes the platform appealing to many users is its special features. So, what are the outstanding features and advantages of Finminity to attract users and investors?
Answer: So what are the problems we are solving. Very important question and this you can relate to 😃
1. Companies now go to multiple investor groups in telegram, pay a lot of money to do events with those groups and try to pitch them again and again. The process and questions are repeated umpteenth number of times. There is no platform aligned to the crypto world where pitching, event management and investor engagement can be done in a single place in a transparent manner for everybody. When investors are ready, companies have to do manually the token agreement or use Hellosign or DocuSign and go back and forth. We bring Ethereum signed agreements that are automatic and non tamperable..
2. After this, companies need to go to developers to build their Fund Release smart contract — with our tokenization engine company founders can configure the smart contract rules in a simple manner without needing to have solidity programming knowledge. And these token engine codes are security audited also.
3. For investors, the problem is that every investment done at seed stage in different companies is Siloed and they need to do KYC again and again. With our platform once they are KYCed and Whitelisted they don’t need to do individual KYC — they can just go and invest with our gateway. They can vote in resolutions, do a check whether the company has achieved their milestone and approve for fund release. They are in control of their risk and also behave as a long term supporter of the company.
So basically we are solving these inefficiencies through a harmonised, easy to use and secure platform that makes the life of Investors and Companies easier.
Q) Defi has become the fastest growing and most accessible aspect of the blockchain industry. How does Finminity feel about this? In your opinion, are we in danger of saturation?
Most investors only focus on the price of the token in the short term instead of the real value of the project. Can you tell me the benefits of holding $FMT for long — term investors?
Answer: Until DeFi comes into real-world, I think it will hit saturation next year in the middle, after Covid vaccine comes in.
Q) Apparently, many blockchain projects are not solving any real problem, they just exist to sell their tokens. What problems exactly is Finminity solving, and solutions are you provide?
Answer: Super question. There needs to be a platform which has a clear token model — not only yield farming and staking which will hit a saturation. There has to be a mix of real life business here.
We have made the following functionality live in Finminity.Finance and we believe with this we solve a real problem for the DeFi and Crypto world -
1. Companies can pitch to investors and associated pitch deck put in an easy to read manner
2. Companies can engage and talk to investors through Discussion module
3. Present their company in events that can be scheduled in the platform
4. Investors can build or be part of a community to talk in specific topics or companies
5. People can Invest through Fiat and Crypto
6. Have their Token Agreement (SAFT) signed through Ethereum signature automatically
7. See their portfolio
8. Investors get interest in their Investment as their funds are kept in client money contract and given to companies when they achieve roadmap milestones. This is done by smart contracts so that rug pull doesn’t happen and small investor money is safe, to the extent possible
9. Investors can vote for resolutions and get rewards for that.
10. Investors can rate companies and get rewards
11. P2P community marketplace like crypto local to sell within the platform without paying extra fees
12. Token generation event and allocation based on the tokens selected as per the regulatory approval of the companies (be it ERC 20 Utility Tokens or ERC 1404 Security Tokens) and the allocation and discount logic during the sale
Q) What kind of advantages do you bring differently for enterprises and SMEs?
Answer: This is a super question. You get extra marks sir.
It has been made in such a way that investors’ hard earned money is not conned and as an entrepreneur, he gets the benefit of crypto crowd VC to grow and build momentum. We have taken care of Investor Risk & Rug Pull by Companies through smart contract-driven milestone-based payment release. In addition we have a decentralized Investor Services Platform powered by Finminity DAO for permissioned community and investor voting for resolutions and statutory obligations.
We need to bring some best practices from real-world of capital markets to the fast moving cryoto world.
Q) Safety and security are always the most important things. What is the mechanism of Finminity Finance to ensure security assets?
Answer: When we do ERC-1404 you need to have a custodian who has to hold the assets. That is a must for the security of the assets not being siphoned off. There are custodians who do that — and regulators also give crowdfunding platforms to be a custodian.
Q) What criteria is applied in selecting project for token sale, do we need KYC to use FINMINITY and how do you totally eliminate scam projects without proper marketing and capital infusion, project dies, how do you convince us you have adequate marketing power and capital to push this project to the top
Answer: Yes we would require KYC for the platform — see the KYC of the Regulators are not for Tax but more for checking the FATF name entry. And with a KYC it becomes so easy to invest in all the companies that comes for funding — be it Utility, Security or NFTs
Q) The hot new term in crypto is “YIELD FARMING”. Why did this get so hot right now? Do you have a plan to develop the Yield Farming system?
Answer: The next company that will come to Finminity will have something of that sort using their robots they sell in enterprises.
