BMJ Score: 2.6
Market
Transparency
Team
Token
Adoption
Quick Summary
112 crypto investors read thisCommentary
Today, there are more than 1,800 exchange market platforms, and despite the plethora of options for trading, individuals feel these platforms are too expensive and lack speed, customer support, and market transparency. TradePlace wants to solve these pain points by introducing an exchange platform with a free analysis service where experts find the best market trends, and the exchange itself is the fastest on the market. It will also feature a forum for the community where individuals can vote on adding new tokens to the exchange, as well as warn others against scams. We like the idea of having a platform to simplify how individuals withdraw funds and efficiently verify users. However, this is an extremely saturated market, and success of the platform will be entirely contingent on the demand for crypto...something that is currently facing a sharp decline. TradePlace does do a nice analysis of the competitive landscape, but highlights that platforms like Bitfinex, bittred, Okex, and BitStamp also have differentiators like fiat trading, customer verification, and margin trading. Furthermore, TradePlace is not yet functioning; the platform will not be released until the first quarter of 2019. The project also plans to leverage its own blockchain, which has not yet been tested, and will not be finalized until 2020. While the token is pure utility, we are impressed with the team behind TradePlace. The project features some notable advisors and makes it clear that partnership growth is very important. Though the team is small, it has a wide array of experience within blockchain, finance, business development, and IT. At the end of the day, there is a need for an exchange that has low fees, provides good customer service, and also features market analysis. We worry that TradePlace does not have enough marketing, and that its own blockchain development is pretty far away. In this saturated market, competition is a certainty and timing is key to success. We hope the TradePlace team can accelerate the project’s growth to play in the market.
Investment Information:
- How to invest: To participate in the presale, register at the following link and continue with the KYC procedures.
- Discount: 50% bonus throughout presale
- Eligibility: Residents of the United States may not participate.
- Token Price: 1 XTP = $0.25 USD
- Jurisdiction: United Kingdom
- Minimum Contribution: 0.05 ETH
- Payment accepted: ETH
Market: 2.5
- Problem addressed/solved: The most popular crypto exchanges have limited functionality in terms of customer service, process speeds, and more. Investors want faster platforms, better customer support services, more information about existing cryptocurrencies, awareness of the latest breaking news about cryptocurrency and blockchain tech, lower fees, less difficulty in withdrawing, and many other things.
- Target customers/customer/ segments/verticals: TradePlace wants to target the existing crypto trading/investing community. Additionally, TradePlace wants the less knowledgeable investors to take advantage of its free analysis provided by top crypto experts.
- Value creation: TradePlace isn’t offering anything we haven’t seen before, but it’s instead focusing on creating a community within the platform where crypto enthusiasts actively trade information, share analyst reports, and enjoy a simple, effective crypto exchange.
- Competition: TradePlace will undoubtedly hit heavy competition in this space. Hundreds of other blockchain startups want to “reinvent” the way we use exchanges. On top of the startups, established exchanges like Binance, Gemini, and Coinbase absolutely dominate the market. TradePlace will attempt to differentiate itself with its interactive “forum” where the community will talk about recent crypto news, provide analyst reports, and expose scam coins.
- Market size/potential: The market for this project is heavily dependent on the success of crypto in general. The market has tumbled over the course of 2018, so not many investors are too keen on jumping into the investing game again. Plus, the majority of the market is controlled by Coinbase and Binance.
- Regulatory risks: The crypto market still faces heavy regulatory mandates.This space is very risky as there is no set standard for how international governments will view and classify crypto as assets.
Transparency: 2.5
- Investor value: XTP is a basic utility token that will serve as the primary form of payment for fees on the TradePlace platform. Thus, TradePlace investors are reliant on the traction that the exchange receives when it comes to increasing the value of their investment.
- Disclosures: TradePlace has all the documents and common disclosure pieces that we like to see, but its lack of an MVP certainly hurts its case. Furthermore, there is no information on the site or in the whitepaper on how the ICO funds will be spent.
- Token distribution: Founder & CEO 7%, Team Management & Partners 8%, Advisors 7%, Marketing ICO 15%, Marketing Pre-ICO 20%, Team Development 8%, Exchange Continuous dev 25%, and Reserve 10%.
- Use of proceeds: Information unavailable.
- Caps: Soft cap: 10,500 ETH; Hard cap: 75,000 ETH
Team: 4
- Track record: TradePlace has 10 core team members and an additional seven advisors. The advisors have a strong presence on this project as many have successful projects that they’ve worked on in the past. Jason Hung, co-founder of Keyman Technology and IDACB advisor, is a top three ranked ICO expert according to ICOBench and has advised over 40 projects as of writing. As for the management team, Youssef NCIR, CEO & Founder, has over 13 years of management experience and even worked as a strategist for a crypto project from 2014-2018. The team looks relatively strong on paper, but a red flag pops up as you follow invalid LinkedIn URLs or find that many of the members don’t list TradePlace on their profiles.
- Integrity: TradePlace has a solid core team and an impressive group of advisors. Many members of each group have worked on crypto projects in the past or even led their own team. Having said that, it’s difficult to decipher whether this team is all in on TradePlace since many do not list the project on their LinkedIn profiles and some members don’t even have an online presence. TradePlace must utilize social media and other forms of contact to ensure investors that the team is focused on the success of TradePlace each and every day.
- Youssef NCIR, CEO & Founder (LinkedIn)
- Amine Akkar, Chief Development Officer (LinkedIn)
- Brahim Out, Investment Relationship and Manager (LinkedIn)
Team Members
Token Mechanics: 2
- MVP: TradePlace has no MVP or applicable beta version as of writing. The roadmap, although incredibly detailed, does not give much information on whether an MVP will be released or when TradePlace even plans to launch the exchange. Under “Q1 2019”, it states that the project will make a deadline to start the exchange.
- Token use case: TradePlace does not provide us with too much information on its token. What we know is that it’s an ERC-20 utility token that will be used for the payment of transaction fees of all exchange and trade operations on the platform. A huge part of the platform is its voting feature, as most exchanges do not take direct user opinions into account, and the XTP token will allow users to cast their ballots on the platform.
- Value-added: The TradePlace token has a bare use utility on the platform. Other than paying fees, XTP has no other value within the platform. TradePlace will be totally dependent on the growth of users on the exchange to drive the value of XTP.
- Decentralization: TradePlace will operate on Ethereum’s decentralized platform, but its long-term plans include migrating to its own blockchain.
- Token Supply: Max supply of 500,000 XTP.
User Adoption: 1.5
- Technical difficulty/investment expertise needed: TradePlace wants to create an all-in-one exchange platform where it can foster a community of like-minded crypto investors. The community can report scam currencies, read news articles on market conditions, and have, in theory, greater liquidity than other exchanges. TradePlace provides a full breakdown of the project with its YouTube explanatory video.
- Halo effect: TradePlace has acquired partnerships with three companies for marketing, design and development, and the exchange platform. The companies won’t immediately catch your eye, but CoinJoker and Boost Your Media are relatively popular players in this space.
- Buzz: TradePlace is one of the few projects where you could really make an argument that it’s generated no buzz at all. Its Facebook page has a grand total of two followers while the Twitter account barely nudges over 200. The engagement on each profile is negligible. As for other news outlets, the project has been featured on a few lower tier ICO sites but has yet to be picked up by a mainstream site.
