One must be very suspicious about ICOs these days.
I will start:
- Where is your BTCtalk ANN thread?
- Social Networks of the core team members?
- Your Twitter/Reddit/Telegram are empty. Have you guys just started out? Why should we give money to such a young team?
- Roadmap?
- Are you guys incorporated?
Thanks for the answers.
@alexanderisora Hey Alexander,
We're just coming out of stealth and thought we'd do product hunt before traditional social channels - maybe a bad decision? We'll do BTC talk probably early next week.
You can google any of the core team members and find our socials.
Roadmap is in the whitepaper.
Yes
Totally not a scam. Check our github. Feel free to message me or anyone else. We want to have full transparency, so if you have any other recommendation for us don't hesitate to let us know.
Hello @shayneshaynesha.
Yeah, ProductHunt people may be really suspicious and curious 🤓
One should gently prepare all the stuff before getting posted here.
Good luck.
@alexanderisora thanks. I understand your concern, the industry is filled with crazy stuff and it's right to be vigilant and even play devil's advocate, but I'm confident in the coming few days/weeks we'll prove ourselves to be totally legit.
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This doesn't sit well with me. The top comment is by the CMO of TokenBnk. The hunter is on their advisor team. There are empty bios when you click on any team member's picture. The download link for the whitepaper says your email "will only be shared with Shayne [the CEO]". The whitepaper says the way users earn on their savings account is through a withdrawal fee - what happens if everyone withdraws? What happens if no one withdraws? The social media accounts are empty or have little to no content. Not saying this is definitely a scam, but at this point it's not enough to sell me on it either...
@chris_crompton1 Hey Chris,
The comment by Jack is a bit of humor as he designed the landing page.
As for the Docsend link, it's lead generation. You put in your email for that reason and I used my premium Docsend account, that's why it says my name. As for the empty bios - let me fix that up! Must be a mistake.
As for what you say about the product: If no one withdraws, it's likely people in the network will say "hey, I'm not earning anything, I'm out" and withdraw, thereby increasing the reward for those who stay. On the flip side, if everyone starts withdrawing, that'll present an opportunity for people to come in and benefit from the influx of withdrawal fees.
@chris_crompton1 at the time of deposit, the exchange rate of 2.5% of the ether denominated value of the deposit into TBK (our native token) becomes a static withdrawal fee- meaning the # of TBK stays the same regardless of price movements of your deposit. There are interesting economic implications to this, as the token effectively represents demand for withdrawal. I would definitely recommend you check out the Economic Implications section of our whitepaper if you'd like to learn more.
I hereby give you my upvote because this is a novel idea that I haven’t seen before, and I think it will be an interesting experiment.
That said, I generally disagree with what you’re incentivizing here. Maybe HODL’ing in the short term is a good thing, but over the long term these tokens are meant to be USED. (With a potential exception for BTC as a pure store of value...will have to see how that plays out). Ether is meant to be used to buy computing power. Litecoin’s eventual goal is to be used as a medium of exchange. The reason they are going up in price is due to speculation that demand for the actual use of tokens will increase in the future. Incentivizing people to hodl and penalizing exchange seems like a shortsighted approach to me. What are your thoughts?
That said, Godspeed - I look forward to seeing how this plays out.
@nneuman Definitely a great point. But you should realize that the main use case for all these tokens for the next few years is speculation. I love BAT, but if I'm bull the Brave browser and their ad ecosystem vision I'm inclined to stock up on tokens and hold.
There is no doubt that this is what people are currently doing in the market. The market value far exceeds the utility value by any metric of token valuation. People are always going to be speculating on the price of given tokens (new ones will be constantly minted) from this point in time onwards, so there'll always be a use case.
So I definitely agree that at some point the goal is to actually withdraw and use the tokens, but I disagree that that means it's optimized for short term. I think we're years away from a lot of these "investments" coming to fruition in terms of utility. And by the time they do, they'll be plenty of other tokens people will want to be HODLing.
@shayneshaynesha That's a good point I hadn't thought about - even after the protocols get built out, tokens will still be minted on a rolling basis and not usable immediately as active networks.
@nneuman definitely. considering the use case of tokens as a crowdfunding mechanism, there'll always be a use case. in years time there'll be a multitude of different types of tokens. Just like the stock market, there'll always be ones that you'd want to buy and hold - or HODL.
Hi guys, I’m Shayne from TokenBnk. I’ve been into crypto for about 5 years now. Started with bitcoin and litecoin in ’13 before getting into the Ether presale, and now hold a variety of blockchain-based tokens.
I started TokenBnk because I wanted a way to earn ROI on my idle tokens while still being exposed to positive price appreciation. I figured, holding fiat for extended periods of time while earning no ROI seems senseless, and it’ll likely be no different for crypto. With crypto being so volatile, lending it out to achieve ROI isn’t plausible because if it’s lent out in a fiat denominated loan at 8% and ether goes up 50% in the same time frame… you’re screwed. So I thought a lot about ways to generate yield that didn’t rely on lending.
TokenBnk is based on the cryptoeconomic theory of financially incentivizing correct behavior. I learned from being in the Ether presale that if you deeply believe a given asset has exponential upside potential, the optimal strategy to capitalize on that is just buying and holding it. Any gains from day trading it in the meantime will be immaterial.
So the way it works is you deploy a Savings Contract to the Ethereum blockchain via our interface, then you deposit any variety of ERC20 tokens to it and based on 2.5% of that value, a static withdrawal fee is created (denominated in our native token- legitimately needed as its price reflects demand for withdrawals). When people in the network choose to withdraw and pay their fee, that value gets distributed back amongst all network participants proportional to how much of the total network value their Savings Contract constitutes. At the user’s discretion, they can choose for the value they receive as a reward to be autonomously exchanged back into whichever tokens they’re holding. Above all, I view TokenBnk as an economic experiment only now possible due to advancements in blockchain tech that could ultimately prove to be an integral part and one of the leading methods of storing value in the token ecosystem of tomorrow.
I’ll be around today if you have any questions. If you can’t comment and have a question my email is shayne@tokenbnk.com
We’re going to be deploying TokenBnk to the testnet soon and are looking for beta testers. If you’re interested drop me a line.
Pce
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@tokenbnk@shayneshaynesha Not a blockchain expert so apologies if this question is very obvious. How does the saving account generate yield? You said "the optimal strategy to capitalize on that is just buying and holding it" - how is that different from just leaving the cryptocurrency in your wallet?
@tokenbnk@d4nyll It's about incentivizing buying and holding. So, the way that the yield is generated is that when people don't buy and hold - i.e. withdraw - they pay this fee. That fee is then distributed amongst all other network participants. That's where the yield comes from.
Not a bad question at all
@tokenbnk@d4nyll@shayneshaynesha oh now I understand! you should mention this as this is your business model, we all make money off of people who withdraw. Without a business model this sounded like a scam :)
I was wondering how are they making money off something locked by individuals?! Bc that's otherwise pretty hard.
2,5% earnings for each withdrawal (collectively shared among current holders), so long term holders will be the winners. It's a great business model. Watch out for "real" banks to steal the idea and implement this, because this is quite remarkable.
I never thought of this, it's mind blowing when one think of the possibilities as one are collectively supporting the cryptocurrency one are holding and creating demand for it to grow AND at the same time include a method of being able to earn interests on top of it.
@vegardwikeby I'm glad you get it, man! You hit the nail on the head.
I think there's a lot that has to happen before a traditional bank could adopt any model similar to this. Nonetheless, with us being the first to try execute this model, if we see positive results it'll definitely attract other makers in the space to adopt similar ones.
It's a privilege to be working on something that's never been done before.
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@shayneshaynesha Yes Shayne, great work and execution! I do however believe that you'll need to either partner up or license the tech/idea to other banks (or similar entities within financials) willing to start up as you need a strong/reliable/brand name behind to gain the trust for the masses. Then we're (you) talking ;)
We've had one to many MtGox incidents!
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@vegardwikeby I don’t think it’s great at all , I see this as nonsense model where the bounty/reward is just a penalty of withdrawal action of owned tokens.
If there was a trade or sort of revenue/dividend generation I could vouch for it.
I guess crypto keep losing its merit due to ideas like this.
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I've read the whitepaper; this project is a soft clone of POWH (proof of weak hands), EthPyramid, and other Ethereum ponzi-like projects. The proposed solution provides no economic value, and may constitute fraud.
Pros:
Very few.
Cons:
This is *similar* to a ponzi scheme, in that the only source of "income" is other users leaving, and paying a "withdrawal fee".
[Disclaimer: I found out Robert is the founder of a competing ethereum-based finance product currently in stealth. The initial comment was a lot worse. Obviously has a bias, hence the false accusations.]
It's definitely not. A ponzi scheme is when you put money in and are at a loss from the get go because the $ you put in gets given to someone else. In this case, you only profit when you or someone else convinces the next sucker to join. And then they're losing till the next one comes, and so on. So someone eventually is bound to lose... a lot.
TokenBnk is more like a game of chicken, where the longer you stay in the more rewards you amass - earning every time other people leave. And you don't lose anything when you join- your value isn't distributed at all, nada. For example, you could be the first person to join the network and 10k people could come after you, but if you're first to leave you'll still lose. So it's your prerogative and fully transparent. Inherently not a ponzi scheme. It's really gamifying the HODLing experience (rewarding strong hands).
So it's not. Shoot me an email at shayne@tokenbnk.com if you'd like further explanation.
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Although the idea seems interesting, i agree with my fellow hunters, we need to know what guaranties and security is provided. A social presence is a first step.
@fearlex We're just starting our social presence as we're just coming out of stealth today. If you check our github we've been working on this for many months. Feel free to contact me or anyone on the team.
I've read the whitepaper; this project is a soft clone of POWH (proof of weak hands), EthPyramid, and other Ethereum ponzi-like projects. The proposed solution provides no economic value, and may constitute fraud.
Pros:Very few.
Cons:This is *similar* to a ponzi scheme, in that the only source of "income" is other users leaving, and paying a "withdrawal fee".