The Incredible Launch Of Monaco

Today was launch day for the first public version of the Monaco app. Monaco is a crypto-fiat payment card. I.e you own crypto currencies (bitcoin) and you can pay just as you usually would with a Visa card, in any outlet that takes Visa as payment. Its been a while in the running, the website has looked great, everything was looking pretty good.
Except one thing. Everyone expected something incredible - a completely finished product, cards to be distributed immediately, and when they didn't get that, they had a tantrum.

I've been monitoring the chat rooms around Monaco for the last three days, ever since the price of Monaco flew up to about $27. This was probably in anticipation of the app launch. What was also interesting however was that the maturity of the chat in the chatrooms was reasonably mature. Good arguments were being made and reasonable conversations were happening. The price was probably a bit high for the pre-product launch, admittedly, but it did demonstrate a new natural high for MCO.

An unfortunate thing occurred yesterday however (day before launch day). A version of the Monaco site was leaked (we are still not sure whether on purpose or by accident) that showed the Monaco cards with the Visa logo on them. The Monaco team closed it down within minutes, but as the web is the web, screenshots were grabbed and pasted all over Twitter and Reddit. This resulted in ALOT of immature investments, and investors joining the chat rooms, who probably had reasonably small amounts of MCO in their portfolio.

At some point yesterday, the hypothesis was made, that 'Whales' (large investors) were controlling the price of MCO so as to buy up the coins that were being dropped by 'weak hands' who weren't sure if this was a sign the price was actually dropping and jumped ship. So between late on the 29th and late on the 30th, there was a slow decline in price. Checking the order books, some large ASKs were being placed, that were responsible for the long red candles.

The chat rooms were pointing out by this point that the price was being manipulated, and that the Visa leak should mean nothing, that there had never been any word from Monaco that on the 31st, the Visa deal would be completed and they would be allowed to show the Visa logo on the cards. All they said was the app would launch.

And this is where the chat rooms had their tantrum. At 10am (London Time) the app hit the Android and Apple Stores, the website was updated and the downloads began.

I would like at this point to draw your attention to the TenX app state.

This is the TenX app in the Android store. I have never in my whole digital life, seen an organisation's production app state in the store that it is potentially unstable. This is what Monaco was up against.
If you've used the TenX app, it has suggestions of being able to pay people with the app, it has suggestions of NFC, but really all you can do is order the TenX card - which by the way has no date attached to it as to when you might get it. They will quite happily take your $15 though.
Back to Monaco.

When the Monaco app hit the stores this morning, the first thing that happened in chat rooms was the continued complaints about the length of time the validation email took to come through. It took about 10-15 minutes. Quite understandable when everyone is on it at once. I wasn't bothered. But then the impatience of people kicked in, and they hammered the button, sending themselves multiple validation emails - each rendering the last email out of date and obsolete - this is good security. Once again, the children headed to the chat rooms to moan about how the links weren't working. They were working perfectly well, but if you clicked an out of date one - because you requested a new one, then you had a very minor hinderance to your flow in the setup process.
Next once you opened the app, you are immediately taken to a flow that will ultimately resulting in your Monaco card being reserved. This for me, went very smoothly, some mentioned it took a bit to go through - this again, can easily be explained by load on the servers.
So at this point we are in exactly the same place as TenX. The app allows us to reserve our card that will be sent out in September. Which should be enough of a hint that they will have the deal with Visa in place by then - otherwise what would the card do? One thing you see on all over the trading world, is buy the rumours, sell the news. Well, I think a rational mind would look at the situation, and think that the rumour is then that the Visa news will come out around the time the start shipping cards.
Setting up the card in the Monaco app was very easy. I was impressed by the validation process from start to end

Validating your phone number comes after validating your email address

Validating your identity is done against your passport or drivers license, and uses impressive facial recognition to immediately verify you

You are then offered to choose which card you would like to reserve, from the free one, up to the Ruby and Precious Metal ones. The Platinum one is reserved for those in the ICO.

All in all, the app seemed well thought out and gives you a very good impression of what a more complete app will look like, probably coming out in September when the cards are distributed. What I don't understand was the absolute panic that kicked off when the app launched. The app launched bang on time, offered a better experience with identical features to the TenX app, and Monaco offers a roadmap of when to expect to receive the cards, and when next news announcements are going to be made.
Yet today has been a downward spiral of complaining, moaning, and criticising Kris, the CEO for scamming them. It will now take a while for the price to recover and I think it should if Monaco do good on delivering the cards on time. But this ludicrous reaction, which I think was based purely on mass hysteria, will now result in cheap coins for the rest of us that were tossed back on to the market as people lost money through their own volition.

I was amazed, but it was an interesting lesson for me too. Based on the slight overpricing (due to hype before the launch), the price could have been thought to come down prior, so a sell could have been made if you wanted to turn a quick profit.
The leak of the Visa logo didn't result in a price hike really at all, which also suggests that people had already considered that deal was already in place, so was reflected in the price.
But most importantly, the 'weak hands' who were clearly in this for a quick buck, had seen the high of the market and thought thats where it would go again, start moaning when the app meets its road map entirely, and doesn't deliver miracles.

Price at time of writing is floating around $12, I'm in at $4 so I'm fine and will hold out to see what September brings. Frankly, I think this was a classic case of why people lose money in investments, and a classic example of how people will never come to blame themselves.

I would recommend to anyone who lost money by buying so high, and selling the panic, to reconsider your 'get rich quick schemes'. Continue like this, and it will be a 'get poor quick' scheme.