The FintruX ICO starts on the 7th of February with their pre sale already collecting over $7 million with a day still to go.

What is FintruX

https://www.fintrux.com
They're planning to launch a new decentralized P2P lending marketplace. They hope to simplify the process for borrowers and provide more assurance for lenders.
The platform will charge a fee in their FTX token, meaning that they don't take the risk on lending money themselves, they do however state that they plan to reserve 5% of their tokens to help any lenders who have had borrowers default on their loan.

How big is the market?

P2P lending grew at a staggering 81% per year in the UK over the 5 years from 2010-2015, this is due to the internet making it easier, banks being less willing to lend money and borrowers being faced with terrible interest rates from their banks.
Traditional high street banks do offer unsecured loans, however it's become increasingly difficult to get them and higher interest rates are being charged.
P2P lending platforms give individual investors the chance to lend money and offer individuals or businesses the chance to receive an unsecured loan.

The FintruX solution

Most P2P lending platforms still lack transparency and aren't truly P2P as they use intermediates. By using the blockchain and smart contracts on the Ethereum network it will be possible to create a completely P2P lending platform that should offer advantages to both the lender and the borrower, such as:

• They plan to partner with different agencies such as credit scoring and KYC, this will help the lender to evaluate who they wish to lend money to and lower their risk.
• There'll be a decentralized rating system where both parties can review eachother after they've done business, this will allow both parties to view any previous transactions that have been made and check that the loans have been repaid on time.
• The platform will have a simple process and charge a percentage in their own token. This is much better than many other platforms that tend to charge a flat fee aswell.
• Decentralized blockchain: By utilizing Ethereum smart contracts it will be easy to provide a fully verifiable history with no risk of anything being fraudulently altered.

Fintrux business model

They plan to charge 10% as over col-lateralization which will be split into different pools, each pool will be designated by the same credit package.
5% of the tokens will also be held in reserve for any emergencies.
The platform will also charge a small fee on each loan that is made and a small service fee for each action that is performed on the smart contract.

FTX token utility

The new FTX token will be used for all of the key features on the platform. Participants on the network will also need to keep a small amount of ETH on the platform to pay for GAS fees.

ICO Details

• Pre sale dates: Janurary 6 until January 21.
• ICO dates: February 7 until February 28.
• Price: 1 ETH= 1500 FTX.
• Min amount: 0.1 ETH.

Founders

• Nelson Lin, CEO and founder: He previously designed successful applications such as Credit-Link, Market-Link, Lois and more. He's delivered solutions to huge companies such as JP Morgan.
• Conrad Lin, CMO and founder: Has a degree from the university of Toronto in Neuroscience and Psychology. He also has experience in social marketing and outreach.

Conclusion

The P2P lending industry has grown massively recently with companies such as paypal and Amazon now also offering loans. Many of these companies charge high interest rates however and it remains difficult for businesses to obtain funding from banks.
Cryptocurrency and smart contracts could help to provide more trust to the industry, getting the first customers will be the hard part but with a large amount of money already raised the project should have a high marketing budget.
Whitepaper: https://www.fintrux.com/home/doc/whitepaper.pdf
Website: https://www.fintrux.com