ICO Review of COTI / PayPal vs COTI

First impression I got from reading the information about COTI was that it resembled PayPal. Why? It concentrated on the fact that COTI will be the payments network for buyers and sellers. There will be mechanism of mediation, trust scores, and other necessary instruments, making this cryptocurrency the best one for merchants and consumers. If you have ever used PayPal, you may already understand the main drawbacks of this service. Still, let’s try to take a closer look at the main problems that greatly increase the need for blockchain-based solutions.

The main problems of the ecosystem currently are:

• Such services as PayPal and Bitcoin consume a lot of money for executing transactions. Check out my video on this matter here

• It takes a lot of time to transfer money, using PayPal and other services. If you pay small fee while using Bitcoin, your transaction may be will never be included in a block

• Generally, it takes some dedication to get used to how cryptocurrencies work. Also, Bitcoin is not the best payment method when you want to trade with someone

• Cryptocurrencies are still not that widespread and used

`The solution to all of the problems:

• COTI, a payments transaction network that solves the payments challenges of today. COTI combines the best of traditional payments systems with the best of blockchain technologies

What is this project about? As you can see on the right part of this slide, COTI values convenience, resistance to fraud, trust, being in compliance with the regulator, instant transactions, and zero/low fees.

• It is combination of the best what PayPal has with the best what Bitcoin has. Basically, advantages of cryptocurrencies and advantages of convenient credit cards. Of course, doing this, there will be some disadvantages because we cannot just pick the best out of something and forget about the bad things

• The main users of COTI will be buyers and sellers. Close example is PayPal. In reality, I feel that this is what ecosystem desperately needs, cryptocurrency that will be widely used by merchants

• Network is underpinned by 3 main components: trust scoring engine, mediation system, currency exchange. I cover those components on the platform slide

• XCTs are native currency and used for: fees, mediation, payments. Actually, XCTs have quite a lot of room to grow in comparison to other recently reviewed initial coin offerings

• COTI will create wallets and virtual debit cards for consumers, processing tools and hedging services for merchants

Did you know that there are $49.8 trillion of consumer-initiated transactions annually? Traditional currencies are responsible for 99.997% of all transactions, while cryptocurrencies take 0.003%.

• XCTs are going to be used as fuel for network to work and for sending payments. There are other usage cases, but this one is the most important one

• PayPal and cryptocurrencies are the main competitors of COTI project

• Success of the network will lead to the absorption of PayPal capitalization and capitalization of other cryptocurrencies

• COTI already has support from global payment solutions company, PROCESSING.com. This way it will be much easier to expand, using respected and experienced partners

What does the network core consist of? Three main elements.

First is Trust Scoring Engine

• The engine analyses network interactions over time to generate a unique Trust score for each COTI network participant
• Parameters which determine score:
o Transaction value
o Dispute occurrence
o Disputes won
o Disputes lost
o User rating

Second is Mediation system

• Mediation system protects buyers/sellers in the event of transactional disputes arising within the network. Mediation provides backup to Trust engine
• Scenarios where mediation is needed:
o Billing errors
o Inadvertent transfers
o Unauthorized charges
o Undelivered goods/services
o Non-conforming goods/service

Third is Currency exchange

• The main functions of the exchange:
o It serves as enabler of cross-currency payments
o it provides end-users a direct mechanism to transfer their holding from one currency to another
o it is enabler of the market-making activity where XCT serves as the common denominator

Currently, there is not much information disclosed about the TGE, but let’s cover what we know. Crowdsale terms:

• ICO starts soon. You need to sign up for whitelist if interested

• 80% of tokens will go to investors+reserve , team retains 10%, advisory sale 5%, and community grants & bounties 5%

• Use of proceeds : 25% R&D, 16% merchant acquisition, 12% merchant services, 10% legal, 10% reserve, 15% market-maker, 7% operational expenses, fund 5%

• Supply of tokens will be limited. The amount of tokens is still unknown. Wait for the details

Site: https://coti.io/
Telegram: https://t.me/COTInetwork
Whitepaper: https://coti.io/files/COTI-overview-document.pdf
Technical document: https://coti.io/files/COTI-technical-whitepaper.pdf