ICO Analysis: Majato
Blockchain and Cannabis are the two fasting growing industries one can think of. And it just so happens that they mesh perfectly with each other. Although laws are slowly changing in jurisdictions where cannabis has become legal, traditional banking for this industry remains sketchy, businesses are being forced to deal in cold hard cash. Therefore, tokenizing the entire industry from seed to sale seems like a no-brainer.
Majato plans to grow and distribute cannabis in countries where it is legal. On top of that, they will have an interactive platform to unite the cannabis market participants.
“The use of blockchain as the core technology will make all stages of production, distribution and even consumption of cannabis products completely transparent and clear for all market participants.”
They will first launch their project in the United States, specifically California. Their main goal is to have a full scale, seed to sale, production company. They will use their funds raised during the presale to fill out legal paperwork, acquire land, and start producing Cannabis.
The 2nd part of this project is the platform, which will bring together the cannabis industry in general and its standalone participants, including scientific and research labs, producers and suppliers of various cannabis products, equipment, seeds, and consumers. This transparent and secure ecosystem will allow streamlining of product sales, and simplified transactions.
One of the key goals of the project is to develop a “Gold Quality Standard” which will validate every product as being produced using the best strains, and high quality growing methods. They talk about the “Gold Quality Standard” in the whitepaper for way too long, revealing their own ignorance about the cannabis industry.
The Token
Their ultimate goal is to become the uniform payment instrument for all things cannabis worldwide
According to the whitepaper, the purpose of the MJT token is the following;
- Direct receipt by the MJT Owners of the Product in the form of Final Product or Raw Product in the relevant POS against settlement of the relevant number of the MJT Tokens
- Ordering the Product for delivery via the Platform in those Jurisdictions where it is/would be allowed under the law
- Discounts on third-party products purchased with MJT token in dispensaries
- Use the MJT Token for internal Project purposes and separate matters relating to its implementation (for example, when submitting feedback regarding the quality of the distributed Product).
During the initial stages of sale (i.e. pre-sale and sale) of the MJT token a total number of 60,000,000 MJT Tokens (Project’s hard cap) will be distributed, and the price will be 0,0011 ETH per token during pre-sale and 0,0033 ETH per token during the main sale stage.
Total supply: 60 million (?)
Presale: Dec 20. 10 million MJT token hardcap, 800,000 softcap .0011 ETH per token (currently $0.77) http://majato.io/
ICO sale: Apr 2018. .0033 ETH per token
All unsold tokens will be burned. And all tokens used to buy cannabis products with from Majato, in the future, will also be burned.
The Team
This team of eight is a hodge-podge of Russian, American, and German lawyers. At least that’s what it looks like, most of them come from a law background including their Founder and CEO, Mike Tretyak. Tretyak, a journeyman IP lawyer, who has no experience in large-scale cannabis farming. In fact, I went into their telegram and asked if any member on their team has experience with growing cannabis? My question got sidestepped, and when I pushed for an answer, I got called rude. I then asked if anyone on their team has worked together and had success in the past? The moderator told me I was out of line to ask such a personal question.
Although it is still just the presale, the lack of community around this team is extremely concerning. There is very little support on their Telegram and Twitter.
It doesn’t seem like they have what it takes to pull off such a massive project as Majato.
The Verdict
As a lifelong cannaseur, who currently is in Colorado, I feel like I am especially qualified to analyze this ICO.
Although owning a piece of this fast growing cannabis industry is an attractive proposition, this particular project is way too far fetched. The legal hurdles they face in order to accomplish what they are trying to do, are probably insurmountable. That being said, they do have a team filled with lawyers, if they defy logic and get this project successful running, the gains for presale investors could be huge.
There is currently no way to legally ship Cannabis. This doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon. Therefore, the only MJT token holders that will be able to benefit by trading their tokens for cannabis, are the ones that live within traveling distance of Majato’s imaginary future Cali stores. This leaves very few benefits for token holders
Risk
Pretty sure this project is considered illegal. Having a bunch of contributors to marijuana growing/selling, from different worldwide jurisdictions, can’t be legal… can it? -3
They have absolutely nothing so far, but a whitepaper. They want to produce and distribute cannabis to the entire world, starting with the jurisdictions which its legal. The problem is, it’s illegal to ship cannabis ANYWHERE. They don’t seem very concerned about this. -5
As far as I know, nobody on their team has experience with large-scale cannabis farming. In their whitepaper, they break down what they estimate the production costs will be. It looks amateurish and fake. And it’s obvious they have zero clue how this industry works. They have thousands of dollars set aside in their budget for “seeds”, which is hilarious because they don’t know about cloning. Nowadays plants grown on a large scale are clipped and cloned from a mother plant. Seeds are only used for all natural outdoor grows. -3
Growth Potential
A forecast done by Arcview shows the U.S. legal cannabis market will grow by 26% next year, and should hit $21 billion by 2021, $7 bill of that being California alone. This industry will only grow. Majatos roadmap says they will become a full-fledged, cannabis producing company by 2020. Here’s a quick summary of their roadmap +3
Dec 17- Jan 18: presale
Feb 18- Apr 18: Acquir land, obtain licenses/permits, form corporate structure for implementing project
Apr 18-June 18: stage 2 of the MJT token sale.
July 18- May 19: Production of batch 1 of product, establishing distribution channels, Platform R&D
Dec 18-Dec 19: Commencement of offering product to MJT owners
If they have a successful ICO, and follow through, they will first start production in California. As just stated, Cali is forecasted to have over $7 billion in cannabis sales in 2021. It’s a shame this project isn’t specifically for California. It seems way more doable if they kept their focus on just the one jurisdiction +2
Disposition
This ambitious project is too early, mostly illegal, and lead by a less than stellar team. One almost wants to call it the “H” word. -4 out of 10
Investment details
Presale starts December 20th.
Source: Hacked
If information is power....then you just powered me up!! :) Great article. Yes, there is risk involved in the cannabis industry especially since regulators in the US are just letting up on the reigns. However the landscape will continue to ease up. I see opportunity in the industry. Looking forward to following this closely.
Glad you enjoyed the article. Follow me to see more!
Absolutely! Followed you right away.
@elite.skeete, great review and analysis of this ICO.
I am a research analyst in the Cannabis legal cannabis sector and the editor at http://www.investinmj.com. I have reviewed 100's of Cannabis deals over the last 4 years of which I have participated and shared my research on only a handful, none of them are ICO's related to cannabis. I am now in the process of reviewing all the various cannabis related Alt Coins and ICO's, many of them will fail for a lack of a good Use Case.
You are right, that for any ICO to be successful in the Cannabis sector, it must be legal, have a viable use case and have community involvement, there are a few that meet that requirement.
I am very well connected in the industry on all levels, from fund managers, investors, investment bankers, licensed cultivators, dispensaries, vertical ancillary businesses, Seed to Sale Tracking software and media companies. We are a co-ordinating with them to develop a viable blockchain solution for the industry.
In order for the Cannabis Internet to be viable, it must have participation from all aspects of the industry, and unfortunately this also means the regulators. We are talking about one of the most heavily regulated industry, and those rules and regulations have to be taken into account when coming up with a solution.
Back in November, I spoke at the EuroAm Cannabis Business Conference about Investing in the Cannabis Sector and the potential for Crypto Cannabis/Block Chain solutions.
I will have more details on the comprehensive Crypto-Cannabis report I am putting together very soon. Investing in the right Cannabis ICO takes research and due diligence, compliance for the use case of the Tokens is also paramount. If the ICO is promoting the use case for "Buying Cannabis" as the primary use of the Token, I would be very careful until there is some clear guidance on its use as payment to purchase Cannabis.
For example, I am from Canada and we will have legal cannabis next year, but for now I don't think the gov't run distribution models will consider accepting Canna Tokens as payment. If the token is getting promoted for use in a grey or black market, stay away... that will get shut down quickly by regulators and authorities even in legal market.
Here is a great thread on LinkedIn that discusses Crypto-Cannabis... I added many comments and my thoughts there.
I will have more details on the Crypto Cannabis market and potential shortly. Follow me and read my posts on Steemit for more details and updates. Here is my Intro post on Steemit.
Great analysis of the difficult social problems surrounding asset creation. Just because you can make a token (or do an ICO) rarely means you should.
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Hi everyone, Majato Project here. Because of the republished Hacked/Steemit review, we decided it is time to clarify some points here.
We want to begin with thanking Steemit, Hacked and Joshua(?) (the author of the article) for finding the time, making this review happen, and publishing it. We are grateful for them making at least some of their readers examine our White Paper themselves and ask us questions.
Now to the matter at hand – the review. First of all, it is a real pity and shame the author came to our Telegram channel aggressive and biased. The author acted so arrogantly we started to believe he was someone from another project in the industry or was paid by someone to do that interview. And of course, people doing serious interviews don’t propose to make some "sh*t" and call admin of a public chat "gay" in an apparent attempt to humiliate him.
Secondly, and highly probably because of the above-mentioned bias, the author published information about the Project that is partially wrong and untrue. To illustrate, for some unknown reason the author comes to a conclusion we are going to ship the product from one state to another across state borders. This is completely untrue, we have never stated this intent, nor this can be found in any Project document, including the White Paper. Our actual plan – completely omitted by the author - is to have the pilot project stage launched solely in California since it allows commercial cannabis activities under its state laws, with both production and distribution never leaving / crossing state borders. When everything is settled and operational we are considering expansion, and definitely not by way of interstate shipments, but rather by means of establishing separate production and distribution sites in US states that further legalize commercial cannabis activities similar to California. The review, therefore, completely contradicts the actual business plan.
As for the connections between our founders, the author could have contacted each of them separately with this question. That is how journalists do their research, and the contact data is freely available. Instead, the author preferred to arrogantly demand answers in the Project’s public Telegram chat. Should he nevertheless contact the founders directly (which would be the right thing to do if you require some sensitive information about a particular person) he could get all the information and confirmations from each of them personally.
So what do we have as the result? From the outset it seems that the author - for whatever reason - decided he knows what we are planning to do and achieve with the Project far better than we ourselves do, and came to a whole bunch of wrong conclusions. Information in the review is untrue on so many levels that this is a direct misinformation of the readers, plain and simple. And, last time we checked, calling admins names in public chats and publishing false information about a business amounts to libel and business defamation under US law, respectively.
Last but not least. Fakes, aggression, public humiliation - we believe this is NOT how serious journalists should work. If you consider yourself a serious journalist, you just don’t do things we discussed, because that is entirely unprofessional. Nevertheless, we thank the author for his time in our Telegram channel and for writing the review, and invite him to contact us directly next time (and no, we don’t mean the “say-that-to-my-face” format) :) As to the Steemit and Hacked readers, we encourage each of you to read the Project documents yourselves in their entirety and ask any questions you personally may have - we'll be happy to answer!
Cheers,
The Majato Project Team
https://majato.io
E-mail: [email protected]