Konios - ICO Review
At its heart, Konios plans to make the transfer of fiat into cryptocurrencies simple for mainstream investors. You see, cryptocurrency is heavily over-represented by technically savvy people who know how to jump through various hoops to purchase crypto with their fiat. Most people aren't sure how to purchase cryptocurrencies, turning many potential users off. Furthermore, if someone has heard about a new token from a certain project they might want to purchase, or participate in a certain ICO, they will need to go through an intermediary coin such as Bitcoin or Ethereum before purchasing that token.
Banks have terrible reputations in the crypto-community for shutting down accounts that purchase cryptocurrencies or are in any way affiliated with crypto. And it makes sense why they would, crypto is a real threat to them. Even Coinbase is riddled with many issues for mainstream investors looking to get into cryptocurrency, including random account closures without any valid reason, and low deposit limits.
How Konios Aims To Solve This
Enter into Konios. Using a decentralized exchange system, users will be able to convert their fiat into their desired cryptocurrency by making exchanges directly with other users on the Konios platform. By sending money directly to other people, in exchange for a certain cryptocurrency, the entire banking system itself is effectively bypassed. Konios does not even plan to operate a bank account for its exchange, because it doesn't need to. Konos will allow direct peer-to-peer fiat-to-crypto exchange via their platform, eliminating all these issues.
When looking into their whitepaper, it struck me that there is currently a solution that already does this, called LocalBitCoins. However, the problem with LocalBitCoins is that it's rife with fraud, and many good accounts are banned randomly without committing any offenses. Furthermore, the entire platform has a shady, unprofessional vibe to it, with little means of appeal. The most important thing which will differentiate Konios from LocalBitCoins however is that users on Konios don't need to meet up in real life or do transactions off the exchange. Provided users have a certain required number of Konios tokens in their account, they will be able to make transfers directly to one another via the Konios blockchain.
The Konios platform itself will be based on the blockchain, in order to ensure a transparency of transactions and decentralization from central authorities which have always made fiat-to-crypto movement difficult for mainstream investors.
Konios Organization
Konios itself is a company based in Switzerland, the traditional "safe haven" finance capital of the world. By being based in Switzerland, overreach from governments or central banks attempting to limit fiat-to-cryptocurrency transfers and back will be limited, since Switzerland has a history of financial independence. Furthermore, Konios is fully compliant with all Swiss laws, and employs a law firm to ensure this.
Many ICOs are based in jurisdictions where both governments and banks can easily circumvent their plans. I know from experience that a lot of projects I have been interested in had to abandon or refund their ICOs because they failed to meet some regulatory hurdle. On the Konios platform, the benefits of both a friendly country and decentralization are combined, in addition to bypassing the need for banks altogether. All these things add weight to make Konios a large fiat-to-crypto exchange platform.
ICO Details & KON Token
The private pre-sale is currently underway at the time of this publication. The main ICO will be launching on July 1st and can be joined on the Konios website. Both BTC and ETH, in addition to fiat, can be exchanged for KON (the Konios token). I like this idea of allowing direct fiat investment in the ICO, since it shows the potential of Konios to be an easy place to transfer fiat to cryptocurrency tokens beginning with their ICO. If you get in early at the beginning of the ICO, you'll be eligible for a 35% bonus. Rate of 1 KON is 0.01 USD.
The ICO will have a total of 3,750,000,000 KON for sale. The ICO will represent 75% of the entire token supply, which shows the aim of Konios to be a decentralized, community based platform from the beginning.
The ICO will represent 75% of the token supply
Now this is where my interest in the project heightens, and my respect for it goes up. You probably noticed the positive tone in this article compared to some other ICOs I review. The reason for it? 54% of funding will go to development. I can't count the number of ICOs that get greedy and put only 20-30% of funding toward development, with the rest of the expenses spent elsewhere, sometimes on greedy teams. This is not the case with Konios. They are committed to launching a working, well developed product for the community quickly, as reflected in their budget, and this has my respect.
54% of raised funds will go toward project development.
Conclusion
It's hard to predict the future of a lot of ICOs based only upon their whitepapers and mission statements, and Konios is no different in this regard. However, the team is humble with their ICO funding, and will be allocating a majority of raised funds to project development. This is promising and adds legitimacy to the project.
Most important is the problem that Konios aims to solve. The cryptocurrency community needs a reliable way for mainstream investors to invest in it in order to retain market value and reach capitalization levels that existed back in late 2017. With the recent crackdown by govenrments and banks on cryptocurrency as a whole, the entire market is in a state of unpredictability. Established centralized fiat-to-crypto transfer services such as Coinbase are now randomly closing accounts, and other peer-to-peer services like LocalBitCoins are too complex for mainstream investors to use and are lacking in professionalism. Konios , if it reaches its vision, will finally allow a way for everyone to easily purchase crypto with fiat, avoiding both governments and banks entirely. If it pulls off its vision, there will be a lot of potential in the utility of the KON token, as users are required to hold it in order to participate on the platform.
Links
Website
Whitepaper
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://icoveteran.com/konios/