Steemit Crypto Academy Season 4 Week 6 [Advanced Course] | Investment through Private and Public Sales

It's no news that cryptocurrencies are becoming more popular as time passes. Roughly twelve years ago, Bitcoin came into existence, as a new project it was first viewed with uncertainty and lots of doubts but as time passed, people began to understand the concepts behind the creation of the currency and its use case which in turn led to mass adoption of the token. Cryptocurrencies are becoming widely adopted by the day and its 2 trillion dollars market cap is enough to back up this point.

Due to its teeming increase in popularity, investors are drawn towards these currencies and with every passing day, there is always a new project in development orexciting release that prompts investors to hop on the bandwagon. However, crypto investments always go in two ways
Either

• You make massive returns (what every investor out there hopes for before taking any action.)

• You incur losses (Red flag, no one wants this)

No sane investor would wish to incur losses therefore when making crypto investments there are a couple of tools which would aid one in making the right decisions.

First and foremost, QUALITY RESEARCH. If you haven't done this before making an investment you're most likely playing Russian roulette with your funds. This is the first approach to take before investing in any asset be it crypto or stocks. The first step in quality research is familiarizing yourself with the use case of the asset you wish to invest in. This can be done by studying the white and blue paper of the asset. It doesn't have to be anything extensive, just know what you're investing in and DYOR (do your own research).

Investors can also take advantage of available products and services in their assessment. For example, when analyzing assets that have been in the market for a while (existing assets). Sites like coinmarketcap, coingecko can be used to expand ones knowledge of the asset in mind.

Lets imagine a situation where I wish to invest in a particular coin, lets say AAVE token. I can take advantage of the coinmarketcap to discover relevant information about the token. All it takes is to access the site and look the token up (can't be more explicit with the steps to avoid bulky information)

We can get a brief overview of the project here even without being exposed to its whitepaper through detailed information about the project and its use case as indicated above. Historical performance and statistics of tokens are also documented here to further aid investors' research.

Importance metrics such as the price, market rank, market capitalization, trading volume, circulating supply etc. can be found using these services.

Images gotten from coinmarketcap

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In utilizing investment tools, one can also trade advantages of charting software online i.e tradingview, Binance etc.. These softwares help in the analysis of tokens and through this we can identify the performance of tokens overtime, determine where to enter a market and exit a market, basically, confirm if a token is a good buy or not.

Image gotten from trading view

With the use of such services, one can get answers to important questions pertaining to a token of interest and utilize such information to make good decisions.

And lastly and most importantly, a final word of advice.

Never invest more than what you can afford to lose

No matter how confident you are in your analysis. Never make that easily overlooked mistake, regardless of how promising the asset may be, one wrong shift in fundamentals and your funds goes down the drain.

2A) Private sale in cryptocurrency

A private sale as the name suggests is made available only to specific investors. It doesn't attract the general public and is most often done internally. This kind of sale is kept privy to the general public and its aimed at attracting credible investors to key into the project using their assets which would enable the founders of the project get enough funding to finance later developments. Investors here get their rewards in the form of profitable returns from investors and being able to accumulate a sturdy amount of the assets before it goes live.
Private sales are often the biggest constituents in the amount of capital raised for projects. It may be done more than once to enable more investors to participate in the early token offering.

From this concept, we observe that private sales bear more advantage to early investors.

Advantages private sale offers

• It's a great way for the project developers to raise money to finance other development stages of the token.

• It offers investors the opportunity to key into projects early enough and gain higher rewards on investments.

Risks

• Dumps
  It's quite disadvantageous for average investors who would invest in the near future. This is because whales who participated in private sale would have amassed a large chunk of the token supply and once other sales take place allowing average investors to key in, increase demand and increase price. These whales would sell off their assets as there is no use going long term if they already have a large proportion of tokens. This action would dump the price

• price dumps may cause smaller investors to lose faith in the project The action of whales selling off early to amass profits would cause other investors to lose faith in the token and might affect a project just at its inception.

• Minimal chance of refund in the event of failure - Investors participating in private sales most often automatically agree that in the event of any happening they wouldn't get a refund

Presale in Cryptocurrency

This usually follows the private sale. Participants of presales most often include major investors that missed the private sale, friends and families of project founders, firms with smaller funds in comparison with those in the private sale etc.

Presales are another great way for the project creators to raise a considerable amount of capital to finance their project.

Although not as much as that of the private sale Presales also offer investors the chance to obtain tokens at discounted rates. Again, project team need not spend anything considerable on marketing here, if at all there would be a marketing tactic it would be centered at a selected few. Investors are usually alerted of this sale by word of mouth, social media and company site.

Advantages presale offers

• It offers investors who might have missed the private sale a second chance at early participation.

• For investors who hold back on investing due to doubts concerning price instability which occurs after private sales. Presales are the best time to key into an asset after satisfying doubts.

Risks associated with presales

• For projects without a lock protocol, initial investors might offload tokens bought in presale shortly after launch to make decent profits. This will have a negative impact on price

• In the event of the failure of a project, investors get stuck with worthless tokens.

Public sale in cryptocurrency

This is the final stage in the coin offering process. In this stage, the project is made available to the general public, marketing strategies may get upped a little in order to increase public appeal for the project. At this stage, investors don't get as many discounts when compared to the first two stages but its still regarded as one of the most important phases as it has to do with the general public.

This sale is done not only to raise capital for finance purposes but also to create public awareness of the token and the underlying technology surrounding it. Public sales can often occur after projects have reached a considerable level in their roadmap i.e listing on some exchanges and services, securing votes etc.

advantages public sale offers

• Safer time to invest: projects that survive through the first two stages without any significant risk such as price dumps are considered much safer to invest in as investor concerns are satisfied.

• Increased liquidity: As a result of the increased number of investors, the liquidity of asset may tend to rise.

Risks associated with public sales

• This is usually the right time for a dump to take place. Large investors who participated in the initial phases would wait for the public to invest into the asset and increase the price. Then they would sell of their large holdings to make profits which would make the price of the token fall greatly.

• Rugpulls: Rugpulls occur when the project devs abandon their project and abscond with investors money. With the large amounts of locked assets a project might amass in general public sales, there is the risk of the project getting ended abruptly by removal liquidity which leads to risk of loss.

3. What are the mediums used for Public/Pre/Public Sales in Cryptocurrency?

Mediums used for public/presale/public sales in cryptocurrencies include"

• A designated website with relevant information included: The designation of a website to a project with relevant information about the project, its use case, and whitepaper cannot be over-emphasized. It adds more credibility to a project and would help to attract investors. Upon hearing about any project, it's common practice to turn to research and having a prospective stumble upon a project website is a wonderful way to sustain a project.

• Social media :

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• Launchpads: With the use of exchanges, coin offerings can also be done through the utilization of launchpad programs. These are platform that allows investors buy into projects before they are officially launched and at the same time provide funds to finance the project.
  An example is the binance launchpad
  
  
  image gotten from binance launchpad
  

4. Research about any recent (2021) successful ICO or IEO and give detailed information about the project. (Note: BETA token is excluded).

Rangers Protocol (RPG) is built on the ethererum protocol, it's ico raised over $64,620,000 making it one of the most successful ICO's this year.

It's interesting to note that the token peaked its all-time high of $29.02 yesterday
According to coinmarketcap

With its current price at, RPG has a max supply of 21,000,000 of which 333,522.00 RPG are in circulation as reported by the project. It has a market capitalization of $7,400,298 and a 24 hour trading volume of $5,374,836

Investors who took advantage of the ICO and purchased at launch would currently be enjoying a return on investment of 582.68% and counting.

5. Create an imaginary token. Write about the project including its use case. Develop an ICO which includes Private sales (3 stages) and Public sales (1). Note that: You are expected to explain what the funds are intended to be used for, your Private sale should have 3 stages, and specify the initial supply available, and the price you are issuing the token in each stage. Also, specify the price you are issuing the token at the Public sale phase (including the supply).

REALIC
The Realic (RC) token is a real estate- web based token built around the Solana blockchain. Realic is in its research and development phase and is being developed by a team of experienced blockchain developers led by @doppley. The Realic platform would possess its native token RC tokens to reward users for transacting with its platform. It serves as a bridge to link both agents and prospective clients in search of assets/properties in a smooth, secure manner.

Realic aims to revolutionize the procurement, sale and ownership of assets through the possession of a secure platform for tracking and storing information relating to property ownership. Realic would reinforce the documentation and storage of ownership of assets. The traditional system of storing ownership of assets is through paper documentation which can easily be forged or tampered with but with the utilization of the timestamp feature that the solana blockchain possesses which the origin of transactions done within the network would be indicated. The existence of timestamps would help to resolve any disputes that may exist in the course of asset verification

Realic ICO
A fully functioning website has been created to make information pertaining to the project readily accessible to the general public.


_{Designed by me}
The whitepaper of the Realic project has been included and the project ICO is set to launch with the expectation of raising over $7,000,000 from its sale.

Use of Proceeds

From the funds raised from the sale 30% would be channeled towards software development, 12% marketing and business developments, 15% - operational expenses, 15%-Eth reserve, 8% - Legal expenses, 8% - miscellaneous, 7% Seeding token changers and ETF's, 5% Buy back scheme,

The ICO would consist of private and public sale and would be conducted via discord and telegram. The private sale would be held three times.

The total supply of the RC tokens is 50,000,000 of which 7,500,000 RC (25%) would be mapped out for the initial coin offerings and offered at a price of $1 per RC token.
The first private sale which was set to take place on the 1st november was targeted towards specific large real estate firms nationwide, Brookfield Asset Management | Canada, American Tower Corporation | United States, Digital Realty Trust | United States

Date - 1st November 2021
Hosted on - Discord
Offer price - $1 per RC token
Tokens purchased - 2,000,000 RC tokens
Amount raised - $2,000,000

The second private sale was targeted at indigenous real estate companies. The marketing team had reached out to a few of these companies and convinced them to participate in the private sale. The sale was scheduled for 5th of November with the necessary information given below:

Date - 5th November 2021
Hosted on - Telegram x Discord
Offer price - $1.23 per RC token
Tokens purchased - 1,750,000
Amount raised - $2,152,500

The third private sale was for friends and families of the project head including developers and associates interested in the project
Date - 7th November 2021
Hosted on - Telegram
Offer price - $1.5
Tokens purchased - 1,500,000
Amount raised - $2,250,000

Of the 7,500,000 earmarked for the coin offering phase, 5,250,000 had been purchased. The project seemed to be doing better than expected as 70% of the earmarked tokens had been purchased therefore the presale phase was skipped and we went straight to the public offering instead.

The public sale was scheduled for 10th November 2021 and would be held for two days till 12th November 2021 (11:59pm UTC). The token had a offer price of $2 and the base tokens used in the offering were Sol, Eth and BNB

Venue - Company website (Realic.io)
Date : 10 - 12 November 2021
Offer price : $2
Tokens purchased - 1,250,000
Amount raised - $2,500,000

Total amount realized from sale.
Token sale was a huge success. A total of $8,902,000 was realized from the sale of 6,500,000 RC tokens.

6. What are the criteria required for listing a token on CoinMarketCap. Is there a criteria for listing an asset on a Centralized Exchange? If Yes, use an exchange for your explanation in response to the question.

Criteria required for listing a coin on coinmarketcap
A) Application - applications for listing should only be submitted via the designated online submission form
B) Shoud meet qualifications for tracked listings.
The qualifications are:
consensus algorithms, peer to peer technology, leveraged cryptography and smart contracts for store and exchange of value

• Possession of a functional website alongside a block explorer
• An available project representative with whom communication would be initiated with for clarifications
• Must be actively traded on at least one exchange

C) Consideration of evaluation framework such as:

• Liquidity
• Trading volume
• Team
• Traction and progress
• Longevity and activity of project etc.

D) Following the house rules of coinmarketcap, These rules
reference post

Criteria for listing an asset on a ccentralized exchange
To point out the requirements for listing an asset on a centralized exchange ill be taking the centralized exchange Huobi pro into consideration.

image source

If the asset in question fulfills the requirements given above, listing considerations may be given to it.

criteria for listing asset on Huobi pro

• Assets are expected to meet the regulatory requirements without compliance risks
• whitepaper and status reports must be disclosed on time.
• projects should have technical support and practical application.
• Existence of strong team and community maintenance
• Not less than 10% or 20% of tokens should be provided in circulation to qualify for voting.
  reference post

After each of these criteria has been satisfied by the project team, the token would be considered for listing by Huobi Pro.

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Conclusion

Concerning the questions assigned by professor @fredquantum and in adherence to the respective rules highlighted. I've done my research and tried to tackle the advanced course for the week. I was able to learn new things through the course of this task. I'd leave the assessment to the professors.
Thanks to the steemit team for this wonderful learning opportunity once again. It's been nice so far, I'm forever grateful.
Thanks for reading my write up and thanks for your support
Thanks for curating my content :)