GATCOIN: Global Awards Token

I know I have been away for several weeks. With so many price fluctuations I decided to stay away from ICOs for a bit, and simply invest on the established coins (mainly BTC and LTC, which proved good), and to watch my previous ICO investments (which have been stable for a month or so now, and are staring to rise). However, with the New Year, there are so many new ICOs, so a whole lot of possibilities, and decisions. Full disclosure, I have also started looking more into bounty campaigns. Yes, I know some people frown upon bounty campaigns, but I have been really good about joining bounties for projects I have invested in. I figured what is the point of doing the work of a bounty campaign, if you don’t believe in the project? I don’t want to waste my time promoting something I don’t care about.

And from the title I am guessing you already know that the one that has caught my attention so far has been GATCOIN, a Singapore and Hong Kong based company.

So, what is GATCOIN? Per their website they are “GAT Coin is part of a broader enterprise system (GAT System) for global merchants to issue their own branded digital tokens (Merchant Tokens). The GAT System will enable enterprises to issue digital tokens to a mass consumer audience with minimal set-up, allowing them to quickly adopt token usage as part of their overall marketing strategy.”

Although this description sounds more merchant / vendor oriented, if you are a consumer (like me!) you might be wondering “Well, so what will this do for me?” Think about it this way. We all love discounts right? But it is a bit annoying that you have to keep track / manage so many different loyalty programs. Wouldn’t it be nice if all vendors (or at least most of them) unified their programs? Sure, that would be awesome, a digital rewards wallet for your phone, but perhaps not enough to capture your attention. What if we take it a bit further: have you ever been stuck being unable to use your discounts because of how inflexible they are? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could exchange these discounts for a discount you will actually use or turn these rewards into some form of currency? This is what GATCOIN aims to do for the consumer.

Now, this does not mean brands will lose the name of their loyalty programs (marketing your brand / your name is key now a days, so no one wants to lose that). You will still get “X Brand Diamond Points” or “Z Brand Value Rewardz”, as vendors will be able to issue their own branded tokens in GATCOIN’s platform, while consumers will be able to exchange X tokens for Z tokens, cryptocurrencies and even fiat through the GAT exchange (their platform “allows the secure exchange of Merchant Tokens and enables low cost cross-border payments and microtransactions.”).

You might also be wondering, wouldn't it be possible for each vendor to create their own ERC-20 token? After all, GATCOIN's token is ERC-20, and sure, pretty much any retailer, company, merchant could create their own, but again what GATCOIN is also looking for is unification of rewards programs (if not companies might as well keep their non blockchain related loyalty programs). The truth is that if this project has the ability continue to build the right partnerships (they currently have SK planet Japan as an anchor client so they already have a solid platform of merchants that will use their tokens), more retailers (big and small) will be willing to use their platform and adopt their tokens.

Their whitepaper also covers very important information regarding why there is the need to use the blockchain, and what is the point of their tokens if every merchant will be issuing their own. I won’t address the first part of the question, because as a consumer it is the part that attracts me the most. Sure, switching one merchant token for another merchant token is pretty cool, but that would give you no option to “monetize” your tokens as merchant tokens are not "real" crypto-currency (wow, I just referred to crypto-currency as real), but a marketing tool. That is were the GAT token (an ERC20 token) comes into play, as the “common medium of exchange” and it also provides you extra benefits like being “able to receive special Merchant Tokens or GATCOIN promotions using the A-Drop™) technology.” (from the images above, I am fine with geolocation A-Dropped discounts, because I provided my info, I just don't like my transaction data being sold as well).

I currently only have one issue with this project, and it is the following statement: “Moreover, exchanging and spending Merchant Tokens and performing transactions from your smartphone wallet creates a variety of valuable data. This data can be bundled and sold to merchants and brands, which give them the opportunity to target specific groups of users with certain interests, demographics or location, further eliminating spam and offering value to consumers.” Although I understand the benefit this gives to vendors (imagine airdropping a discount to a customer as they are walking past your store? They call this A-Drop™) and it is true that our every move is tracked now a days whenever we login different apps (thank you geolocation … not so much) I am not a fan of my transaction data being sold to merchants and brands since one thing I appreciate from crypto-currency is the privacy it offers. However, I actually appreciate they are open about this happening as I am almost sure most new crypto-currency related apps stemming from an ICO will be doing the same. Do I like this? No … Is it a deal breaker for me to invest? Probably not (I might still ask the team regarding this on their Bitcointalk Ann Thread though and report back in the comments section. My username on BTCtalk is allycn if you are ever over there).

Merchant A-Drop™

Consumer A-Drop™

Their roadmap does seem ambitious, but we should expect the full launch of the GAT System in December 2018.

Per their whitepaper “A fixed supply of 1 billion GAT will be created for operation with the GAT System. Thereafter, no further coins will be created.” In case you were wondering, ““Any unsold tokens (if the hard cap is not reached) will be redistributed” (again, per their whitepaper), but after seeing how the pre-sale went, and with current ETH prices, I doubt they will be left with unsold tokens.

ICO pre-sale started on Dec. 17th 2017 and as you can see from the images above, it just finished today January 7th, 2018 and they had a very good 20% bonus (I only learned about this ICO earlier today and Pre-Sale had already closed). However as much as I would have loved to get the 20% bonus, a 2 ETH minimum contribution (at current prices) would have been a bit too much for me. To be honest, since my ICO investment budget is small, I might have to wait until the Token Sale second week when the minimum contribution is 0.1 ETH, but with no bonus. I will have to check their website periodically because during pre-sale they managed to raise USD 13 million, and considering their hard cap is under USD 14.5 million I am not sure the ICO will make it into week 2! (I have re-updated this section since the WP had an amount, and the ANN thread had a higher amount of 35.87 million USD, but it should be the updated information as it was posted on Dec. 10th 2017 on their medium blog: https://www.gatcoin.io/new-token-sale-details/ However I don't know how this will be impacted by the ETH increase from USD 450 per ETH - at time of WP update - to the current USD 1152 per ETH).

As always, and I can’t stress this enough, before investing take the time to do your own research. I am no financial advisor. I am learning as I go (making mistakes along the way) and what I think is interesting and good, might not work for you. If you want to learn more about GATCOIN, visit their official website: https://www.gatcoin.io/ check out the team and read their whitepaper or you can click here in case the hyper link is not showing up on your browser: https://www.gatcoin.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/170919v2-Whitepaper-EN.pdf You can also check a demo for their app here which I thought was really neat.

Remember that investing on any ICO or cryptocurrency is risky (as is any type of investment), and there is no guarantee of returns, so never (ever) invest more than you can afford to lose.

Happy ICOing!

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Links to some of my previous articles:

• Crypterium: A Cryptobank Game Changer
• My Current Electroneum Feelings
• How I was crypto-currency scammed
• My First ICO – Electroneum