Could you explain why here you say.
So ICO price is 3x higher than the earliest funding rounds
The price of the March funding round was 0.015 CHF. So ICO price is 3x higher than the earliest funding rounds, but this also reflects the progress of the company which leads to higher demand. I'll see what we disclose about August round, but ICO price is certainly not 5x from that (price was significantly higher than March price). I'll let the COO answer any other question on Tuesday about this matter.
Okay, thanks!
I believe it would be best just to disclose those informations. I mean, it's understandable that early Investors had the opportunity to buy cheaper. They were willing to take a bigger risk - so, nothing wrong about that.
But the impression that it seems to be important to keep it secret how much LKK were sold prior to this ICO, could do more damage than help to make this ICO a success. For me personally it's the number one reason to be carefully in general, whenever I have the impression there could be something to hide - while I actually think that this is a good project. I have no doubt that it's legit and not comparable to some other hyped up and basically corrupt projects like theDAO for example (which wasn't just a fail because it was hacked) - and a lot of other ICO's.
But of course: A question for every Investor, who doesn't want to buy blind, is how the price will be after an ICO and if something is overvalued or not. It's also about attention and market-reactions etc. And of course, Lykke will be different in many ways. It won't be a Poloniex-Coin and the market won't play by the usual crypto-rules. But some things never change: If there are many with a lot of LKK in a high profit zone, it could very well be that they will bring some pressure on the price, especially if Bitcoin should go up. That's also something to consider in Crypto for those who pay with Bitcoin and not FIAT. And this ICO is a "Crypto-ICO". And it's not a cheap one.
But here you say
LKK is worth 0.012 CHF (mid price), up from 0.004 recently
There exist 1,250,000,000 Lykke coins (LKK). 100 coins represent 1 share in the legal entity. Lykke AG is based in Zurich Switzerland. The founder of the project is public and has considerable background, having founded Oanda, one of the largest Forex brokers, see [1]. The total outstanding LKK is valued at 15M CHF, so that each LKK is worth 0.012 CHF (mid price), up from 0.004 recently. The LKK can be currently converted in a manual process to CHF. It is currently in discussion how the exchange to BTC will happen, since the exchange hasn't launched yet, but is planned for release in Q1 or Q2 2016.
In terms of distribution it is perhaps difficult to compare with Proof-of-work or Proof-of-stake system. LKK does not have its own blockchain, but uses the Bitcoin blockchain. The exchange of tokens can happen off-chain. In that sense it is more like a traditional corporation, as it also registered as such. The reason to own the token would be to to expect return in form of fees earned from the marketplace. It is currently a startup project, but the initial phase is nearing completion. The wider project was launched last year in an open format October 2015 (see [2]). There are currently 10-20 people actively working in the project. The closest analogy is a crowd-based exchange, rather than a purely centralised exchange. It is not a decentralised exchange in the sense of Counterparty or Mastercoin, etc.
While getting wider circulating of LKK is also a goal, programmatic distribution in the sense of the known currency systems is not planned. Tokens can either be bought on a market, or earned through contributions.
For the concept and also source-code, I'd encourage anyone to have a look at the wiki and ask questions here. We're currently building on OpenAssets and NBitcoin, but also keep track of all the developments.
Please also note there is the original whitepaper:
https://wiki.lykkex.com/colored_coin_exchange_white_paper [1]
https://wiki.lykkex.com/yellowpages/founders[2]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6piZnwgqM0Because .004 to .05 is well over 3x
