Dear Bubbletone followers,
We highly appreciate your active participation in the forum. We will continue to inform you about all the news. For your attention the questions and answers that were announced during the AMA session:
Q: Who is your potential competitor?
A: The best world's project were described in the recent article published on Forbes
Q: Who are your potential partners apart from Shocard?
A: At the moment, we don't develop deep cooperation with Shocard because we're developing our own solution for clients validation. The main problem within this solution has been solved, namely the opportunity to recognize various lines from various documents. This option allows users not to type their personal details, exclude errors and manual labor of operators to retype the clients data from pdf copies documents. Also now we are working on implementation of mechanism for comparison of selfie photos and passport photos. It is necessary to meet requirements of a number of mobile operators.
We are now working on PoC with SiMYO and several other mobile operators. Our potential partners are all mobile operators, especially small and medium ones (like MVNOs) and other service providers (insurance companies, booking companies, content providers - for example, TV, music, business apps etc.). Kasko2go, an insurance company, is our current partner and they will launch their project next year. And after that we will be able to integrate them into our system.
When it comes to telecom, we are working with Simyo (spanish MVNO operator), Mobily (SA MNO operator), Venta Mobile (Latvia), Mobifone (Vietnam). AT the moment PoC procedure is passed with one of them and we will implement this procedure with others. We have a list of partners who are not ready to announce their names until the PoC successfully complete. We consider Nexign to be one of the most important strategic partners. Nexign is one of the biggest companies that provide BSS (billing systems) for mobile operators. This company fully understands how the billing systems work and they help us to create low level API of our BlockChain for integration of our BlockCHain part into BSS of mobile operators. AT the moment, all our main BlockChain resources are focused on creation of this API.
This will allow mobile operators to quickly implement to our platform. We hope to show real ready industrial use case during GSMA mobile world congress in Barcelona at the end of February on our joint booth.
Q: Do you have any plans to develop your own Blockchain or will remain in Ethereum?
A: When it comes to the platform, we are developing a private blockchain for a special group of users - an industrial blockchain for telecom operators and service providers. This blockchain is for professional market players. Based on Graphene, it has very high performance .
Q: We invested in the whole “BubbleTone” which is in use in Russia currently “without” UMT. In previous posts from the BubbleTone team, only certain functions and or features explained as “certain services within BubbleTone App” will use “UMT”. Stated after the fact of investing.
A: Nowadays the app of such level is very complicated and requires time for many integrations. First integration was with a Russian operator, that's why their clients can call to PSTN using the balance within this operator. Also the development of the web-version of the BubbleTone has been taking a lot of time. We hope it will be available soon.
We have implemented a number of telecom functions into the app (e.g . conversion of voice codec OPUS into G.729, integration with our own SMS-server, etc.) and we have a delay with implementation of personal balances into the app. As soon as the personal balances are implemented, the SIP out calls for other participants will be available. We hope it will take place in the first quarter 2019.
Q: What happened to your test with 'Virgin' Russia?
A: Virgin Connect uses profiles that are not compatible with our our applet. As a result, the tests are suspended until we find a solution.
Q: Where are we in 6 months? I see no exchange trading action and increase, I don’t even know how much each umt is worth.
A: During this time, the team was focused on negotiations with operators and the platform development. We do not expect the trading activity to increase until the token gets its utility purpose. You can find the UMT price here:
https://www.livecoinwatch.com/price/Bubbletone-UMTWhen it comes to UMT and token-economy - there were many questions about it.
First of all, we're focused on the development of the platform and its launch. Secondly, we're working on our app. This app is a possible interface for operators. THE APP IS NOT BLOCKCHAIN-BASED. It will allow subscribers to choose and pay for offers. It is operators who use blockchain to make deals. When the platform is launched, more operators will be integrated into the platform and UMT token will get more value because it will be utilized and in demand.
Q: Where is your HP announcement?
A: At the beginning, we planned to recommend operators to use HP equipment for nodes, but operators refused as they consider this to be protectionism.
Q: What was the treasury management of the funds raised during the ICO? Does the company still have enough fund to build the project (aka, did they cash out ETH into fiat or did they just hodl the ETH)?
A: At the beginning of our ico, one ETH was 1350$. As of now, it's lower than 100$. The main amount of funds we received during the pre-ICO stage. As you can see, the exchange rate has significantly changed. The organisation of ICO-process required a lot of money. We participated in many events and it was really expensive. The rest of the funds has been allocated to R&D. Our product is complicated, it requires time and resources, both human and financial. We have also allocated a part of our resources to create joint solution with Nexign. As i mentioned above, we are going to showcase this solution in Barcelona in February 2019. Besides during the whole year the exchange rate was getting worse and worse, but we stored money on the accounts, from which we received them. We have been spending funds on an as-needed basis.
There are no standards of blockchain in the world. We understand necessity of developing standards in this innovative technology. That's why we participate in different international organisations, such as ITU, TM Forum, SAMENA Council. In ITU we actively participate in the Focus Group on DLT. This process also requires many resources, both human and financial.
During the ICO we concluded several SWAP agreements. Once these companies are listed on exchanges and unlock our part of tokens we are going to partially sell them. For our project to function fully and normally, we need to cooperate with banks, which take money from mobile operators and convert them to SDR tokens. There are no banks who are ready to do it now. That is why we have decided to establish our own payment institution which requires EMI (e-money license). It's very important task, it will take at least 6-8 month and additional investments.
We are also working on SDK for iOS and Android to let other operators integrate our application into their applications, as they want to promote their services using functionality of the Bubbletone appbuild in their apps. We are going to rewrite our WP in quarter 1 2019. As for the roadmap it will be rewritten by the end of this year.
Q: What is the current circulating supply of UMT?
A: The circulating supply is 160 069 319, 28.
Q: How much % of UMT supply is still locked and when will all unlock?
A: About 412 mln (appr. 72%) of UMT supply is locked. All of them will be unlocked in 24 months (starting from september 2018). 3 % is unlocked every month.
Q: Can you explained the top holders in etherscan?
A: The biggest holder is Network development fund (locked for 24 months). No tokens are used from this fund now.
From the very beginning the project was not focused on speculators. This a long-term project. We are not going to dump our token, we are going to work hard and to increase the token value and make the platform up and running.
We'll try to inform you more often about all the changes in R&D of Bubbletone platform. We'll have our roadmap corrected by the end of this year. We will updated our WP in Q1 2019. We kindly ask you to be patient.