Topic: [KOBO] Kobocoin - An African peer to peer payment/micropayment system - page 36. (Read 127548 times)

Keep the good ideas coming. I'll post the work schedule tomorrow when it's all confirmed.

I'm now going through all the posts and preparing tomorrow's work schedule. It looks healthy. Lots to do and investigate.

In terms of remittance, we now have a location to perform the test remittance transaction. We're getting there!
 

Thanks. Yes it's been bumpy. 6 months old on 7th July. Glad we're still here and got the infrastructure behind the platform. Thanks for the encouragement.
 

Kobo is possibly safe from de-listing for now..   only way to grab big volume is to buy up.,, selldowns are seldom, thus the low volume.. buyers need to be more aggressive with their offers so it won't have a wide spread... as new developments materialize, current holders are more likely to keep their coins and stake more.
 
 

I believe the current supply is around 24 million while the 350 million is the supply over the lifetime of the coin.

regards,
jj

tight supply?.. might it be a signal of  an uptrend soon?..  because unless someone unloads to the bids, the only way to get 20ks to 100ks is to buy up the posted offers,

Forgot to add that we'll be starting a Youtube channel soon and posting videos, video blogs and other stuff. We're thinking of using some form of animation rather than our ugly mugs.

I'm not the most confident speaker, but if I have to I'll join in the discussions on cryptos and the future of the blockchain etc and get my name/face out there. I actually do know it needs to be done, but I'm a bit of a hermit. I'm not really looking forward to that side of things.

Thanks. Good ideas there. I've updated the Thread title as suggested. We're going to become a lot more open in terms of scope. There's been interest from all corners of the globe which is really good.

I'll look into the pros and cons of saying 'Africa's own Bitcoin'. Sometimes you can inadvertently advertise another product just by mentioning it. If someone has no clue what bitcoin is, they may investigate further into bitcoin, and decide bitcoin, rather than kobocoin, is the coin for them. I'll look into it, and speak with Simi about that.

I'm speaking to a few services about being added to their platform. With so many coins it's hard to prove how serious we are. Once we have some remittance transactions under our belt (and publicise it) they'll probably be a lot more positive about adding us to their services. All these services need coding work to add new coins so they really need to see the benefit to themselves before adding to their services. I was looking at CoinPayments.net as a payment gateway. Their terms seem a bit 'out there' but I think it's somewhere we need to be as well. There's negotiations required with all the services we'd like to be associated with.

I really like that idea of partnering up with a Chinese Crypto team. I'll look into that as well.

I'll also get onto ShapeShift.

Kobocoin now has a weekly work cycle. I'll make sure all investigations into the points raised are started from Monday. Hopefully, I'll have answers for you by this time next week.
 

I think there are many coins staking right now.

to add...in areas with disturbance (war,  civil unrest, etc,) , it is safer to carry & use Kobocoin instead of fiat money (cash)

Yes people can hold their kobocoin in wallet and get "interest".
 
The "proof of stake" interest is 10% yearly.

thank you for the update-

.the remittance business offers a huge potential for kobocoin.. bitcoin-based remittance is already existing in southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines.

some suggestions:

 -maybe drop "West" and promote it as "African"

 -as a marketing strategy,  is it possible to use "Africa's own bitcoin" without getting into copyright issues?
 - in the logo, maybe use a silhouette/shadow of cheetah in background to stress fast transaction.

 - tie-up with e-commerce sites like OLX South Africa as its peer-to-peer payment system.
 
 - maybe an interview in some bitcoin podcast like Let's Talk Bitcoin to broaden awareness of Kobo .

 - for agents to adopt Kobo, there should be at least a semblance of stability in the price.. right now, spread is wide because of low number of traders..


 -regarding bittrex, i think Kobo should remain to be listed on bittrex

 - China is Africa's biggest trading partner and its largest investor.. Maybe a tie-up with  a Chinase crypto com to promote Kobocoin as alternate mode of money transfer between Chinse and African traders?

 - apply for inclusion in shapeshift.io  ?

Thanks. It's a long road but at least we're on it!
 

The remittance 'flow' has been worked out. We're hoping to run a test case (with pics) in the near future. I'd like to give specific dates but things always seem to take longer than I'd like.

Once we've proved it, and worked out all the numbers, then it can be theoretically scaled up to produce realistic forecasts. It would be nice to pick arbitrary figures and work towards them but I'd prefer to see it in action, get real figures, and work from those.

The question that needs to be answered for all non-Kobocoin participants in the remittance transaction is "What's in it for me?"

Sender/Receiver - Immediate benefit - More of your money gets to the recipient because of the low fees
Local independent agents involved in the transaction - This is more tricky. We need to make it attractive enough so that agents are happy to add Kobocoin to their already existing portfolio. Local agents are competing with the traditional remittance services with sky high fees. There's more 'wiggle room' with Kobocoin (low fees), and hence more opportunity to make profit.

At the start, I expect that we at Kobocoin will be handling all the remittance transactions. Once the buyer and sender see the immediate benefit of low fees and near instant transaction speeds, I'm hoping they'll encourage family & friends (who also receive money from abroad) to look into this "new thing called Kobocoin" and help generate new customers. If we can achieve that, then the local agents will soon begin to hear local people asking if they also deal with Kobocoins.

This is what we're working towards.

Great to hear what the next steps are.

I like this part: "Remittance Services".

Kobocoin is a great opportunity for people who paying high fee's for money transactions to and in Africa.
Hope they discover and use kobocoin in the future so they don't get "robbed" by big parties of their money what they can use hard.

All i can say is a great update!!


 

Forgot to add that since the majority of mobile wallets downloaded have been from outside Africa we will be updating the website to reflect a more global outlook. The feel of the website and tone of the organization needs to be more inclusive. We're working on it.

There's a lot to do but we're on it.

On a personal note, I'm a bit of a geek hermit. I'd welcome any suggestions on how to encourage and build a community. I think I've been quite rubbish so far. Any advice appreciated! There will be a bounty for ideas we implement.

One thing I think we we need is a faucet. Can anyone build one for us? I'll integrate it with our website. PM me.
 

UPDATE:

I think it's time to give an update on where we are with things. There's stuff going on behind the scenes and I'm always unsure how much of our strategy to post here, but lack of updates is not a good thing.

If you think the initial plan is rubbish then please say so. Your comments will help us to tighten up what we're offering.

The android wallets have been cobbled together and released, but I'm still in the process of getting the Exchange Rates added to the wallet. It's a silly problem. The Bittrex and Cryptonator public APIs do not provide data in the format expected by the wallet modules, so it doesn't work without major code alterations (which haven't been done yet). On the other hand, the Yobit API works perfectly, but volume is non-existent on Yobit so the price displayed on the wallet is not the latest price.

Forgive me for saying this, but it's ironic that in terms of wallet development, it's better for us to lose Bittrex (that we're fighting to stay on) and start using Yobit. Then the exchange rates would be correctly displayed without hours of new coding, and still have CoinmarketCap and Cryptonator being updated, so apart from the Bittrex name we'd actually (technology wise) be in an possibly better place. But, again, it is what it is.

I'm in the process of farming this specific exchange rates work out to a third party rather than stopping other progress just to get this resolved.

The next step may take some time to implement but we're in the process of getting things organized. This is step 1 of market penetration.

Remittance Services

As was said in the OP, the remittance market is worth over $80bn. One thing that people who have downloaded the wallet have been asking is "What can I do with them?". We are aiming for the first step into the market to be in the area of remittance services.

As well as the traditional money transfer services, there is also a massive trade in global currencies happening on a lot of street corners in Africa. People returning home or visiting Africa, generally carry foreign currency with them, which is changed by these traders into local (or foreign) currency. We aim to try and become a part of that market (over time).

We are aiming to build a distribution channel which allows those traders on the street corners to trade and exchange other FIAT currencies with kobocoins, as well as cash out their traded kobocoins into local currency. We aim to have a central hub that facilitates those traders without us having to open multiple kiosks for this purpose. Of course, it will be a very small operation at first. I won't give details of the channel (it already exists, but is not being used for cryptos - yet!) because it's obvious (to us anyway) and can also be used by the competition!

Once the channel is setup and open, we'll then perform a few publicized tests, i.e. ask someone locally in the UK to send a relative some kobocoins, which we, as Kobocoin, will redeem for them at the receiving end. Our initial service will be a closed loop (only kobocoins bought from Kobocoin will be redeemed at the other end - officially). That way, people who are used to sending $100 to family, only for the family to get only $60 after fees will see the real difference. $100 will net them more than $95. The hope is that this will encourage others to use our services. Why? Because it's cheaper. We are aware that other services are cutting fees, but we believe we have as much flexibility, if not more, to achieve this.

Just like any currency service we intend to set daily buy/sell values.

This may sound risky at first glance, but we are not looking to service high value transactions when the service first starts. A suitable upper limit on daily volume will allow us to maintain a float without breaking the bank. Hopefully it will raise awareness and highlight the crypto USPs of minimal fees and also being transferable between individuals. We're hoping to encourage people to keep, stake, and transfer their kobocoins between themselves, without going for the default cashing out option. This is how we hope to stimulate it's use as a currency.

These things take time to organize but we've been making steps in the right direction.

Regulation is resolved. At the moment it's all about money laundering and terrorism. We have to be vigilant in our dealings. Pleading ignorance is not an option.

There's also other things in the pipeline:

We're finalizing what we want to see in the upcoming merchant POS wallets. Development will start later in the year. It will allow competition between traders (for customer business) but I'm not giving away exactly how we'll be achieving that. It's an option that some traders have asked for.

There's the iOS wallets. Needs to be done, but I'm very wary of using web wallets for kobocoin (the default option with iOS). I personally don't think they're secure enough. I'm in discussion with other devs about the iOS wallet. There may be a solution later in the year from another team, I'm discussing using a white label version of their offering for kobocoin. I'm just hoping the solution doesn't utilize a web wallet.

Technology wise, I need to resolve the hashing url for the mobile wallets. The server has crashed a few times which in turn has stalled syncing on the mobile wallets. I'm looking into the possibility of load balancing the validhashes url to avoid this situation, but this is more tech and hardware, and not something that can be implemented immediately.

Other than that, we now have an elevator pitch. Let me know if you think it works, or how you think it needs to be altered.

Elevator Pitch

Part one:
Kobocoin is an electronic currency that can be transferred without a central bank or clearing house. Currency transactions are person-to-person, near instant, worldwide, and incur minimal fees, if any. No financial or credit history, or any form of registration, is required to use the kobocoin currency.

Part two:
Kobocoin offers currency services concentrating, for now, on the African continent where remittance services alone is a market worth over $80bn. Sub-Saharan Africa is the global lead in mobile financial services. Gallup data show that, currently, an average of 54 percent of adults in sub-Saharan Africa make one or more long-distance payments in a given month, totaling approximately five billion transactions annually. The total volume of these flows is approximately $760 billion, and 50 to 60 percent of the transactions are in cash. With a conservative estimate of revenues at 2 percent of volume, this results in annual revenues of about $6.6 billion from electronic payments.

Part three:
The Kobocoin organization creates free, and paid for, services and applications that utilize the kobocoin currency, as well as building services and solutions for other electronic currencies.

The finalized elevator pitch will form the main basis of the business plan.

There's more going on, but remittance is the main push now to encourage usage. Again, thanks for your continued support.
 

it's quite frustrating to see some dubious coins having large trading volume, while a transparent coin like Kobo is getting anemic volume.. right now, KOBO is again in danger of being delisted @ bittrex.. I hope the Kobo investing community will rise up to the challenge of  supporting the coin and keeping the volume up... this coin has the potential to be big in the future... on the other hand, this is a sweet time to accumulate while things are quiet and non-holders have no clue about the e-commerce plan.
 

Thanks. I will. We're going to be setting some major targets and start working towards them. We'll be developing POS (point of sale) merchant wallets once the infrastructure is more resilient e.g. multiple hashing explorers for stability.

The biggest problem is staying on the exchange while all of this is being developed and released.

thank you.. please keep us updated on the business plan..
 

I'm in the process of preparing a business plan with future targets etc. It's not easy getting all the figures together but it's in progress. Also, there's been an issue with the server which provides valid hashes for the mobile wallets. After a few weeks of working without the Kobocoind daemon is not working as well as it should be. I can't find an explanation at the moment. I've rebuilt the blockchain twice but it's just not as reliable for some strange reason but I'll get to them bottom of it.