ICOs

Go Faster, Farther, Easier with These Travel Industry ICOs 4 1314

Travel is going places. The 7.6 trillion dollar industry is enjoying the blockchain revolution, and things are about to get global. With opportunities opening up for companies to improve flight bookings, P2P travel tips, and of course currency exchanges, travelers can expect exciting things in the near future.

Here are a Few Upcoming Travel Industry ICOs to Shake up the Travel World:

Cool Cousin

Ever been in a foreign city and tried to find an ‘authentic’ no frills eatery? There’s always one listed in your guidebook, but you don’t need a guidebook to find it: it’ll be the one packed with tourists! The eatery itself may not have any more or less to offer than the neighboring restaurants. It just happens to be the one the Lonely Planet writer went to, so now it’s where all the tourists go.

Centralized travel advice, like Lonely Planet and its grandchild, Trip Advisor, depend heavily on biased views, and had the power to transform local economies based on whim and chance. Millennial and Gen Z travelers are looking for a more personalized travel experience, and Cool Cousin has stepped in to fill the void.

It’s a decentralized, peer to peer network through which you can find a local to give you travel advice or even be your city guide. The company has been around since 2016, and has enjoyed healthy growth already, so now that they’re launching an ICO it’s going to be one to keep an eye on. Token sales are open now, and the wallet and first transactional features are slated for third quarter 2018.

TripBit

Any traveler knows where most of your money really goes: exchange fees, ATM fees, booking fees, other fees, and fees for your fees. If you’re not careful you can lose your budget halfway through your trip. In an effort to curb this scattered and draining experience, TripBit is creating an all-in-one platform for global citizens.

Their three prong approach integrates flights, hotels and events into one platform. It’s designed to save travelers time and money, because instead of paying fees for all these services separately, you can book everything as a bundle through TripBit. This also alleviates headaches like double bookings, and streamlines the whole process into a seamless experience.

TripBit is set up to accept a small variety of cryptos in addition to fiat currency, and of course their own TBT tokens. There should be plenty of room for them to expand down the road into other avenues like tours, car rentals, etc. TripBit’s ICO launches in March.

GlobeTrotter

Remember traveler’s cheques? They were the paper notes that cave people carried around so they didn’t have to buy foreign currency. Now that we have the blockchain in place, isn’t it time we had a crypto that worked as a universal travel currency, sort of like traveler’s cheques once did?

Cue GlobeTrotter. Instead of building a schmancy app or boutique P2P service with a blockchain engine, GlobeTrotter is focused on cryptocurrency itself. Their goal is a tad lofty: to create a stable, universal cryptocurrency with mainstream acceptance as a travel currency used around the globe.

The strategy behind this involves a three coin system. First they’ll offer tokens, like normal, which will fluctuate (“hopefully upwards”). Next will be GlobeTrotter coins, with a fixed and stable value based on the top ten global fiat currencies. The coins won’t be available on any exchanges–you will only be able to buy and sell them directly from GlobeTrotter, at their preordained rate. Third will be gift coins, which are like gift certificates that vendors can distribute freely on their own terms, redeemable only at their shops.

GlobeTrotter is also touting added security through a backup system to recover lost wallets or keys, and “smarter contracts” optimized for ultra-user-friendliness. Their mission hinges on their ability to create a stable crypto that finds mainstream acceptance, but if they pull it off they could make history.

Traveling Onward

Other noteworthy ICOs include CryptoBnB, which has positioned itself to usurp AirBnB with a swifter, more secure blockchain approach; also check out BaliCoin, a travel service bundle which has already launched its ICO. As always, it’s important to do your own research before deciding which, if any, companies you want to invest in.

With faster, easier, decentralized travel services already popping up around the globe, the world already looks easier to navigate for the travelers among us.

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Christina is a technology and business communicator who has worked with high profile ICOs and blockchain influencers to break industry news.

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Top 9 Crypto Buzzwords You Need to Know 6 5882

crypto buzzwords

The crypto world is in a constant state of flux. Innovative ICO after innovative ICO appears. Markets rise, markets crash. And as each day goes by, the crazy, hair-raising ride that is cryptocurrency becomes decidedly more interesting. Its abundant vocabulary becomes richer as well, and new crypto buzzwords crop up daily.

To really understand the ins and outs of this complex ecosystem (can anyone fully claim to do that?) you’d need an encyclopedia updating in real time. But, just to get you started, here’s how to hold your own in any cryptocurrency conversation.

These are the top 9 crypto buzzwords you need to know:

Bitcoin BTC 

Well, obviously, Bitcoin tops the list of crypto buzzwords. In fact, the vast majority of people automatically think of Bitcoin when they hear the word ‘cryptocurrency.’ Emerging shortly after the financial crisis, in 2009, you can read more about the ideology behind Bitcoin here. But, know this: If you don’t have this word down pat, you can’t even think about talking crypto.

Ethereum ETH 

The second largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, Ethereum in theory is not in competition with the world’s most famous digital currency. Running on its own blockchain, Ethereum supports apps and trade through a system of smart contracts.

Blockchain 

Dabble a little in crypto and it won’t be long before you’re hearing about the technology behind digital money–the blockchain. Actually, generating cryptocurrency is just one use case for blockchain, since the technology can record any information and keep it safe and immutable on its decentralized system.

We’re still discovering just how many uses this new technology has, but it’s widely considered the most disruptive technology since the internet.

Cryptography

This is the technology applied to all transactions in the blockchain. It’s essentially a process of scrambling information, making it unreadable, and allowing transactions to be kept anonymous.

Satoshi

While it sounds like a raw fish dish, Satoshi is actually the smallest fraction of a Bitcoin that you can buy. It’s also the first name of the suspected inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, (although this is something he denies).

Market Cap 

This term is used a lot and is a good indicator of how large a cryptocurrency is. You basically take the total supply and multiply it by the price to figure out its dollar value.

Mining

Beyond flashlights and hard caps, mining in the crypto world refers to the computational process of generating cryptocurrency on the blockchain. Each computer in the network uploads its power, and miners are rewarded for their efforts in digital currency.

Hashing

A “hash” is a computer program that basically takes any information and turns it into a set of numbers and letters of a certain length.

Forking 

Soft forks, hard forks, the concept is basically the same. Forking is when there is a split in the digital recordings on the blockchain, usually used to right a wrong, such as the hacking attack on Ether in 2016.

While you may not claim to be an expert after grasping these basic crypto buzzwords, at least you won’t look blank when you hear them thrown about in the office. From mining and hashing to forking and cryptography, little by little you’ll hold your own in the cryptocurrency world.

7 Red Flags to Watch For When Investing in ICOs 3 3624

investing in icos

For many people thinking about investing in ICOs, it may be their first time investing. When traditional opportunities are only open to a selective few with a high net worth, cryptocurrency has democratized investing for all. But it also means that there are a lot of first timers out there not sure of what to look for when they part with their cash.

81 percent of ICOs end up becoming scams. That’s a pretty grim panorama. You have to have an iron cast stomach to want to continue investing in ICOs. But, if do you want to try your luck and see if you can back a winner, here are seven red flags to watch out for first.

1. Too Many Buzzwords

“Decentralized,” “immutable,” “distributed,” may all sound like very important words, but you need to make sure you understand what they really mean. And even more importantly, that your ICO team does as well. There’s been so much marketing hype surrounding Bitcoin and the blockchain, that many people have fallen victim to it, including the ICO startups themselves.

They may be in love with the idea of no regulation or centralized authorities, but how important is it to their actual business? And can they demonstrate a clear way of using the technology? In short, is it more than a fluffy concept on a white paper?

2. Is Their Token Really Needed?

It may be hard for a layman investing in ICOs to assess whether an ICO’s token is really needed. But, try to examine the business proposal. Could it be carried out without using cryptocurrency? What function does the token have within the actual business? Is it being built on a new platform, when it could really be built on Ether? If the ICO has a useless token it’s chances of failure are close to 100 percent.

3. An Unconvincing Management Team

This is pretty much investing 101 in any kind of area. Most top investors in IPOs will study the management team to make sure it has the right balance of passion, leadership, and technical knowhow. While an individual investor may not be able to assess this, be sure that the ICO actually has team members on their site.

If the people don’t even appear on their page, it’s quite possible that they are scam artists. And if they do appear, be sure to run a quick background check. LinkedIn or Google should be enough to at least make sure you’re on the right track.

4. Ultra High Reserves

It could be a good thing that your prospective ICO team has a high amount of reserves. But this depends on their plans to use them. If the funds are allocated to use throughout the roadmap, and not just in the early stages, that’s a good sign of intent. But, if there’s no explanation in the white paper or anywhere else about how these funds will be spent, you could consider ultra high reserves to be a red flag when investing in ICOs.

5. No Code

If there’s no code to support the idea behind the ICO, it may never materialize into something more than an idea on a piece of paper, or a fancy website. At the very least, your ICO should be able to display some technical knowledge. This means demonstrating their ideas with some working code. Being able to write the code required is a basic prerequisite and no company should be asking for finances before showing that they can translate their ideas to code.

6. A Long and Confusing Roadmap

There may be no hard-and-fast rule when it comes to how long a roadmap should be. But make sure that it makes sense and is coherent. Generally speaking when investing in ICOs, you want to get behind something that’s aiming for about two years to get off ground. If it’s longer than that, consider it carefully and ask a lot of questions.

An ICO with a five-year long roadmap may not have a plan for solving problems should it flounder after six months. And that’s the point at which they could easily run with investor money before the project ends.

7. The Same Old Faces investing in ICOs

If you’re flicking through ICOs and you see the same faces appearing on the advisory board, that could be a red flag. While it could be genuine, there’s also a possibility that the advisors are trying to profit from as many projects as they can. Don’t give them your money, too.

ICO investing isn’t for the faint-hearted and it shouldn’t be done on a whim or an instinct. Take some time to do your research, watch out for these seven red flags, and you may just come out on top.

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