Looks like the blockchain has found another groundbreaking use case, this time in the charity donation sector. The Blockbustered version of past charity fundraising required donors to blindly trust that their money was going to the promised cause.
The problem with this is that you can’t trust anybody.// -- Discuss and ask questions in our community on Workplace.
In 2013, The Tampa Bay Times ran an elaborate investigation into the 50 worst charities in America. What they found was disgusting. The 50 charities raised a combined $1.3 billion over 10 years’ time. Only $350 million of that went to the cause, with the rest going to greedy hands, like the for-profit companies that raised the donations.
AIDChain is a platform the tracks donation flows, allowing anyone to be able to track the AIDCoin, which will prevent any misbehavior. This platform will also be able to track fiat money flows by integrating with the banks API. According to the company, “Charities can also use the platform to register, verify identity and manage communications with their donors.
”Another promising feature AidCoin offers is AIDPay, a donation button/gateway. Charities can integrate this feature onto their website and accept many different forms of crypto and fiat, allowing for easy exchange at the current rate for AIDcoin.
Supposedly, AIDcoin will be the only form of payment allowed into the ecosystem, and will be required to access the different services on AIDChain. As you can see above, the platform plans to exchange donor’s credit card, PayPal, bitcoin and Ethereum into AIDcoin. This is terrific.
However, they don’t explain how they will do this. When I asked “will you be using that fiat/btc/eth to repurchase AID off the exchanges, and what % does the company keep for themselves?” They replied
AIDCoin is backed by CharityStars, an existing online company that has raised over $10 million in charity auctions. CharityStars is already VC backed, and seems decent. However, $10 million in charity auctions is not a real earth shattering number.
AidCoin’s team, or shall I say CharityStars’ team, is currently 25 people deep.
Their CEO and Co-founder, Francesco Nazari Fusetti, has had success in the past.Their other Co-founder, Manuela Ravalli, was ranked (by somebody) top 10 Italian female entrepreneurs under 35.The team looks capable, and have been together at CharityStars for a few years now.
The online donation market in the United States last year alone was $15 billion.There is much to like about this “idea”. The thing is, it’s only an idea right now. The company has its “parent site” up and running, but AidCoin is not built yet.
The AIDPay gateway is the thing that stands out most. Requiring AIDCoin to be the only coin on the blockchain, while accepting fiat and other cryptos, is perfection. They have figured it out. Quite a few projects grew weak when they abandon the usage of their coin.
The technology that will allow them to do this is not built yet, though.Here is the company’s accomplishments, and gameplan so far. As you can see, the beta for the AIDChain won’t be released until Q1 2018.
The problem with this is that you can’t trust anybody.// -- Discuss and ask questions in our community on Workplace.
In 2013, The Tampa Bay Times ran an elaborate investigation into the 50 worst charities in America. What they found was disgusting. The 50 charities raised a combined $1.3 billion over 10 years’ time. Only $350 million of that went to the cause, with the rest going to greedy hands, like the for-profit companies that raised the donations.
AIDChain is a platform the tracks donation flows, allowing anyone to be able to track the AIDCoin, which will prevent any misbehavior. This platform will also be able to track fiat money flows by integrating with the banks API. According to the company, “Charities can also use the platform to register, verify identity and manage communications with their donors.
”Another promising feature AidCoin offers is AIDPay, a donation button/gateway. Charities can integrate this feature onto their website and accept many different forms of crypto and fiat, allowing for easy exchange at the current rate for AIDcoin.
The Token
Supposedly, AIDcoin will be the only form of payment allowed into the ecosystem, and will be required to access the different services on AIDChain. As you can see above, the platform plans to exchange donor’s credit card, PayPal, bitcoin and Ethereum into AIDcoin. This is terrific.
However, they don’t explain how they will do this. When I asked “will you be using that fiat/btc/eth to repurchase AID off the exchanges, and what % does the company keep for themselves?” They replied
“We have essentially two ways to doing this:This doesn’t really answer the question.
– integrate with existing exchanges through API
– allocate part of the Aidpool and of the funds received to create a reserve and manage crypto conversions.While the answer can be a mix of the aforementioned two solutions, we can’t say right now how the process will work exactly since we need to test the different options available”
The Team
AIDCoin is backed by CharityStars, an existing online company that has raised over $10 million in charity auctions. CharityStars is already VC backed, and seems decent. However, $10 million in charity auctions is not a real earth shattering number.
AidCoin’s team, or shall I say CharityStars’ team, is currently 25 people deep.
Their CEO and Co-founder, Francesco Nazari Fusetti, has had success in the past.Their other Co-founder, Manuela Ravalli, was ranked (by somebody) top 10 Italian female entrepreneurs under 35.The team looks capable, and have been together at CharityStars for a few years now.
The Verdict
The online donation market in the United States last year alone was $15 billion.There is much to like about this “idea”. The thing is, it’s only an idea right now. The company has its “parent site” up and running, but AidCoin is not built yet.
The AIDPay gateway is the thing that stands out most. Requiring AIDCoin to be the only coin on the blockchain, while accepting fiat and other cryptos, is perfection. They have figured it out. Quite a few projects grew weak when they abandon the usage of their coin.
The technology that will allow them to do this is not built yet, though.Here is the company’s accomplishments, and gameplan so far. As you can see, the beta for the AIDChain won’t be released until Q1 2018.
Risks
- Scaling and price fluctuation problems are a major concern. They are building on the Ethereum blockchain, which is not ready for them yet. The volatility of their token will be a problem. For example, how bad would it be if a charity raises $50,000 which they receive in AID, but by the time they go to sell the AID for a good price on exchanges, the price has gone down and they only receive $35,000? -4
- CharityStars is a real company/website. They have been doing auctions since 2013, and have raised $10 million so far and their Twitter shows they are actively running different auctions. However, they currently have 17,000 followers, and their auction announcement tweets rarely get more than a couple likes. This lack of popularity is pretty concerning. Will putting their company on the blockchain really make it take off? They don’t leave any room in the budget for marketing. -3
- They are basically a whitepaper ICO, a there is no working product, which is possible fine if we can trust them to build what they promise. A huge red flag with this project is that it seems they didn’t plan on how to build and integrate AIDChain. They say this AIDChain will be able to convert people’s fiat and crypto donations instantly to AIDcoin. That’s literally all they said. They offer no explanation of how they will build this technology. And according to their token allocation plan, they forgot to distribute tokens to the AIDChain. How is the chain going to supply AID if it doesn’t have any AID? -5
Growth Potential
- AidCoin/CharityStars claim to have had over 40,000 different bidders on their site. That’s pretty good for being such a young company. If they up their marketing, this could get popular.+4
- The following quote from AidCoins’ telegram spokesman, Gorgio, sums up what they offer.
“Right now charities manually report how they spend the funds received, with AidCoin and Aidchain traceability on use of funds can be automated. Moreover the information recorded on the blockchain will be immutable, tamper-proof and publicly accessible, increasing the level of transparency and allowing public auditing.”This is a big idea. Most people wealthy enough to donate money don’t because they simply do not trust that their funds will go where promised. +5
- They raised 8,333 ETH during the pre-sale. That’s a success. Clearly, there is interest in this project. +3