TenX’s ICO finished nearly as soon as it started, with the project raising 200,000 eth in around ten minutes, currently valued at around $67 million, for the further development of a crypto debit card, a new protocol called Commit and to apply for a banking license.
The team received seed funding by Fenbushi Capital, a China based VC fund that focuses exclusively on blockchain projects, having previously invested in Circle, Bloq and many others.
However, they listed Vitalik Buterin himself as an investor on the webpage and whitepaper prior to the ICO in a somewhat misleading manner as Vitalik told Trustnode it was Fenbushi that invested, not he personally, as we detailed yesterday.
But Julian Hosp, co-founder of TenX, told us Buterin had helped with the Commit protocol and was one of the first individuals to test the debit card, suggesting Buterin has been assisting the project.
They already have a wallet usable only on Android, a debit card which you can order for $15, then you just send eth or btc to the wallet, allowing you to spend it by taping your card anywhere Visa or Mastercard is accepted, not any different than if you had deposited fiat, rather than eth or btc.
How that works is somewhat simple. Once you make a purchase, they take the eth equivalent amount, sell it for USD or whatever currency on Kraken or Poloniex, and then send the USD to the merchant. For the service, they take a fee of 2% from the merchants.
On top of that, they plan to apply for a banking license, but have not yet taken any steps as far as we are aware. Then there is the commit protocol which aims to allow for an easier interchange between currencies.
So the overall package is interesting, especially if they do get a banking license, with a significant plus for the project being that they actually have a working product out there, but the aggressive marketing is somewhat dicey to say the least.
It will therefore be interesting to see how the project develops in the coming months and years, as well as how this $67 million will be spent.
