Opportunities:
1) Solves a real problem that can be benefited from the decentralized platform
- Right now, identity verification is a pain in the butt. You need to give away so much personal and sensitive information to different companies.
- The whole process is also very inefficient – oftentimes you are sending the same information over and over again to different organizations.
- If you are in the cryptocurrency game, you know about the hassle that you need to go through verifying your account in every single exchanges. Not to mention that the time it takes for each company to verify and approve the documents that you sent.
- If Civic becomes successful, it is going to dramatically cut down the time and cost associated with verifying users’ identity.
2) Great team – Vinny Lingham, being a star on Shark Tank, lends a lot of credibility to the project.
3) Unlike most ICO nowadays, Civic already has a product – the secure identity app. Although the app is still in an early stage, I can see how users can benefit from using the app.
- If you are performing an action (creating an account, making a purchase, etc.) on companies partnered with Civic, the website will show a QR code which you can scan using the Civic app. Your identity will be instantly verified once the code is scanned.
4) The ICO structure levels the playing field and ensures smaller participants can get in.
5) There is a network effect for this project – the more users the token has, the more valuable they are.
Concerns:
1) Market cap of $100 million is on the high end of ICOs. It may affect how quick the token price can move.
2) Civic is asking for a lot of sensitive information from users – some users may feel uncomfortable sharing so much personal information to an unproven startup. If this happens, it would be difficult for the project to scale.
Conclusion:
Overall, I like this ICO because it has the potential to disrupt a very inefficient and frustrating process. Our thoughts of the tokens for short term and long term are as follows:
1) For short-term holding:
- May not be that good because (1) the market cap is higher than most recent ICOs, and (2) the ICO structure allows pretty much everyone to be able to participate in it, reducing the demand for purchasing the token immediately following its trading on exchanges.
2) For long-term holding:
- Very good potential for the following reasons:
i) Vinny Lingham is a high profile and experienced entrepreneur – this can dramatically increase the odds of the project being successful because Civic would have an easier time finding large corporations as partners.
ii) I believe identity verification has not seen much innovation in the past. If Civic is successful, it can disrupt and dramatically improve the current model, and in the meantime, make a lot of money for token holders.
