Opportunities:
Red Pulse is a Chinese company that is well understood by Chinese investors.
The company is established since 2015 with revenues from institutional clients, making it more advanced than most ICOs out there.
The company is well positioned to benefit from the rising economy of China, especially in the news industry where information is opaque in China.
Red Pulse is trying to solve a genuine problem – information transparency in China. If successful, Red Pulse can be the leader in a very large market.
The company has a strong team and advisors.
Concerns:
Since this is the first ICO on the NEO platform, the security risks are higher than normal. When large sum of money is involved, hackers will look into the smart contract to exploit loopholes and try to steal funds.
Red Pulse announced that they will not accept any contributions from Chinese. As Red Pulse is raising fund through NEO, which is a predominately Chinese platform, this change is going to hurt the demand for the ICO to a certain extent.
The business and technology have nothing to do with blockchain. The idea doesn’t really need blockchain to work. The benefits of using cryptocurrency as explained in the white paper, for example, 1) allowing users to run a tab to minimize transaction fees, and 2) building a community, aren’t very good reasons.
Unlike most of the other tokens, there is a 10% per year inflation in RPX, half going to existing RPX holders, and the other half going to content producers. So effectively, there’s a 5% inflation for token holders.
The open research platform will not be launched for another year (ETA 2018Q3-4).
Conclusion:
Overall, I am neutral about both the short- and long-term potential of this ICO.
Our thoughts of the tokens for short term and long term are as follows:
For short-term holding [edited after the Chinese ICO ban]
Neutral. This company is one of the more established one that I have seen so far. However, after the Chinese ICO ban, it may be difficult for exchanges to list RPX after they are traded. Binance had an agreement to list RPX but it is unclear now that Binance is one of the ICO platforms affected by the Chinese ICO ban. We are waiting for updates from Binance and/or Red Pulse.
Size your bet accordingly because as mentioned above, this is the first ICO on the NEO platform. So the security risks are far higher than the usual ICOs on Ethereum or Waves platform.
For long-term holding:
Neutral. The token system is very new, especially in the China market. It is uncertain that Red Pulse can pivot from their current model of receiving subscription fees from institutions to a model that’s catering more to the mass market. Unlike institutional investors, the retail investors aren’t used to paying for data.
