Merry Christmas all from the Token team and a huge thank you to our community for the continued support. As always, the ride has been a rollercoaster. Ups, downs! And every once in a while a loop-de-loop. We know it’s not been easy. For our December update, we’ll recap the challenges we’ve faced and end on a high with some positive news for 2018.
First the lows:
1) The Bittrex delisting
As many of you are aware, TKN is no longer trading on Bittrex. Our strategy remains to get relisted and to get listed on other major exchanges as soon as possible. We are progressing with the legal documentation and applications with other exchanges, we’re keeping the pressure on, but things move at a snail’s pace this time of year — you’ll be the first to know when we have an update.
We understand the frustration this has caused, however, I’d like to add some context. In finance, stocks get delisted and re-enlisted constantly. The token space will be no different. The pain is worse as Bittrex has been the only large exchange to trade us — something we are addressing.
Anecdotally you can look at MKR (MakerDAO) and see that they only trade on EtherDelta however with a unicorn market cap of over a billion, only just shy of OmiseGO. Why is their market cap so high? Because they’ve focused on building an amazing product. Not on arbitrary p&d before they actually have something to support it with.
I applaud Rune and the Maker team for their practices and accomplishments, our strategy is the same. We are entirely committed to building something that actually makes sense, that will blow away any competition and set a new standard on multiple fronts. The value will grow once we start rolling out. An exchange listing flip-flopping will have very little bearance on the project. Our actions always have the long-term success of the project in mind.
2) Delayed product approval
Our card issuer has had to postpone the approval for all of their current partner programmes, while they sort out a few challenges of their own. This has delayed the live testing of our product.
Being as transparent as possible:
- This decision is out of our control and mandated by a partner critical to our success
- Our product is built and ready for live testing, however, the decision will delay our ability to go live
- To help the approval process go as smoothly as possible, we have also been advised to make some updates to our website
- We have not been given time estimates for approval; we believe the approval will be granted in a matter of weeks rather than months — we have our fingers crossed
Plan of action:
- We plan to use the additional time to improve and refine the product in the test environment, if you’d like to contribute to a testing session in the London office please say in the forum
- As a result of this additional time, we hope to include more features than initially planned in the first release
We understand many members of the community will be disappointed — believe me, we share your pain. All we can say is that we continue to be committed to getting our product released in the shortest possible timeframe and we are working tirelessly to resolve the issues that block our path to success.
Some good news for 2018!
2017 has been full of surprises and lessons learnt. A few things we can all look forward to next year . . .
New joiners to the team:
John Humpish
John is joining to give us some much-needed help with our marketing efforts. John’s background has spanned both early stage start-ups and multinational organizations, where he led marketing efforts globally at Zurich, Deutsche Bank and AXA. John sees significant potential in the Token proposition — for both the crypto community and the broader marketplace, and embraces the challenge of bringing Token to the masses.
Ben Whitby
Ben comes on board to lead our compliance function and brings with him an extensive background in both compliance and tech, having worked at IBM, PwC and HSBC. Ben was one of the FinTech, RegTech thought leaders at HSBC, where he helped them develop strategies around dealings with cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Ben possesses an invaluable balance of both deep understandings of cryptocurrency and a wealth of experience with compliance and regulation.
Behind the scenes at Token
This year we’ve been heads down building a solid team and product foundation, next year we know we need to tighten up our communications. As part of this, to give you better insight into life at Token, we’ve been filming a short ‘behind the scenes’ video series — look out for the first episode in January! We’re still continuing the search for an excellent community manager — if you know someone who could fit the bill, please do share details in the forum.
We’ll update you again in January and will hopefully share positive news regarding the recent challenges. Until then, we wish all of our community a wonderful festive season.
Best,
Mel, David and the Token team
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