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The Altcoin Investment Platform
Introduction
Angel Token is a platform and community dedicated to buying altcoins and selling them for profit. They somehow claim to not be selling a security. The company does not disclose where they are based, and their ICO will close by December 19th. As of December 13th, they have received close to $500K USD in funding (735 ETH).
What makes this token interesting is that they are promising investors that they can refund their investments before before March 7th, 2018. We think this will become generally a common practice as the ICO world becomes more standard.
“It is impossible for any Angel Token ICO investor to lose more than a maximum of 20% of their Ether investment before March 7th, 2018, regardless of what happens to the price of Angel Tokens on the exchanges”
— Page 3 of Angel Token White Paper v3.0
The Idea
With the booming field of cryptocurrencies, every day there seems to be a new token that promises to become the new Ethereum, or to replace Bitcoin. It is impossible to keep track of all of these hidden gems. The anonymous team at Angel Token decided to solve this problem.
The idea is to create a community dedicated to invest in altcoins. The community then focuses its marketing and technical skills to help increase the value of the altcoins in their portfolio, in a series of methods short of a pump and dump scheme.
In their words:
“We believe that the work we will do to enhance these cryptocurrencies/assets, in conjunction with the crypto-capital support from the Angel Foundation will increase the trading price and market capitalisation of these cryptocurrencies/assets considerably”
— Page 5 of Angel Token White Paper v3.0
Traction
There is no indication that there is any, or that the product exists in any way. We are extremely skeptical about the lack of any information in strategy, technology, MVP, or even who built the technology.
The Token
In order to be labeled as an “active Angel Token holder” the user has to own a minimum of 10,000 Angel tokens, which currently would sell for 0.7924 ETH or approximately $380 USD (price slightly defers due to ICO Bonuses). This is similar to trade.io membership for investment. If a user holds less than this amount of Angel Tokens, their access to the community will be automatically withdrawn.
The price of the token will remain constant at 0.00079 ETH per 1 Angel Token, although there is no explanation about how they will keep the price stable. As we mentioned in previous articles, it is incredibly difficult to create and maintain a stable token. As companies typically have to purchase physical assets, such as gold, and keep them in vaults, in order to have an asset to fall back on, and maintain the stable asset’s price.
The tokens are also created immediately whenever the user purchases it. Leaving us with questions about why to even make the token, and instead just use ETH.
Use of Funds
Token distribution taken from Angel Token website
Angel Token plans to keep 80% of their Angel Token ICO earnings in a vault as a guarantee for investors looking to sell out their tokens before the platform is raised. They are also planning on using 70% of their ICO earnings in further investments, 15% in marketing, 8% for the founders (for what reason?) and 7% i talent recruitment.
There is no indication or details about the strategies, personnel, founders, or what talent recruitment will be utilized. So we have no way to evaluate whether or not these numbers are realistic or even make sense in the first place.
ICO Details
The Angel Token’s ICO is currently live. Their ICO started on November 27th and will finalize on December 19th, 2017. They have currently raised 735.55 ETH (~$500K USD) out of 31,150. Investors currently receive 1262 Angel Tokens for in exchange of 1 Ether.
Angel Token’s ICO restricts investors from: USA, UK, Singapore, China from participating (their white paper also includes New Zealand but not their website). They do not indicate why this is the case, nor do they indicate where they are based, or what legislation or tax jurisdictions they are part of.
80% of the ICOs holdings are held on an escrow for the next 5 months. The purpose of this is to enable the investors to talk to the founders, as well as the community and make up their mind if they decide to pull out of the project.
The Team
The Team at Angel Token is a self described “Group of honest and experienced marketers”. The website does not include a section team, which makes us incredibly skeptical about the product and its quality. There is no indication that the team has the skills necessary to run a company, let alone even put their faces on their product.
The founders justify the lack of team with the following:
“We would like our proposal to speak for itself, and we do not believe that revealing our identities would add any significant value to this proposal. We believe that a person’s name guarantees nothing, and in the fast-changing and largely unregulated environment in which crypto assets currently exist we see few benefits for either the investors or the founders to fully divulge their identities”
— Page 37 of Angel Token White Paper v3.0
That quote raises majors red flags about who is owning the money, how they are operating with it, and what their skills at running a company are, if any.
Transparency
Angel Token claims that it will publish a monthly valuation of their portfolio. While simultaneously adding the following disclaimer:
“It will not be our policy to declare exact holdings of any cryptocurrency/asset. Neither will it be our policy to declare every trade or market entry or exit that we Make”
— Page 31 of Angel Token White Paper v3.0
Token dividends (in the form of Ether) will be made quarterly, but only in those quarters that have reached the highest portfolio valuation to-date. Their paper claims this will increase long-term decision-making, but it seems that it just motivates investors to have modest increases in valuation per quarter, and make sure every quarter is just slightly higher than the previous.
The company is incredibly ambiguous about what they want to build, how they will build it and who will build it. They claim to be experts and use artificial intelligence, but no details are provided about their use of those technologies, or who the “experts” are.
“We have a team of experts researching the cryptocurrency market constantly to find great opportunities. We’ll be using the latest analytical tools, as well as some more interesting Artificial Intelligence offerings that can be used as great indicators of investment potential and trade timing. However, we will also be led by the investment Club”
— Page 15 of Angel Token White Paper v3.0
It is also not clear how the community will make decisions on investments, or how these decisions will be managed or developed. It is not even clear if the product exists at any level or who developed it. The only brief mention is a voting system based on Proof of Stake.
Their 38 page paper is incredibly long, for a paper with so little information.
Conclusion
There are multiple suspicious parts of this ICO. We are extremely skeptical about this ICO for multiple reasons. The most important is the fact that none of their cofounders are listed anywhere on the website or their white paper. We do not know if Angel Tokens has incorporated, or where, and there are multiple inconsistencies in their white paper, and website, as well as use of stock photos on their website.
The platform promises to make altcoin investments for their investors. However, it does not explain how it will be able to achieve this. Specially when all reputable exchanges require the identity of the person purchasing the asset. Angel Token’s army of anonymous investors would not even be able to cash a single dollar on the current environment.
Furthermore there is no indication that the platform will be finalized, or even be made by the time the ICO closes its March 7th deadline to withdraw 80% the money. We do not understand why they even require to make a token.
This ICO is full of questions, anonymity, ambiguous and incomplete promises, and surely a lot of risk and uncertainty.
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