Hive sorely needs more ways to on-ramp fresh capital.
Currently, the blockchain pays out significant amounts of crypto (HIVE and HBD) that is funneled through the exchanges and turned into fiat before leaving the ecosystem. To have a stable economy, we need a matching inflow of fiat that is "on-ramped" into HIVE.
There are unfortunately preciously few avenues for on-ramping to HIVE and not that many reasons to do so.
Indeed, we need people to buy HIVE with fiat so that the price keeps at least stable when our users sell HIVE for fiat. But why would anyone buy HIVE?
- To power up and have a say in the governance of the system. Unless one is a whale, that "say" is not easy to achieve, which understandably blunts the interest of people for Hive power
- To power up and generate a "passive income" - the problem with this is that the income being generated is denominated in HIVE and for HIVE to keep its value there need to be other reasons for people to buy HIVE than this one
- To use it on TribalDex and play with tokens, potentially including game tokens for Splinterlands and other games.
- To buy HBD and ... save. Again there is a huge risk here because if HIVE doesn't keep its value, HBD will be dragged down as well
- To HODL, hoping that HIVE will go to the moon. Of course, after so many years of little to no price action, there are fewer and fewer people who believe in this dream
- To buy HBD and spend, potentially using Distriator.
Do you see other reasons? Do you think the reasons listed above are sufficient to make the system sustainable in the long term?
Good bye Transak, you'll be missed
Aside from buying HIVE on Binance, we used to have an on-ramper called Transak that allowed direct HIVE purchases with a credit card or a SEPA transfer. Unfortunately, they have recently dropped their support for HIVE for economical reasons. Not enough people were using their HIVE-buying services, so maintaining the on-ramp was not profitable anymore; what signal does that send?
Welcome Zypto ... who?
So I was understandably willing to be positively surprised when I read about a new proposal for a partnership with a young company called Zypto.
The proposal is to pay them 20 000 HBD from the community money to "integrate" with Hive ...
click to read the original proposal
That could be good, I thought, especially if they offer on-ramping. It wasn't clear so I checked their website. Form a legal standpoint, on-ramping faces A LOT higher hurdles than off-ramping. The traditional financial system is more than happy to facilitate the return of economic value in the form of fiat money (off-ramping) than to let economic value leave the traditional banking rails and escape in the blockchain and crypto world (on-ramping)
So I wrote an e-mail to Zypto to get more clarity on that topic: are they going to offer on-ramping or only off-ramping?
While waiting for them to reply, I took a closer look at their rather rudimentary website, with no "team" section but claiming a VASP licence "in the EU".
As I have a Master's in EU Law, I noticed the first incongruity: VASP licences are national, not valid "in the EU". The only licence valid throughout the EU is the MiCA "CASP" licence. So Zypto has a VASP licence ... where ? Well, I couldn't find out by visiting zypto.com/legal/ because there, the connection timed out (twice)
Their full name "Zypto SP z O.O." is the Polish equivalent of a "Ltd." company (GmBH in German, Sàrl in French) which might be seen as less solid than a corporation. I wanted to see who's behind so I've searched the web. I found both a Polish website and an website that provided an English report
As you can see, the capital is rather minimal, 5000 PLN or about 1100€ (less than US $1500) and the registered address is in the Polish city of Lodz.
Mid 2024, there seems to be mainly a beauty salon at this address if Google Streetview is to be trusted.
There are two partners, Jean Nasrallah (49%) and Joseph Alexander Parkin (51%). The first seems to be located in Canada while the second appears to be based in Spain.
Now the somewhat more worrying news came from the Quebec (Canada) Financial Market Authority which announces publicly that it has imposed fines (not huge, but still) to M. Jean Nasrallah in connection to an allegedly irregular offering of $FCF and $ZYPTO tokens
click here or on the image to navigate to the Canadian AMF press release
Conclusion
I personally would applaud paying 20 000 HBD to welcome a partner that facilitates a smooth on-ramp from fiat to HIVE.
Transak wasn't that smooth but its services were nevertheless very useful because of the great APIs they provided. Could Zypto be that partner that replaces Transak and offers an even better (and cheaper) service?
What do you think?
I'm going to reblog this so that more people are aware of your findings. This is the sort of thing that requires conversations, discussions, and sunlight.
Thanks for putting in the work Sorin.
I've put a link to this article in a comment on the original proposal from Crimsonclad. Upvoting that comment could also help more people see and read it and click on the link to read more here
you are at the top now, thanks to Shani ;)
Thanks for reblogging, I wouldn't have seen the post without it - well, now I've seen it twice, once to read and make my first comment, and another time to thank you for sharing it!
It is a no from me - and was after I did my own sluething, which was not nearly in as much depth as yours.
If they saw value in it, as a company, they'd invest the funds themselves knowing they'd get a ROI that could beat other business activities.
I see it as corporate welfare to sponsor any company in such an endeavour using funds from the DHF, especially given the company's noncompetitive fees in the marketplace of their peers.
I wondered what had happened to Transak, I used it regularly until it "no longer supported services". What a shame.
I'm not mad about this proposal, not least because of the challenges of on-ramping. Is this not something we could build ourselves for 20,000 HBD? Or perhaps we could use the resources to fund an open competition with a spec and invite potential developers to submit.
In one way, 20,000 HBD seems like a lot, in another hardly anything to get a global service in place.
I do believe this is something we should build ourselves. And thanks for upvoting the comment I made in the proposal
My recollection is that Blocktrades used to offer such service, but ceased to do so some years ago. My understanding is that DHF proposals passing over the Return Proposal are largely decided by Blocktrades vote. It seems Blocktrades does not consider undertaking such commerce viable at that price.
The problem for the Blocktrades service was the increased compliance requirements, although that probably had a commercial implication as well. An AMA is promised so I guess we will learn more about this proposal.
Hmm, we surely need more details under the circumstances...
Seems like a lot of question marks with that company. I could see a frontend being built that would buy SOL or BTC on the lightning network using a credit card and then utilizing the LeoDEX or VSC to end up with HIVE in someone's account.
Also utilizing CashApp to send funds to a "HIVE account" and it does the conversion in the background. Cash App is only in the US and the UK though.
It seems an AMA is planned which should help.
one word....dodgy
thx for this deep dive in the company!
!BBH
!UNI
You can find yt vids with one of the owner and very few paid yt content about zypto. That 'legal' page doesn't open at all, tried with VPN, too.
In case you know the connecting EU laws, do you know Hive and HBD legal status in EU?
Is it the reason why not possible to list it on other, but well-known similar services like Nexo, bit2me, Wirex, Tap etc? or if it's mainly about the direct purchase, like simpleswap?
Do you know, why don't they want to delegate to zypto some Hive, instead of giving them from DHF, so they can power up?
As Hive futures started, I was waiting for Hive and HBD will appear in the earnings. Since Hive appeared at few exchanges earnings section, so legally should be ok, I wonder why HBD doesn't appear???
That would be the key to get money, serious money (it could be added to wallets, too, like the Atomic Wallet)?
Do you know, would be that legally possible? (in EU reg corp, exchange?)
Anyway, until they don't stop the DHF insanity, you can't really expect serious people will buy Hive, perhaps they would buy HBD, but for that need plan and spend money reasonably, not wasting for nonsense. (Not to mention the insane amount of Hive on exchanges.)
No plan at all, and not even signs that they want to change the tendency.
Are there publicly available accounts for Zypto?