28.03.2024

ICO Analysis: SelfKey

Naga Coin (NGC) will be a utility token used for the social trading applications and virtual good exchanges built by German FinTech company, NAGA Group AG. NAGA Group AG aims to raise $220 million in this token sale.

This token will also come with the NAGA WALLET, which serves as a medium for users to hold cryptocurrencies and deposit them in their trading and gaming accounts.

The project information claims that proceeds of the ICO will go towards marketing to increase the growth rate of the business and the token.

What stands out about this token sale is that Naga Coin is one of the world’s first crowdraises by a fully regulated, public, and listed company.

NAGA Group AG built out SwipeStox (utilized by over 100,000 users with transactions of over $4 billion USD), a social network like Facebook for stock trading, and Switex, a virtual-good exchange, which was a joint venture with the German Stock Exchange.

The NAGA Wallet will help users deposit tokens into SwipeStox, Switex, and any further NAGA projects within the NAGA ecosystem. On the other end, the wallet will be connected to leading crypto exchanges and will help users trade and convert fiat and other tokens into NGC.

Being blockchain-based, NGC helps ensure full transparency and accessibility for people who want to participate in financial trading/investing, in-game item trading, and crypto-investing.

The Team

“Naga coin” is being issued by the NAGA Group AG, a publicly traded German FinTech company listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

Founded in 2015, NAGA has evolved into a rapidly growing FinTech firm. With over 150 employees, NAGA has six offices in five countries. NAGA IPO’d in July 2017 and has seen a share price increase of around 400% within a three month period. It currently has a market cap of around 230 million Euros.

NAGA’s bread and butter is building mobile and web applications for capital markets and the gaming sector, and has been doing so for several years.

The NAGA team includes Founder Executive Director Yasin Sebastian Qureshi, Founder Executive Director Christoph Brück, Founder Executive Director Benjamin Bilski, Co-Founder CTO  Igor Kulatov.

Tokens and Distribution

The token sale starts on December 1st and will end on December 15th. There are 220,000,000 NGC tokens available.

  • Available tokens: 220,000,000 NGC
  • Total tokens created (Hard Cap): 400,000,000 NGC
  • Minimum Cap: 1,000,000 NGC
  • 1 NGC = $1.00
  • “Recommended Minimum Purchase per Person $15 (=15 NGC)”*
  • Recommended Maximum Purchase per Person $10,000,000 (10,000,000 NGC)*

*Recommended purchase amounts are from the NAGA information, NOT Hacked.com or this writer.

There are currently eight payment methods to purchase NGC: Ethereum, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, or in fiat via a bank transfer (SEPA/SWIFT) or via credit card.

The Verdict

What really piqued my curiosity about this token sale is that it’s for a publicly traded company.

Being a publicly traded company comes with a slew of stringent regulations, which are aimed at protecting shareholders. This is something that the Wild Wild West world of ICOs is lacking.

Use-case aside, what I like about the project is that the proceeds of the coin are aimed towards marketing and growth. This isn’t your typical ICO where a white paper pitches a vague concept that could “potentially change the world if we only got 1% of a (insert impossibly large industry) market. This is a functioning business that is looking to raise capital to further its business goals, and utilize a token to provide higher value for the already functioning applications it owns.

Risks

  1. The pre-sale, which lasted just a week, offered a bonus of 30% for early investors. While offering bonuses to early investors is pretty standard among token sales, it’s always something I’ll roll my eyes at. Early investors essentially receive a ⅓ more value from the token sale than people in the main sale, which isn’t so bad if you’re an early investor but it’s not too appealing if you’re in the main sale. -2
  2. NGC is currently entirely linked to NAGA Group. While the NAGA Group does have an impressive track record of growth and creating shareholder value, it’s worth mentioning that a situation less rose-colored could be dangerous for the token. -1
  3. While having a successful parent company has a myriad of benefits, it also poses a hindrance to astronomic growth. NGC is tailored to NAGA’s ecosystem, and that ecosystem can only get so big. -1

Growth Potential

  1. The visibility and transparency of a publicly traded company. This is a huge selling point for me. This isn’t your typical ICO where you only have a few whitepaper pages of company information and a semi-active LinkedIn. NAGA Group AG is incredibly visible and has a variety of different outlets for contact including Medium, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and more. They’ve even got a company overview video. +3
  2. NGC has several uses and isn’t just pigeon-holed into a single project. The NAGA Wallet will help users use a variety of applications within the NAGA ecosystem. The more the NAGA Group manages to grow its business, the more valuable the tokens become. +2
  3. The NAGA Group team strikes me as highly entrepreneurial, and the more projects they create in the NAGA ecosystem linked to the NAGA Wallet, the more uses their token will have. Then we go down the logical sequence: the more uses the token has, the more demand, the higher the price. +2
  4. The NAGA Group is already an existing and rapidly growing business. In my opinion, tokens launched as a means for more growth, rather than merely to exist, are a much more appealing (provided they aren’t mismanaged or consistently diluted by the release of new tokens.) +3.5

Disposition

We arrive at a +7.5 for Naga Coin. The project’s success is going to be extremely correlated with the overall successful implementation by NAGA Group into the NAGA ecosystem. NAGA’s projects like SwipeStox and Switex, as well as any other projects they choose to release, are also going to be strong determinants of how well NGC performs.

Overall, this seems like a relatively low-risk investment. Having a successful parent company limits the downside, but the maximum potential size of the NAGA ecosystem can be limiting.

I recommend further researching not only the NGC offering, but more about NAGA Group AG SwipeStox, and Switex to get a better idea of what the playing field looks like.

ICO Information:

The token sale starts on December 1st and will end on December 15th. For more information, visit the token sale page and take a look at the whitepaper.

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