From :: https://medium.com/nexo/misconceptions-about-nexo-and-an-outlook-on-dividends-and-beyond-700334e03080





Misconceptions about Nexo and an Outlook on Dividends and Beyond

We hope the current Crypto Spring finds you in good spirits and health so that you can profit from these most dynamic and exciting times for the blockchain space.

Key Takeaways:

  • Nexo is the market leader in the crypto lending space and all our efforts are dedicated to ensuring that this continues to be the case going forward.
  • The essence of Nexo’s business model is unchanged and we are actively exploring new avenues to maximize token utility and investor value on our way to becoming a multi-billion dollar financial institution.
  • Despite unforeseen delays not dependent on Nexo, the Nexo Card is launching in Europe first. We are hard at work to expand card deliveries to our clients in other countries across the globe.
  • The promised new lower loan minimum of $100, new collateral options and referral program have been IT-ready for months but their deployment has been on hold while we secure additional funding. This has been done to meet the enormous loan demand that will inevitably result from introducing them.
  • With the next update in June the mobile app will become available for iOS and Android, while TRON will be onboarded as a new collateral option.
  • In June, we will announce the ex-dividend date for the next Nexo Dividend.
As ever, the entire Team is going the extra mile so that Nexo continues to bethe undisputed market leader in the crypto lending space while delivering new features, functionalities and new opportunities to further enhance the Nexo product offering and to maximize value for the NEXO Token holders.
Building one of the most sophisticated and profitable companies in the blockchain space, and dedicating all our resources and mental capacity to that cause, has unfortunately come at the price of temporary neglecting the communication with the Nexo community which we are now seeking to remedy.
For too long have we ignored the malicious spreading of misinformation about Nexo and the NEXO Token — an income-generating digital asset with significant growth potential. This “FUD” has, in turn, affected both the Token price and the Nexo community.
With the clear understanding that “you can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”, we would like now to address the misconceptions that are circulating.

Consistency of the NEXO Token Terms

There has been some speculation that the Token Terms have been amended. A look at them on the website clearly shows that this is not the case. All essential features, like the 30% profit-sharing and the Nexo Dividends are still very well part of our tokenomics.
While there are no major deviations from the initially set terms, changes are, of course, sometimes needed in order to adapt to new circumstances and changing business and regulatory realities. An example would be the introduction of the Loyalty Dividend which was not included in the initial Token Terms but was added later on — a move hugely appreciated by the community.
Good management of a company and our obligation to investors require us to remain flexible and precisely out of this necessity have we worded the disclaimers of all offering documents the way we did. This includes the Token Terms so that we can make these adjustments when needed. This is standard practice and many companies such as Binance have done it.
Should Nexo ever feel the need to fundamentally review its model, we will communicate it well in advance, as we have always done in the past. We are all in this together and the Nexo Team and Management is here for the long run. We are committed to building a multi-billion dollar company and everyone at Nexo stands with their reputations which have been asserting for over 10 years of FinTech success.

Updates on the Nexo Card

The launch of the Nexo Card is taking longer than expected for reasons outlined below. Those are issues that unfortunately Nexo has no control over. We have been fully committed to adjusting to the new market and regulatory realities and we will all reap the fruits of these efforts very soon.
Here are some of the basics of how card programs work so as to provide clarity:
The issuers of Visa and MasterCard do not offer international card programs, meaning that companies looking to start issuing cards are required to apply for and create separate card programs in different countries and continents. These have completely different card issuers with diverse and very lengthy processes.
To complicate things further, Visa and MasterCard have very strict policies on who can get approved for a card program, and are especially conservative for businesses involving crypto assets in their model. The rules have changed dramatically adding new requirements, especially since Visa stopped most of the crypto cards.
Suffice it to say, we did get approvals but we also got subjected to additional due diligence processes and/or have been asked to make adjustments in the model for certain jurisdictions, which slowed us down. Even receiving any feedback can sometimes take 6–9 months.
Therefore, the Nexo Card will not be immediately available internationally. Тhe Nexo Card may be on the MasterCard in some jurisdictions while being on Visa and other networks in others. What we did when experiencing setbacks was to appeal; look for new card issuers; find ways to adjust the model for the given jurisdiction, etc. — everything to launch the Nexo Card as soon as possible and in as many jurisdictions as possible.
The Nexo Card will first become available in Europe with more parts of the world following suit.

$100 Loan Minimum and New Collateral Options

Issuing our first credit line a year ago, we had a minimum loan requirement of $5000, which has gradually been decreased to just $500 — something unique in the lending space to this day. We are certainly looking to be even more inclusive and to lower the minimum loan further.
The reason why a lender imposes a minimum loan amount in the first place is because of the number of registrations, verifications, loans, repayments or support tickets it can physically handle without compromising the user experience. It is also connected to the costs associated with each loan.
Nexo has been able to service loans as low as $500 in 45+ fiat currencies to our community of over 200,000 users is because of Nexo’s 10+ years of experience in online lending automation.
There are two main reasons why we have not yet lowered the minimum amount even further and why we are not adding more collateral options yet (albeit being IT-ready for a long time):
  1. Nexo does not charge its users any bank transfer fees and we would like to keep it that way. Precisely the same way we do not like charging our users with loan origination fees and/or liquidation fees like some competing companies do. While a lower minimum loan amount helps Nexo to become more inclusive and to significantly increase its user base, the bank transfers costs associated with tens of thousands of small loan transactions add up to a substantial amount for Nexo and currently, our banking and payment institution partners around the world are not willing to lower their fees. We are still negotiating these charges in our effort to bring them down while also talking to new payment providers to potentially find cheaper payment distribution channels.
  2. Lowering the loan minimum to $100 or aggressively adding more collateral options would further increase the demand side which we might not be yet ready to back with enough financing. This is true also for the upcoming affiliate program. Since launching the platform a year ago, the demand for the Nexo Instant Credit Lines™ has been phenomenal, despite a ravaging bear market. But even though our corporate finance team is constantly raising additional financing, at times Nexo just cannot keep up with the ever-growing demand.
  3. As you might know, we have first turned to our customer base for additional financing, adding the “Earn Interest” Product which allows the community to earn 6.5% annual interest on stablecoins and EUR — a fully flexible account with no lock-up periods and no fees. This is part of our effort to raise more financing while giving back to the community by letting them share the success story of Nexo in yet another way.
For the reasons above, we have made the conscious decision to postpone the further lowering of the loan minimum and to slow down the onboarding of new collateral options to match the pace at which we are able to secure additional financing.
What we can disclose at this stage is that the latest voting results from Nexo’s ongoing community survey are unambiguous, and so TRON is the cryptocurrency to be onboarded in June.
We are positive that we will be able to present you with exciting news and opportunities in the near future which will culminate in Nexo becoming “NexoBank”.

Engaging with the Community

Nexo has always engaged in a constructive dialogue with anyone raising valid concerns.
Of course, there have been deviations from our initially communicated roadmap and delays have occurred which has frustrated members of our community. But in most cases because of issues that Nexo has no direct control over.
Delays are not uncommon for startups, but also for established companies in any line of business — otherwise, Elon Musk would have colonized Mars long ago. Or Richard Branson’s early backers would have had their long-postponed IPO.
After initial efforts to reason with the people spreading misconceptions and “FUD” and to explain the flaws in their statements and logic, Nexo has, of course, started taking actions to limit the spreading of detrimental and false statements on its official channels which is part of our fiduciary duty to our investors.
We are constantly working on creating a healthy space and it is up to the community and the market to decide whether or not we are succeeding.
Please refer to the plethora of positive testimonials about Nexo that are publicly available.

The Next Nexo Dividend

As all of you are aware, dividend-paying companies generally distribute dividends once a year. From the onset of Nexo, we have communicated our determination to introduce more frequent distributions.
In June, we are going to announce the ex-dividend date for the next Nexo Dividend.
Please make sure you read this article:

Conclusion

While we appreciate any constructive criticism and try to constantly better ourselves, ultimately those who are not satisfied with their investment with NEXO have multiple opportunities with enough liquidity to exit their positions and move on.
All of us are in all of this together and the interests of Nexo, as a company, and its management are perfectly aligned with those of the NEXO Token holders — in regards to the business, in regards to the performance of the token, and the overall development of the enterprise.
Amazing things are coming with the Nexo Card launching in Europe, the Nexo mobile app, the new collateral options starting with TRON and the second Nexo Dividend payout.
With the tokenization of the world, Nexo is in a perfect position with its leading automated lending infrastructure to capitalize on the widespread adoption that established behemoths of the financial world such as JP Morgan, Fidelity, the Yale Endowment fund and Facebook will ensure. The total addressable market for Nexo’s products thus rises to the trillions and we are happy to have you in for the ride!
Thank you for your trust!

Do check out our earlier blog posts, share them with your friends and let them too be part of the Nexo success story!
Question? Visit your Help Center.
Interested in Nexo? Get in touch:
Telegram Twitter Facebook Reddit LinkedIn | Email



From :: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190530005672/en/

Blockchain Credit Partners (BCP) Launches World’s First Tokenized High-Yield Private Credit Fund

The BCP High-Yield Fund is backed by US Assets, Provides Quarterly Payments, and is endorsed by The Institute for Blockchain Innovation (IBI) and Blockchain, Fintech & Financial Services Leaders
Blockchain Credit Partners (BCP), www.BlockchainCreditPartners.com, announced today the launch of the world’s first Tokenized High-Yield Private Credit Fund with a focus on providing consistent high-yield cash flow payments through lending against secured assets. The fund has chosen to use the Securitize platform and protocol for the issuance and lifecycle management of the fund. The Securitize DS Protocol will allow for future compliant trading of the fund on an authorized Alternative Trading System.
The BCP High-Yield Fund is the first time a high-yield private credit fund has been tokenized using the blockchain. The primary focus of the fund is on two segments of secured lending: Autos, and Real Estate. Loans will be in a senior secured position with attractive Loan-To-Value (LTV) ratios. The fund looks to provide consistent high-yield quarterly payments that are secured by hard assets on an over collateralized basis.
The BCP High-Yield Fund leverages the Managing Partners’ Gregory Keough and Derek Acree substantial experience in the traditional and online secured lending space. They have also served as C- Level executives at Global Fortune 500 enterprises.
The BCP Fund advisors and partners include a who’s who in the digital securities, blockchain, and traditional investments arenas and include:
The Institute for Blockchain Innovation (IBI), a global think tank composed of global pioneers in the Digital Securities (Security Token) and Blockchain Payments space who are building the future of financial systems on the blockchain
Associate Professor of Finance at University of Oregon, Visiting Fellow, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Partner at Collaborative Fund, Steve McKeon.
President, Securitize, Jamie Finn: Serial entrepreneur and Co-Founder of Securitize one of the leading digital security platforms for tokenized securities.
With additional advisors to be announced shortly.
Investing in High-Yield Private Credit has previously been reserved almost exclusively for ultra-high net worth private banking clients or hedge fund investors. The BCP Fund tokenization opens this investment opportunity up to global investors who are seeking secured high-yield cash flows.
Carlos Domingo, CEO & Co-founder Securitize, stated “We fully support the innovation of new financial products that re-imagine the traditional fund industry. Especially products that were previously only accessible to hedge funds or ultra-high net worth clients. Tokenized products running on our DS Protocol will allow funds to trade on regulated marketplaces and provide investors with additional benefits beyond the 7 year lock up model found currently in most private credit funds.”
About Blockchain Credit Partners (BCP):
Blockchain Credit Partners (BCP) is pioneering the re-imagination of the fund industry using blockchain technology. Investing in High-Yield Private Credit has previously been reserved almost exclusively for ultra-high net worth private banking clients or hedge fund investors. BCP is making this asset class accessible for a broader group of investors while leveraging the blockchain and tokenization.
For more information:
www.BlockchainCreditPartners.com
About Securitize:
Securitize delivers trusted global solutions for creating compliant digital securities. The Securitize compliance platform and protocol provide a proven, full-stack solution for issuing and managing digital securities (security tokens). Securitize’s innovative DS Protocol has the highest adoption rate in the industry and enables seamless, fully compliant trading across multiple markets simultaneously. Multiple Securitize powered digital securities are already trading globally on public marketplaces with many more in the pipeline.
For more information contact: info@securitize.io
Disclaimer
This press release should not be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal. We are not soliciting any action based on this material. It is for the general information of our clients. It does not constitute a recommendation or take into account the particular investment objectives, financial conditions, or needs of individual clients. Before acting on this material, you should consider whether it is suitable for your particular circumstances and, if necessary, seek professional advice. The price and value of the investments referred to in this material and the income from them may go down as well as up, and investors may realize losses on any investments. Past performance is not a guide to future performance. Future returns are not guaranteed, and a loss of original capital may occur. We do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice to our clients, and all investors are advised to consult with their tax, accounting, or legal advisers regarding any potential investment.
Blockchain Credit Partners
Kira Mendez
561-408-7968
kira.mendez@blockchaincreditpartners.com

 
By
 

DeFi and Credit on the Blockchain: Why Loans Are Better When They’re Decentralized


DeFi and Credit on the Blockchain: Why Loans Are Better When They’re Decentralized
In the feverish quest to decentralize anything even remotely open to decentralization, one of the most promising areas is finance and the financial industry. This shouldn't be too surprising, given bitcoin and the origins of blockchain technology, but at a time when even babies are being put “on the blockchain,” the emergence of decentralized finance (DeFi) provides welcome proof of crypto's real utility and applicability.
And while DeFi is covering a wider range of areas — from remittances to derivatives and investments — its most promising sector involves credit and lending. That's because, thanks to the openness, security and transparency of blockchains, it's possible to make loans and credit available to a larger pool of people than ever before, while the interoperability of blockchains opens up the possibility for creating a spectrum of new lending products and services.
But even though the sector has expanded considerably over the past year or so, decentralized finance still needs to put in plenty of work before it can compete with legacy financial systems. At the same time, users need to be careful when using early stage and untested DeFi platforms and services, just as they need to be aware that not all DeFi systems are truly decentralized.

The big decentralized lenders

DeFi might be a relatively new and ill-defined term, but its meaning is simple, referring to the use of blockchains, cryptocurrencies and/or smart contracts in providing financial services to clients. And when it comes specifically to loans and credit, there are numerous platforms, services and companies that are harnessing decentralized ledger technology for the purposes of lending services.
The most well known of these is MakerDAO, which lends its stablecoin — DAI — to users, who gain their loans by depositing ether (ETH) with the Maker system as collateral. According to the recently launched DeFi.Review website, it's the biggest decentralized finance platform by a comfortable margin, having roughly $508 million in ether locked up in its platform. Behind it is EOS REX, which has deposits of EOS worth around $437 million, and which lends to users who want extra EOS in order to stake the cryptocurrency for extra CPU/NET bandwidth on the EOS blockchain.
Both of the platforms above are infrastructural, in that they serve primarily to support crypto economies and ecosystems — be this the EOS blockchain in the case of EOS REX or various cryptocurrency markets in the case of DAI. As such, they arguably don't satisfy the common sense or traditional definition of lending and credit, given that they aren't awarding loans to the general public. Meanwhile, the fact that they both account for approximately 86% of the total amount of assets locked up by DeFi platforms (according to DeFi.Review) is an indicator of how young the sector still is.

Why lending is better when it's decentralized

Nonetheless, as young as DeFi lending may be, there are many other platforms besides MakerDAO and EOS REX that are offering credit via decentralized means. Launched in September 2018 and having around $42.4 million locked up, Compound is a decentralized money market where you can lend your own stores of crypto in order to earn interest, while the peer-to-peer lending platform Dharma was launched in April and has roughly $23.91 million locked up, either as ether or DAI. On top of this, there's a long list of competing platforms, including Cred, BlockFi, Lendoit, SALT, NUO, ETHLend and Colendi.
Another one of these new DeFi lending platforms is Bloqboard, which lets users borrow or lend a range of crypto assets on the Ethereum blockchain, from Wrapped Ethereum to BATZRX and DAI. Its dashboard is fairly simple, with visitors being able to choose to borrow or lend any supported crypto and with them being presented with the variable interest rate they'll benefit from or have to pay. It also enables customers to use Ledger or MetaMask to interact with the Ethereum blockchain and track their transactions. And as Bloqboard's head of growth, Nick Cannon, explained to Cointelegraph, such transparency is a big part of the reason why decentralized lending and DeFi more generally is likely to take off.
"DeFi brings magnitudes greater accountability and transparency to investors making for a healthier financial system. These products will broaden access to sound financial investments no matter what geography you reside in."
On top of greater accountability and transparency, decentralized finance will also bring the benefit of greater security for users and their funds, something pointed out to Cointelegraph by Guillaume Palayer, a co-founder of decentralized crypto asset management platform Betoken.
"The main advantages are the control, security and permissionless nature offered for the end users by DeFi products," he said. He went on, saying:
"Permissionless because everyone can access it without conditions and independent of your local financial system's health. Security and control because the vast majority of DeFi products are non-custodial and offer the option to opt-out of their service with a simple transaction."
As both Palayer and Cannon suggest, the decentralized and geographically nonspecific nature of blockchain means that DeFi lending is more open to a wider market of customers than centralized alternatives. But in addition to this, decentralized lending is more open in a financial sense, and for two primary reasons.
First of all, most blockchain-based credit platforms don't actually require users to have a good credit score or even a credit history, with many covering the risks they take on by requiring collateral — often in the form of crypto — from borrowers (as in the case of MakerDAO, for instance).
"With a decentralized loan, you're not dependant on having access to a credits system and you are able to customize the duration and the cost of the loan however you want," Palayer explained. "As far as I know, no centralized loan providers offer this kind of advantage in a trustless fashion."
The fact that you don't require a credit score is in evidence, for instance, with Nexo, which offers instant loans in over 45 fiat currencies. Nexo co-founder Antoni Trenchev told Cointelegraph:
“As long as you have crypto assets, you can immediately borrow cash that is delivered straight to your local bank account.”
Nexo claimed to have issued $300 million in loans to over 170,000 users in the seven months leading up to March, while Trenchev also reports that the use of blockchain and crypto-based collateral means that loans can be made extremely flexible for users, both in terms of the amount borrowed and in terms of the conditions attached to lending: “There is no fixed repayment schedule, no strict maturities. As long as you have sufficient collateral to secure your borrowed funds, you have the flexibility to repay your loans at any time with cash or crypto assets.”
Secondly, in many cases, the decentralized, blockchain-based nature of DeFi lending systems allows companies to offer credit at a lower cost, something that obviously makes obtaining loans more affordable for a wider group of people. “Borrowing and potentially the costs of payments in distributed systems are lower,” Alexey Ermakov, the CEO and founder of decentralized payment apps Aximetria and PayReverse, said. He continued:
“Among other reasons, this is due to the fact that in the case of blockchain-based credit systems there are no compliance costs and/or they are significantly lower, and costs are also lowered by the ability to make electronic mortgages and provide loans on the basis of smart contracts.”
Feeding into the openness of decentralized lending platforms is the burgeoning area of blockchain interoperability and atomic swaps, which promise to give users more options when taking out loans or lending crypto.
"Another huge advantage that stems from DeFi's permissionlessness is interoperability," Palayer said. "You could take out a DAI loan from MakerDAO and convert it to Ether using Uniswap or Kyber Swap to gain leverage. The possibilities are endless, and we feel everyone should be excited about this."
And from a more general and macroeconomic perspective, the increased openness and accessibility of decentralized loans should result in higher productivity for the global economic system, as outlined by Cannon:
"As the market matures, decentralized lending services will source more 'dead capital' from around the world."
Put differently, blockchain-based loans will have the effect of putting “dormant” crypto to work in the wider economy, with hodlers having the opportunity to borrow or lend without ever renouncing the underlying ownership of their cryptocurrency.
“Many have been purchasing cryptocurrencies as a very long-term investment, expecting their value to grow hundreds even thousands of times,” Trenchev explained. “Naturally, such investors do not use their crypto for payments. They do not trade it. They simply keep their assets with the expectation of having exponential returns by just holding.”

Future challenges and future promise

There's little doubt that the world of blockchain-based lending is a tantalizingly promising one, but the fact that it's still in its infancy should give potential customers and the industry more generally pause for thought.
First of all, the vast majority of DeFi platforms are still untested and in development, and as SALT's head of product, Rob Odell, told Cointelegraph, this means that users should be careful when choosing a service:
"Be vigilant about researching your options,. For all its advantages, most DeFi applications are still very new — they need time to work out all the kinks and be battle tested."
Odell also noted that users should consider "how limited the offerings of some of the DeFi loan products can be. For example, right now, MakerDao only works with Ether," and while MakerDAO is (like certain other platforms) planning to add more cryptocurrencies in the near future, its current limitations are one indicator of how much distance DeFi has to travel before it can compete on the same level as legacy systems.
As with pretty much every area in which blockchain technology is being applied, education will be one of the first key areas in ensuring that DeFi can expand, mature and realize its potential. "There are a number of challenges but I think education is the greatest," Jeremy Lam, product lead at OmiseGo, a finance-oriented scaling network for Ethereum, said. He added:
"DeFi platforms will often require the capacity of the individual to be in control of their own private key. I don’t think most people are ready to handle such a responsibility. Also related to education, we have to consider who is using DeFi services. How do we protect people with insufficient financial knowledge from losing money on products they don’t understand?"
One thing that potential users need to be educated about is that some DeFi platforms will be more — or less — decentralized than others, something that could potentially put them and their money at risk. "A Service provider needs to fulfill certain conditions to be a true DeFi service,” Stani Kulechov, the CEO and co-founder of the Swiss-based AAVE, which runs the Ethereum lending service ETHLend, warned. He went on to say:
“First and foremost, ensure that the service provider does not hold your assets. This means that there must be a smart contract that holds the funds and secondly ensures that the transactions are conducted via smart contract and not through a third party signing. You should choose DeFi projects based on transparency and track record.”
More fundamentally, decentralized lending won't succeed and make significant headway until the industry pinpoints — and builds itself around — gaps in the credit and loans market it's well-positioned to solve. "As mentioned, education is a large challenge," Lam said.
"The other huge challenge is to properly understand what problems DeFi is trying to solve and onboard the users that are experiencing that pain."
And while there is certainly a demand for loans that don't require a credit history, the fact that most no-credit DeFi platforms ask for crypto as collateral would mean that the success of such platforms is predicated on the general and widespread adoption of cryptocurrency.
And while we certainly haven't yet reached the “widespread” adoption of crypto, there is some indication that adoption has increased in recent months, with around 9% of Americans now owning bitcoin (according to an April self-selected survey from Blockchain Capital), compared to only 2% in November 2017. There is, then, genuine hope that the DeFi sector will capitalize on this growth, with figures belonging to this sector confident that it will overcome its challenges and make good on its potential.
"I'm very confident about the tremendous ecosystem's growth we could witness in the next coming years," Palayer affirmed. Similarly, Odell said, "While it's still very early, decentralized finance will eventually be the norm if the promises of transparency, openness and access are fulfilled by these solutions.”

From https://cointelegraph.com/news/defi-and-credit-on-the-blockchain-why-loans-are-better-when-theyre-decentralized

Newer Posts Older Posts Home