Ethereum Watch

What is Giftcoin?

“Giftcoin aims to disrupt the $500 billion charitable donation market by providing complete transparency in charitable giving.”

~Alex Howard, Co-Founder

ICO Alert Quick Facts

1. Giftcoin is building a network where donors can be certain their money is being used ethically
2. 1 ETH = 6000 GIFT tokens
3. March 20, 2018 — April 20, 2018 (ICO 1), October 2018 (ICO 2)
4. 350,000,000 total available in both ICOs / 1,000,000,000 total supply
5. The ICO 1 soft cap of $2,500,000 has been nearly reached

Q&A with Alex Howard, Giftcoin Co-Founder

ICO Alert: For those who are not familiar with Giftcoin, can you explain what it is and what the team aims to accomplish?

Giftcoin:

Giftcoin aims to disrupt the $500 billion charitable donation market by providing complete transparency in charitable giving.

At the moment, when you give to charity, you have no idea where the money goes. After a series of scandals over recent years, trust in the charitable sector is at an all-time low. In fact, only 40% of millennials believe that when they give to charity the money will end up where intended. Our research has shown that people would give on average 49% more if they had confidence that their money would be put to good use.

By using Giftcoin, donors can have complete confidence that their donation will go to the good causes they want to support.

ICO Alert: How do the Giftcoin tokens (GIFT) function within the platform and why are they needed?

Giftcoin: The GIFT token will be used to make charitable donations on the Giftcoin platform. Charities can then chose to hold their donation in GIFT or convert it to a stable coin which maintains the integrity of the smart contract.

ICO Alert: Please tell us more about the independent oversight body you plan to create, the Giftcoin Foundation.

Giftcoin: The Giftcoin Foundation will hold the currency reserve to allow us to provide liquidity to the market. This will have independent oversight to ensure the reserve is not used to manipulate the price. The oversight will be provided by key stakeholders in the charitable sector.

ICO Alert: This one is from @demmersong in your Telegram community: “How does the team plan on addressing the ‘last mile banking’ issue that so many charities run into? Crypto seems to complicate that at the moment.”

Giftcoin: We agree that this is a known issue with banking into the developing world, and it is addressed in our whitepaper.

To recap, Giftcoin must work in a semi-offline mode, at least during the early years of adoption. For example, confirmation of receipt of funds can be made cryptographically secure even in the absence of Internet access (for example, as a simple digitally signed transaction). These confirmations can then be converted into on-chain transactions when the payment agent returns to an area with network coverage. As the agent typically has no access to the sending address, this removes the possibility of double-spend on the recipient’s end.

To address this issue, we will use a differentiated network topology. This will allow nodes on the Giftcoin network that are close to the recipients and may have limited bandwidth to still be capable of forwarding transactions and submitting blocks. We also plan to make use of biometric data when signing our transactions.

ICO Alert: Let’s use a specific example and see how Giftcoin would help.

I have years of non-profit ventures in my own history. At one orphanage, donations were flagrantly embezzled by the director, physical goods were locked away until the need for them was past dire, and volunteers paid the director a “camp fee” to visit. The director even “fostered” children when government agents visited so he could collect the stipend — only to send the kids back to the orphanage as soon as the coast was clear.

Are there any ways in which I could expect Giftcoin’s plan to mitigate such outrageous deception?

Giftcoin: Clearly there are pockets of serious corruption such as this which have no place in the charitable sector. One way that Giftcoin would help to protect against such issues is that we will have restrictions on how funds can be spent. This will ensure that an untrusted organization such as you described would not be able to redeem Giftcoin.

ICO Alert: Your whitepaper says that “by utilising a smart contract in the token, it is possible to release funds in stages only when projects reach key milestones.” Who verifies when a project reaches a key milestone? Are any supporting materials required? What is to stop a non-profit from claiming an unachieved milestone?

Giftcoin: We see verification as a sliding scale. Some projects will require strict verification and others a more relaxed one. We also have three instruments of verification: evidential proof, the Giftcoin community, and third-party services. For the strictest projects, we would use all three instruments. For example, we could send field agents to the projects to check that they have been executed as stated, photos etc. would be uploaded to our platform, and then the community could vote on whether they think the requirements have been met.

For less-strict verification, we might just rely on the community to vote. This might work well for projects in the West, for example, and is a powerful way of engaging the donor base more deeply in projects.

ICO Alert: There are other cryptocurrencies for charitable giving and good causes, such as DonationCoin (“The original cryptocurrency of charity,” founded 2013), PinkCoin (2014), and AidCoin, the ICO for which ended February 1, 2018.

Yet your website tagline is “The world’s first cryptocurrency for charitable giving and good causes.” Perhaps you expect to be the first to significant adoption? Or you believe these alternatives fall short in some way that qualifies Giftcoin as the true first?

Giftcoin: None of these tokens are yet successfully delivering on their promises, so we believe the market is wide open. Our many conversations with charities and key stakeholders in the sector have told us that a key principle of the Giftcoin platform is offering a stable coin to charities to protect them from market volatility. Those not doing this will have major challenges getting any kind of market adoption.

ICO Alert: Your expected minimum viable product date is July 2018. Do you have a current progress report on the MVP (screenshots, etc.) that you can share with us?

Giftcoin: We have deliberately made the decision not to publish more information on our MVP as we do not want to present it before it’s ready. However, the Giftcoin team has brought a number of successful consumer apps to market, and we feel very confident that we can execute on this part of the project as stated.

ICO Alert: When can contributors expect to fully use the platform? Please feel free to share any recent updates.

Giftcoin: We will be running trials over the summer with a number of our charity partners, and contributors should be able to participate at that point.

ICO Alert: As a non-Giftcoin question, we like to ask for unique predictions for the ICO and cryptocurrency space in the future. Where do you see both in the next 3–5 years?

Giftcoin: The ICO space is like the Wild West right now. In 3–5 years, we see a much more mature industry with more regulation. This will allow the properly-run, sensible projects to flourish and will prevent the badly-run, exploitative projects.

In terms of crypto, like many others we believe that we are in the middle of something like the dot-com boom. We believe that blockchain and cryptos are the most revolutionary technologies of the last 15 years. The companies that make it long term will be the next Googles and Amazons.

Restrictions

Per the Giftcoin whitepaper, to participate in ICO 1 “you need to self-certify as a sophisticated investor as well as pass KYC (Know Your Customer) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) checks … For investments greater than $10k additional checks may be carried out.”

ICO 1 (“Token Offering 1”) Information

The first ICO began on March 20, 2018 and will end on April 20, 2018. There are a total of 100,000,000 Giftcoin tokens (GIFT) available during ICO 1, representing 10% of the total GIFT supply. A hard cap of about $10,000,000 is set for this period.

1 ETH = 6,000 GIFT. The minimum purchase is 0.251 ETH.

BTC is also accepted for this ICO, in addition to ETH.

Giftcoin is an ERC20 token at this stage, so it’s important that contributors use ERC20 compatible wallets to receive Giftcoin tokens. According to Giftcoin, the ERC20 tokens received will be exchangeable for Giftcoin native tokens when the Giftcoin network launches and before native GIFT are actively listed on exchanges.

ICO 2 (“Token Offering 2”) Information

ICO 2 is planned to take place in October 2018. There will be a total of 250,000,000 Giftcoin tokens (GIFT) available during ICO 2, representing 25% of the total GIFT supply.

Giftcoin plans to have its network launched by ICO 2, meaning that the tokens issued will likely be on Giftcoin’s own network and not on the Ethereum network.

Bonuses and Discounts

• The pre-sale stage of ICO 1 offered a 50% discount.
• The first 24 hours offered a 25% discount.
• Week 1 offered a 15% discount.
• Week 2 (current) is offering a 5% discount until 9:30 a.m. EDT on April 3, 2018.
• Participants who joined the advance whitelist for the public sale will receive a 10% bonus in GIFT tokens.

GIFT Token Distribution Information

There are a total of 1,000,000,000 GIFT tokens being created, with 350,000,000 available during both ICOs. Contributors will have their tokens distributed shortly after the end of the ICO, directly to the ERC20-compatible ETH wallet they specify when they contribute.

How to Contribute

ICO 1 is distributing an ERC20 token. You will need an Ethereum wallet that is compatible with ERC20 tokens, such as a MetaMask, MyEtherWallet, or Ledger wallet. Do not use an exchange wallet address to receive your tokens, or your tokens will be lost.

To contribute:

1. Visit https://www.giftcoin.org/register/
2. Fill out your personal information for KYC/AML and upload your chosen form of identification.
3. Once you have been verified, you can obtain your Giftcoin BTC or ETH contribution address as well as specify the ERC20-compatible ETH address where you would like to receive your GIFT tokens.

ICO 2 (October 2018) may follow a different procedure, since Giftcoin’s plan is to distribute not ERC20 tokens but native Giftcoin tokens.

GIFT Token Allocation

• ICO 1 (March 20–April 20, 2018): 10%
• ICO 2 (October 2018): 35%
• Giftcoin Foundation reserves: 25%
• Founders and team: 15%
• Undefined: 15%
  Undefined tokens will be retained for distribution for community initiatives, business development, academic research, education and market expansion.

Use of ICO Proceeds

Roadmap

Founding Team