Merchant Token is a buzzy new ICO following the StudentCoin playbook, but is it a good investment?
I bought into StudentCoin fairly early, my $20 investment is currently worth $34, in retrospect, of course I would have invested more, so is Merchant Token my chance to do just that? Let's dive in.
StudentCoin derived its credibility in part thanks to the internationally renown partner institutions. While it can certainly be argued that StudentCoin deliberately misled investors by overstating the degree of these partnership, that's a discussion for a different day, this is a question of optics. Can Merchant Token match or surpass StudentCoin's credibility with it's partners? Merchant Token's main partner is HIPS Payment Group (hips.com) which is already partnered with over 200,000 businesses globally. This is a highly practical partnership and would allow Merchant Token to hit the ground running, well on its way to mainstream recognition. As I praised StudentCoin's foresight in integrating COINBASE Marketplace to allow casual and novice investors an easy way to buy in, Merchant Token has done the same as well as offering many other options for payment.
In terms of practicality, Merchant Token is the winner in my mind. A crypto that strives to bring consumer protections to blockchain payments is a big step forward for the industry and, if successful, Merchant Token will help many more businesses and individuals feel comfortable utilizing crypto as part of their business or regular purchases. StudentCoin's dream of popularizing hyper-tokenization and facilitating its wide adoption across the world would be a game changer and in return support an entire generation of innovation in crypto and blockchain coming out of Universities across the world, this goal should not be diminished in any way, but Merchant Token's success would result in many of the same ends, just through a different route. The ability to rely on the same basic protections when paying with Ether, BTC, or Cardano as you would get using a Credit Card cannot be understated in the effect it would have on inspiring confidence for institutions to adopt crypto payments and individual consumers, this is exactly what Merchant Token aims to do.
My recommendation is to invest a small amount you're comfortable parting with if this project doesn't pan out. Buy some StudentCoin, buy some Merchant Token: Strap in and see ya on the moon!
Check out Merchant Token for yourself and if you decide to invest, make sure to follow this page to ride along with me for updates on it.
