MUSC seeks to extend the crypto world to those who abstain due to religious purposes - almost like the revolution that Islamic Banking brought to the Middle East where financial services could now be extended to those did not want to participate due to abstinence from interest etc. In this post I will analyse the MUSC project, and rate it in terms of the 'Token' criteria in the SVET framework. This rating is conducted from an unsponsored, unbiased perspective and serves merely an informative purpose- not as financial advice (!)
Recap of Framework
The framework is designed for technology analysts to be able to assign as close to an objective rating as possible on the merits of a project.
Within the review of a project's 'Token', the following criteria is assessed:
SVET Token Rating:
- 'Sustainability': How stable were this coin / token prices in the past and now? How big / small is this coin / token market cap? How likely is that the market cap will grow / fall in the future?
- 'Value': What is past / current transaction volumes of this token / coin? What is the likelihood that this coin / token will appreciate / depreciate in the next 1-2 years terms?
- 'Engagement': What is coins / tokens usability? How intensive is it used by the public outside of the trading on exchanges?
- 'Transactions': How easy is to purchase / sale this token? What is its cost of transaction? How available and easy to use is its wallet / storage?
The rating is assigned from a scale of a, b and c, with the +/- variant indicating a strong/ weak performer respectively in that category.
Vision Review
Sustainability
After having gotten the chance to thoroughly review the Muslim Coins project by diving into the community-wide communications, it has become obvious that the team has had to play a flexible role in the launch of the MUSC token; both, coming across as disorganised at times but being able to adapt to meet their targets. The consequence of this on the ‘Sustainability’ criteria is evidence of short-term fluctuations but not due to market economics, as the token is yet to go through it’s IEO and exchange listing, but rather due to the price set for the presale. After having met only 16% of it’s first presale target, as CEO Sharif transparently admitted (Sharif, 2021), a rather rushed second presale was organized which over-exceeded the hard-cap of 40 BNB by roughly 32.5% bringing the total raised by the project to 53 BNB (SpaceSeed.finance, 2021).
The fluctuation between the price of first presale was an increase of 0.035USDT to 0.038USDT which was apparently done to “stay fair to the buyers in first presale” (Sharif, 2021). Confusingly, however, the presale was done in BNB but this was not adequately mentioned to participants before-hand, leaving them unaware of BNB to USDT price fluctuations over that time period. Regardless, the latter cannot be considered a strong negative as it was only a period of two weeks between the first and second presale under which the project demonstrated an influx of community members, swelling its Twitter and Telegram following by roughly three times the members which will have undoubtedly played a key role in the second presales success. During this time the commitment to scheduled release on its IEO and exchange listing is notable, with the price of the former set at 0.04USDT and the latter at 0.05USDT (Muslim Coins, 2021).
As such, noting the short-term trend and planned release pricing, the project launch pricing has been fluctuating but with demonstrated commitment to IEO, it’s exchange listing, and protecting it’s presale buyers, the market cap is only set to grow – at least, whilst no market pricing economics are involved as of yet – leaving the ‘Sustainability’ rating at ‘b’.
Value
In recent weeks, the ‘value’ of the token has shown rejuvenated life as the project has grown and achieved its presale target and yet is still far behind a point at which it can be seriously considered as a competitor amongst some of the largest tokens so far. The probability of it appreciating considerably in the medium-term of 1 to 2 years can be deemed ‘highly likely’ “as the number of Muslims is projected to rise toward 2.2 billion by 2030 [and] Muslim Coins is unlocking the doors of cryptocurrency trading in the Islamic world” (Newsfile Corp., 2021).
Despite this, its volume is still depleted and there is some limited counter-evidence to support that Muslims may not be as interested in the project as marketed – that is, the 1.8 billion user target for MUSC can only be taken lightly as marketing device especially considering that “only around 20 to 30 percent of banking in the Gulf and Southeast Asia follows Islamic principles; many Muslims use conventional finance if it offers higher returns or more convenience” (Reuters, 2018). This is a strong indication that just the brand of Islamic finance is not enough to sway the entire Muslim community, as much like with the case of conventional banking, some prefer the alternative’s financial products.
That being said, even a 20-30% share of such a broad population would be staggering, but questions may of course be asked of the feasibility of this considering that many new Islamic-finance cryptocurrencies are in the pipeline which it will have to compete with. This leave it with a value rating of ‘b+’ mainly from forecasting, and less from historical volume information of which there is little to none existing to date.
Engagement
Having only just been released into private wallets, the MUSC tokens demonstrate nothing special about ‘Engagement’ other than unique planned uses off exchanges. Taking a look at present on-chain data through the use of a BINANCE Smart Chain scanner reveals that despite being released into wallets, there is not much tendency to even trade the token with an average of five transactions on-chain for the past few days as of the first week of September, 2021 (bscscan.com, 2021). What this is a healthy indication of however, is prevailing ‘HODL’ sentiment in the present investors who are more interested in the use-cases of the actual token. As the marketing promises, and recorded screen captured demo evidence highlights (MUSC Telegram, 2021), the team is sticking to the plan of developing an app, a credit card, as well as a ‘Zakat’ (Islamic Charity) system which is what it seems the majority of community participants are interested in (Muslim Coins, 2021).
As the state of the project at present is still in its infancy, not much can be expected from the data or even compared to other similar Islamic-finance oriented crypto projects as this industry is quite new and MUSC remains an early mover. Therefore, it can neither be deemed of strong or weak usage in its niche sustaining an average rating of ‘b’ despite being an early mover.
Transactions
The advantage of running on BEP-20 is the perpetual absence of a transaction fee which is a short-extending advantage when considering the actual procurement of the token is difficult with it only just having been released to wallets from presale. The first presale was technically troubled with lots of users complaining about faults in the launchpad (SpaceSeed.finance, 2021). This took hours to fix on the first presale day and perhaps cost the project in both reputation as well as holders of the token. However, these issues were resolved by the second presale, another key factor to it then meeting and crossing its planned threshold with the latter.
The app and wallet for Muslim Coins is still in development however the released footage so far shows promise in the way of Islamic-compliant finance, as well as some unique features they had not marketed at all including the ability to put in targeted ads, which is not necessarily a positive, but perhaps a required move for the low capital project. Another interesting feature of the wallet is the ease with which users can track how much they have contributed in ‘Zakat’, their Islamic charity obligation, which is automatically calculated based on their transactions, as well as direct donation from their MUSC credit card. These will be appealing features for Muslim crypto users but it is key to take this into context that even with, for example, direct debits for charity payments available to them at present with fiat, they do not necessarily choose to opt-into this and rather wish to wait and pay on their own accord. As “Zakat is often paid out at the end of the year once calculations on any leftover wealth are made” (Liberto, 2021), some may even find it disagreeable that 2% of every transaction is automatically deducted for this purpose.
Therefore, despite the interesting features on offer, there are questions to be asked of the technology from both a recent history perspective, as well as a use-case perspective leaving the ‘Transactions’ rating at a ‘b-‘.
Verdict
MUSC’s SVET.Trust (Sustainability — Value — Engagement — Transactions) Rating: b / b+ / b / b-
References
bscscan.com, 2021. Contract 0x8B93585978B81E4FC0aE063fe526dBfBE9B8D42D. [Online]
Available at: https://bscscan.com/address/0x8B93585978B81E4FC0aE063fe526dBfBE9B8D42D
[Accessed 05 September 2021].
Liberto, D., 2021. What is Zakat?. [Online]
Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/z/zakat.asp#:~:text=gold%20and%20silver.-,Zakat%20is%20based%20on%20income%20and%20the%20value%20of%20possessions,Muslim's%20total%20savings%20and%20wealth.&text=Zakat%20is%20often%20paid%20out,any%20leftover%20wealth%20
[Accessed 5 September 2021].
Muslim Coins, 2021. Homepage. [Online]
Available at: https://muslimcoins-ico.com/
[Accessed 28 August 2021].
Muslim Coins, 2021. Whitepaper. [Online]
Available at: https://muslimcoins-ico.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/WHITEPAPER-EN-10082021.pdf
[Accessed 28 August 2021].
Newsfile Corp., 2021. Muslim Coin Launches Its Islam-Compliant Cryptocurrency. [Online]
Available at: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/muslim-coin-launches-islam-compliant-072300052.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMgmyP2hExZtLio_tRoFmJVlgrcH74DtxVHFB4H1D7gLGocUzqdZ4iLLh-VkLy1K78BJJTaIxJTYnfLOhlazkWf3WoA
[Accessed 12 August 2021].
Reuters, 2018. Islam and cryptocurrency, halal or not halal?. [Online]
Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2018/4/8/islam-and-cryptocurrency-halal-or-not-halal
[Accessed 28 August 2021].
Sharif, 2021. The First Presale [Interview] (28 August 2021).
Sharif, 2021. The Second Presale and Roadmap [Interview] (03 September 2021).
SpaceSeed.finance, 2021. Muslim Coins. [Online]
Available at: https://spaceseed.finance/
[Accessed 04 September 2021].
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