One of my favorite things about being a content creator is having someone leave a comment and ask me to cover a specific coin/project/token/etc, and in a recent video, I was asked to take a look at Student Coin. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of conflicting information with some people thinking Student Coin will be the project that finally brings crypto mainstream while other people take a more critical look. In this post, I'll do my best to separate the facts from the fiction, tell you what you need to know, and give my honest opinion about Student Coin.
Overview of Student Coin (STC)
Before jumping into the details, I wanted to briefly point out that the goal of Student Coin is to "put the tokens and blockchain into the mainstream.” The project hopes to do this by creating a platform that enables virtually anyone, regardless of technical experience, to create any kind of token including coins, DeFi tokens, NFTs, etc.
The team believes that universities have typically been hubs of innovation and that launching Student Coin at universities is the ideal way of capitalizing on that innovative spirit and fostering crypto adoption.
Student Coin offers a variety of resources that are designed to spread crypto awareness including a learning portal that provides education about blockchain basics as well as more in-depth lessons on specific coins and topics.
Easily Create Cryptos, NFTs, Tokenize Assets, ETC
Although the feature has not yet been released, Student Coin will offer an easy-to-use terminal that will allow anyone to create their very own cryptocurrency using a simple graphic user interface. Personally, I think this is a huge step forward as even some of the most simple cryptocurrencies still require a bit of technical experience to use.
The Student Coin terminal will not be limited to simply creating cryptocurrencies but will allow users to create a variety of tokens including non-fungible tokens including tokenizing themselves to pay for student loans......interesting.
Additionally, Student Coin plans to launch an STC-based token exchange which will allow users to trade any STC tokens against other tokens in the ecosystem.
Tokenomics
STC has an interesting tokenomics model which derives its utility through three primary functions. First, STC is needed to create any other forms of STC-based tokens. Think of it as the fuel of the STC universe similar to how a variety of tokens can be built on top of Ethereum but still use Ethereum as the underlying fuel or transactions. STC powers both the exchange of STC tokens as well as the ability to create new tokens.
Additionally, users can stake STC for the ability to earn payments from exchange fees. Lastly, holding STC means each user also has a small part of every other token that has ever been created using STC.
Reservation 1 - Claim of University Support
Overall, I think the intent and vision behind student coin is solid. I appreciate any project that hopes to increase crypto awareness, education, and adoption. Although I certainly support the project's goals and mission, there were a few things that made me a little bit more reluctant to support it as an investment.
For example, the whitepaper states that Student Coin is run by students, faculties, and entrepreneurs from over 20 universities including New York University, Harvard, Stanford, and the London School of Economics. Further, the whitepapper claims that STC is “fully supported by the academic faculties”.
Obviously, having Harvard, the London School of Economics, and Stanford all endorse a cryptocurrency would be absolutely groundbreaking news; however, the reality appears a bit more mundane. Instead of receiving an official endorsement from these universities, the reality is that there are people who work at these universities who also support student coin.
If we look further into the website, we see that student coin claims that it has major supporters “at” NYU, “at” Harvard, and “at” the London School of Economics. Having a supporter that happens to work at a university is a far cry from being endorsed by the university itself.
I don't mean to sound pedantic or tedious with my details, but there's a huge difference between receiving an official endorsement from a university as opposed to simply having someone that works there support your project. It would be like saying that your local little league baseball team is sponsored by a Fortune 500 company just because some guy that works at Walmart decided to buy pizza for the team.
Reservation 2 - Overestimating Support
Unfortunately, this tendency to over-represent support seems to be a recurring theme with the project. If we look at the main page, we can find a chart with logos of companies where we can find more info about the token. Immediately, I noticed that PUBLISH0X and Uptrennd are listed as places where STC token can be found. The way that this is presented implies that Publish0x and Uptrennd have written articles about Student Coin. However, as those of you who use these sites will know, Publish0x and Uptrennd are simply sites that allow any contributor to create their own content. The content hosted there does not imply that Publish0x or Uptrennd itself is writing about the project.
To be fair, Student Coin isn't claiming that they are endorsed by Publish0x or Uptrennd, but the way this is presented makes it seem as if Publish0x or Uptrennd itself is writing about Student Coin. Once again, having a prestigious cryptocurrency website write about your project is very different from having some random blogger post an article about your cryptocurrency project on that same website.
Perhaps its an oversight, but the project claims that token details can be found on CoinGecko. However when I go to CoinGecko and type “STC” or “Student Coin”, I am not presented with any results. Again, it's not necessarily a bad thing that the project isn't listed on CG, but I do wonder why they would claim a listing where one does not exist.
Reservation 3 - Referral / Pre-mining
In and of itself, a referral program isn't a bad thing. There's a lot of great cryptocurrency websites that use a referral program in order to attract new users and spread the word. At the same time, some people equate a referral program with a pyramid scheme, and I did find it very interesting that Student Coin claims that users can earn 20% of the ETH invested by each person they refer of 30% of the STC purchased by their referrals. At least to me, that seems VERY high compared to the industry standard. As a point of reference, Publish0x allows users to claim 5% of the tip their referrals generate.
As I said, there's nothing inherently wrong with a referral program, but those are incredibly high numbers when you consider that some of the top ambassadors are earning over 300,000 US dollars. As an investor, it would make me wonder whether the support for Student Coin was truly organic of if people were just supporting it to claim the short term bonuses.
Additionally, STC is pre-mined which means that it is not possible for individuals to mine the coin themselves. I did find it interesting that 50% of the entire token supply has already been allocated even before the token sale. When we combine strategic development, partnerships, and marketing, 40% of the entire token supply is devoted to promotion or marketing the token in some way.
Discussion
At this point, you're probably thinking “Okay PTE, who’s side are you on here, just tell me if Student Coin is good or not.” Unfortunately, this is one of those projects that I can't give a simple yes or no answer to. As far as education and outreach is concerned, I think Student Coin has great potential and could be incredibly useful. The ability to easily create your own cryptocurrency or NFT in a simple ecosystem would really help a lot of people who identify as "Hands-On Learners" to get more blockchain experience.
Although I think the educational component of the project is absolutely fantastic, I simply don’t feel the vibe as an investor. I do feel that the project overestimates the amount of support that they actually have. Claiming that the project is fully supported by university faculties while also listing support “at” Harvard and other universities is either 1) simply confusing or 2) overhyping. Listing support on CoinGecko where there is none makes me question the team’s attention to detail. Pre-mining the token, giving 20-30% referral commissions, while also devoting 40% of the token supply to various forms of partnerships and promotions makes me question the long-term sustainability of the project. If the team must spend that much on promotion and commissions, I have to wonder if the project's success is due more to clever marketing and commissions as opposed to the underlying fundamentals of the project.
Summary.
At the end of the day, I have to say I do like Student Coin as an educational opportunity for spreading blockchain and cryptocurrency awareness. I truly wish them support and success in that function. At the same time, there are a couple of things that just give me an odd “vibe” as an investor. I want to be clear that this doesn't mean student coin is a bad project, it simply means that it's not right for me. If you end up making 100X on STC, I'll be right here to give you a high five and say "Well Done!"
And that is the key to all of cryptocurrency investing. It's important for each individual to find what they like the best. Just because I do or don't invest in a certain project doesn’t mean that YOU should or shouldn’t invest. I've been wrong about many cryptocurrency projects (like DOGE), so DYOR, embrace responsibility for your financial decisions, and leave your comments below.
As always, thanks for reading, and this is not financial advice.
References
https://www.studentcoin.org/whitepaper
https://www.coingecko.com/en
https://www.studentcoin.org/
Image Credit
https://unsplash.com/photos/u0vgcIOQG08
