This is a speculative play for me and in no way is a recommendation to buy or an attempt to hype a sh!tco!n. Writing about a speculative project forces me to dive deeper into a coin and decide if I should just take profits at the first chance or add to my position. I generally don't look at smaller coins/tokens priced under $0.01, but this one has the potential to become huge if it is listed by a larger exchange. Currently you can find Telcoin (TEL) on UniSwap, Balancer, KuCoin, CoinGate, and a few others priced at $.00774 at the time of writing. It has a market capitalization of $425M and ranked #162 on CoinGecko. I chose KUCOIN simply because I keep most of my spec plays on that account and I won't pay exorbitant gas fees on a swap for such a small position. Due to the large influx of new users I haven't been able to finish creating my Telcoin wallet, so I will update this post when I have it completed and have more information on the functionality of the app.
Telcoin (TEL)
TEL specializes in low cost, near instantaneous remittances via their in-house mobile wallets running on blockchain. Remittances are just sums of money and are used globally, especially in migrant and unbanked communities, to transfer funds. The global remittance industry estimates the market will increase from $682B USD in 2018 to $930B by 2026 (citation) with digital remittances representing about 4% of the overall market or $36B by 2026 (citation).
Telcoin utilizes the Ethereum blockchain and held their ICO in December 2017. It experienced it's ATH in January 2018 at $.0118 and quickly disappeared into obscurity reaching an all time low of $0.00006516 in March 2020. Since then the project has seen a resurgence as at some point a new CEO was emplaced (I can't discern the date), they introduced their own wallet/mobile app, business partnerships were created, and customer acquisition has increased dramatically. A ton of hype has been created around the release of their V3 app and additional onboarding of sending/receiving markets. One thing is for sure, they have a very active and dedicated social media team and are doing a good job of continuing to expand on their use-case.
Fees/Income
I couldn't find exact fee amounts, but Telcoin's website states they are focused on keeping the remittance fees at or below 2% in a market that averages a 7% cut. This average of 5% savings and mobility ease-of-use will drive customer acquisition. Their original whitepaper does reference fees at 0.5%, but I cannot substantiate that they are current.
Social Media
They have a large following of ~36K Twitter followers and an active Telegram with roughly 18K members between its two groups. They continually update their community on progress within the project averaging 1-2 posts per week. They have dedicated admins in their Telegram groups with set M-F hours, so issues may be resolved and community updates pushed.
Tokenomics
As stated previously the MC is around $425M with daily volume of 15M. There is decent liquidity spread throughout their partner exchanges and swaps. It has a circulating supply of 54 Billion TEL coins and a max supply of 100 Billion with KuCoin as the most active trading market.
It has a valid use-case and has made considerable progress in creating partnerships, onboarding of send/receive markets (see below), mobile application development, and consumer acquisition.
According to the white paper the majority of the tokens are distributed/used by TELCOM partner companies for carrier billing and mobile money platform usage. What I can't find (and do not like) is a dedicated token section. I want my projects to be transparent on how they intend to grow my investment. Perhaps this exists and I just haven't located it yet, however their public website is geared more towards the consumer; it does not include an investor/token portal. Perhaps this could be written off as a team that is more focused on production and providing value around the underlying business rather than the token metrics. Hopefully they can address this in the near future.
Additionally, I like to see a deflationary asset or a plan to become one in the future. With 100B tokens wondering in the ether I want to see where my 18000+ tokens are going to eventually reside in the grand scheme.
Not that you should rely solely on this other than as an additional tool in your arsenal, but here is Trading View's technical assessment:
Final Thoughts
This project has a lot going for it; it has been around for several years, has valid use, a working product, good partnerships, and a large community. Where it fails is in its transparency towards its tokens/investors (or maybe I didn't look in the correct places) and a plan to remove some of those billions of tokens out of circulation. Either way I threw a few bucks at it... Hell, it can't be any worse than that $700 investment I made buying Elio Motors crowdfund stock back in the day.
Thanks for reading! Tell me your thoughts on this token. Is it an all hype sh!tco!n that flushed my money or is it a potential gem? And if you enjoyed the content please feel free to smash that thumbs up button.
Completely unrelated:
Bloomberg Report price predicts BTC at $400K in 2022.
