Numoney is a retail store located near Buangkok MRT station. They offer over the counter (OTC) services for purchase of cryptocurrency and now they are looking to start their own online exchange (a hybrid of Gemini & Binance). They are looking to raise funds for the exchange's liquidity through Initial Exchange Offering.
Numoney is started by a group of Singaporeans who saw the problems in the cryptocurrency scene in Singapore and South East Asia. Started in November 2017, in a span of four months, the turnover of the company crossed S$2.5million, highlighting the demand for cryptocurrency in the South East Asia market. This significant turnover has resulted in the flagging of their bank account (mainly due to the high volume of deposits and withdrawals). In the long run, OTC services became unsustainable in the developers' view.
This problem that Numoney faces is not unique to them alone. Banks all over South East Asia and Singapore have not been very appreciative of cryptocurrency start ups despite DPM Tharman approving of cryptocurrency in our tiny red dot. [http://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/tharman-no-strong-case-yet-to-ban-cryptocurrency-trading-in-spore]
For example, locally, Coinhako's bank account was shut down and they are now relying on Xfers for bank transfers. However, Xfers has been down since mid December for system upgrading. They recently opened up transaction for a select group of members to trial the upgraded system. Xfers grew so quickly over the past months that they are now required to apply for a new license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore as the funds managed by them has reached close to S$30million.
This further highlights how large the demand for cryptocurrency is in Singapore, considering that Xfers main purpose is for the purchase of cryptocurrency through their digital goods wallet. With no clear reopening date for Xfers, there is a pressing need for a new solution to fixed the current problem in our local cryptocurrency scene.
You may argue that there are other US based exchange like Coinbase and Gemini. But there are inherent flaws to these solutions. Primarily, the main issue with Coinbase is the cost. As of now, because Xfers is down, you can only use credit card to make purchase. The credit card fee is 3.99% including a 2.6% bank charge. As such, any purchase would set you back by almost 7%. Also, due to the large backlog of support tickets, Coinbase takes ages to reply a support ticket, so it could take a long time for problems to be fixed. They also do not have live support.
Gemini, although offers a way lower fee of 0.25%, you are required to get yourself verified (a requirement under US law, also known as KYC - Knowing Your Customer). The verification process can take up to a month.
Personally, it took 21 days to get myself verified. After getting yourself verified, you will need to do a remittance transfer over to Gemini's bank and that will take one working day. However, there are instances where customers follow the right instruction given by Gemini, but the funds are still refunded by Gemini's bank. In this instance, you are required to pay for the forex fees which could be about 1 to 2% of your total transferred amount. In the worst case scenerio that your funds go missing, which is something I experienced myself just a few weeks ago, you are required to file a tracer request which will set you back by $35.
These troubles would probably be too much for a newbie to deal with. As such, a dedicated Singapore & more specifically South East Asia based exchange would help solve the problem for newbies. The developers believe that block chain technology is the future and to drive it mainstream, there would be a need for a retail store, which will further lower the barriers to entry.
Numoney is looking to store funds in their personal cash vaults, eliminating the need for any bank as a middleman. For a start, there are two possibilities for interested party to make their purchase.
- They can make a trip down to any of their office and make a cash payment, any subsequent actions required will be done by the staff on duty. Do note that OTC purchase has a minimum purchase of $500. Otherwise, you can also top up your exchange account at their office as well.
- As much as possible (or until the bank shuts the account down), customers can also top up their exchange account through bank transfer.
This provides a straightforward "fiat in-fiat out" solutions, bypassing the various steps required to cash out your profits when you purchase cryptocurrency.
For a start, Numoney is looking to support Ethereum on their exchange. Progressively they are looking to add more alternate coins, effectively turning the exchange to something similar to Binance. Numoney exchange would hence be a Coinbase/Gemini + Binance hybrid.
Looking at the roadmap,
26 Feb - Launch of exchange and beginning of Ethereum trading pair
March - Launch of Bitcoin & Litecoin trading pair
April - Launch of Ripple trading pair
May - Launch of Monero trading pair
Unlike Initial Coin Offering which is done through a smart contract, Initial Exchange Offering would be done on the exchange. For the IEO, NMX tokens would be offered for sale. NMX token serves a similar purpose as Binance token, NMX token will be used to cover the exchange fees. A total of 1,000,000,000 NMX token will be minted and the hard cap for this IEO is $10,000,000. 1NMX = $0.01. Any additional coins unsold would be burned.
Sales of the token will be done in the form of dutch auction.
Do join the developers in their telegram group to find out more.
Telegram: https://t.me/NMX_IEO
Also, do note that this article is not all encompassing so you can also read the whitepaper to learn more about Numoney and the developer team.
Whitepaper: https://exchange.numoney.store/media/files/numoney_nmx_ieo_whitepaper-1_feb_2017.pdf
Medium: https://medium.com/@Numoney
Thank you and if you have any feedbacks for me, feel free to leave your comments below.