ICO – InvestTravel.ro

AirFox Closes $6.5 Million AirToken Pre-Sale Weeks Ahead of Schedule

admin — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 08:14:11 +0000

BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–AirFox, the company making mobile data and internet more affordable for millions of people, today announced it closed its $6.5 million ICO pre-sale weeks earlier than scheduled. The ICO will open at 10 a.m. ET on September 19, 2017. AirFox will use the ICO funds raised to further develop and launch its new blockchain consumer platform, AirToken (AIR), in order to tokenize mobile access by unlocking mobile capital from the smartphone for the underserved and underbanked prepaid mobile subscribers in emerging markets.

A TechStars portfolio company and venture-backed startup with a proven business-to-business wireless product, AirFox aims to raise up to $15 million in a token sale to make mobile internet more accessible to four billion underserved people in emerging markets who cannot afford it.

The pre-sale attracted a very diverse audience, including sophisticated crypto investors, angel investors and other early backers of the project. AirFox wants to build a broad community of supporters, not just large early investors. AirFox also capped the amount a single person could purchase in the pre-sale to maximize individual contributions while creating a diversified pool of AirToken holders to benefit the long-term success of the project.

The latest version of the AirToken whitepaper (version 3.0) contains numerous updates, additions and tweaks that answer questions raised by pre-sale purchase inquiries, clarify any ambiguities and reflect advice provided by legal counsel.

Over the last year, AirFox’s business-to-business platform has enabled more than 2 million unique U.S. prepaid wireless subscribers to reduce their mobile costs while helping wireless carriers better serve their customers. Now, AirFox’s free consumer Android apps, AirFox Recharge and AirFox Browser, enable any prepaid mobile subscriber on Earth to earn AirTokens by viewing and interacting with advertisements. Users can redeem AirTokens for mobile data or use them to send mobile data to others via 5 billion prepaid SIM cards and over 500 wireless carriers.

AirFox will use the ICO funds to develop a revolutionary microloans program and expand abroad to emerging markets. The AirToken micro finance system will allow peer-to-peer lending in Air-Tokens at more affordable rates using the mobile data and airtime ecosystems that already exist in these markets. AirFox eliminates the overhead involved with traditional lending caused by inefficient intermediaries and government regulation by using the blockchain to match lenders with borrowers at transparent terms, and reduces the transfer fees involved.

By analyzing thousands of data points on mobile behavior, device data, payments and browsing history, AirFox will use proprietary algorithms to assign credit rankings to users. Using these credit scores, AirFox will segment users into tranches, allowing lenders to provide microloans in AirTokens through an Ethereum smart-contract. The AirToken system provides greater access to capital at cheaper rates, expands access to mobile capital through pre-paid wireless accounts, and improves the lives of underserved lower socioeconomic classes.

On September 11, AirFox will be at Pepcom and Showstoppers at Mobile World Congress Americas to promote the AirToken platform.

About AirFox
Founded by ex-Googlers Victor Santos and Sara Choi in January 2016, AirFox quickly established itself as the leader in affordable data plans for US-based prepaid wireless carriers. Incubated at Harvard’s Innovation Lab, AirFox is a TechStars Boston alumni and is venture backed by Project 11, Launch Capital, and NXT Ventures, among others. With the launch of its ICO and new blockchain consumer platform, the company is on a mission to enable unrestricted access to the internet for anyone with a prepaid smartphone.

AirFox’s free Android apps, AirFox Browser and AirFox Recharge, enable users to earn AirTokens, a new cryptocurrency, by viewing advertisements on their devices, completing offers, and browsing the internet. AirTokens are redeemable for mobile data and, eventually, goods and services. AirFox will use the ICO funds to develop a revolutionary microloans program that enables peer-to-peer lending in AirTokens at more affordable rates. To learn more, visit www.airfox.io.

Contacts

AirFox
David Richard, 781-483-0671
press@airfox.io

Lampix’s Augmented Reality ‘Crypto’ Crowdfund Scores $4.5M, Targets $60M

admin — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 00:51:50 +0000

Lampix, a US-based fintech building a blockchain-based ‘image mining’ network for augmented reality or any other computer vision systems, raised 11,111 ethereum (ETH) – a little over $3m – from investors in three minutes during a ‘pre-sale’ crowdsale token launch (CTL) of their PIX token this week, together with partner company ICO.info.

At the prevailing exchange rate of $285 USD/ETH at the time, Lampix, with offices in New York and San Francisco that transforms any flat surface into a smart surface using machine learning and computer vision, pulled in $3,166,635 of investment prior to the crowdfund in PIX tokens being opened up to the public for a 10-day period from August 9, 2017.

Since being created in 2015, Lampix has garnered paying clients from the likes of Bloomberg, PwC and large retail chains amongst others, and is creating what is described as a “new blockchain that will hold data-sets of real world objects.”

This data is said by the company, which won the best Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality company this March at SXSW festival, the largest festival of its kind in the world, as being a “vital pre-requisite” for augmenting reality systems ranging from smartphones, wearable glasses, or their own Lampix product. The founders behind project believe that Lampix will impact humans as much as computers or smart phones in the future.

Bold stuff – but why do we want smart surfaces and Augmented Reality? Well, the team at Lampix believe they can free human computer interactions from digital screens. As their website stated: “Think Tom Cruise in Minority Report. Imagine your room in five years: you will be able to use any surface around you as if it was a computer. The ability to transform any surface into an interactive computer (augmented reality) is going to unleash applications we have not even conceived of.”

The crowdfund itself is being structured in three stages. Specifically, day 1 of the crowdfund had a token sale cap slated of $20 million (m) minus the total amount of tokens during the pre-sale with a 15% bonus. Subsequently, day 2 will also has a maximum of $20m but with a 10% bonus of PIX tokens for sale. Then finally from day 3 until the tenth, a third and last $20m tranche of PIX tokens will be made available for purchase at a 5% bonus.

However, in order to enable Lampix to reach its full potential, the firm said it needed to build a “billion-picture-and-description database”, and indicated it required a total of $60m to fund creation of their computer vision machine learning distributed database and to build the Lampix ecosystem.

The plan is to use the capital raised to pay as a bounty the image miners for the database, to build the database software (both for image processing and the blockchain part), build the Lampix software and hardware (manufacturing and App development costs), as well as to help promotion of the entire ecosystem through sales and marketing, and pay staff salaries.

Reaching Its Funding Target?

But what if this $60m target is not reached by August 18, you might well be asking? When canvassed about this, George Popescu, CEO of Lampix and an MIT alumni based in New York, commenting in that event said: “Everything will be smaller and slower. We would cut the sales and marketing parts, the initial database bounty we start with will be smaller.”

He added: “And, instead of ordering a 10,000 Lampix-device run we will order a smaller one. Thus far we have raised [over] 15,000 ETH, which is about $4.5m and already a significant amount of money to enable us to do all of this on a smaller scale.”

(Source: Lampix).

A pie chart showing a breakdown of the where funds being raised by the PIX token sale will be allocated. (Source: Lampix).

The Offering & Use Of Funds

Lampix are creating a supply of just over a 1.1 billion (bn) PIX tokens. Intending to sell 50% of the tokens in the token launch over three days, they need to raise around $60m to make any surface a smart surface over the next four to five years.

A total of 30% of the tokens will be placed in reserve and 20% of the token will be used for the team.

The funds collected through the launch will be used to cover the expenses of the project until it starts making profits and sufficient cash flows to function on its own. According to an 85-page whitepaper on the project, Lampix stated that it expected to make profits by 2021.

How much is a PIX at launch?

One PIX is equivalent to $0.12 during the crowdsale token launch, with tokens being distributed as follows: (a) Issued – 50% of the tokens will be issued for the ICO; (b) Reserves – 30% for data purchase; and, (c) Company/Team – 20% earmarked for research and development.

A Lampix spokesman said: “We will use PIX tokens to grow the data ecosystem through purchases and payments. The crowdsale token launch is a vital component to bring the Lampix and database to fruition, which will play a key role in developing augmented reality applications across many devices.”

Blockchain Technology

Lampix’s Popescu, who holds three Masters degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineer, 3D Printing and Nanosciences, commenting on the application of blockchain technology going forward, said: “It has major application beyond currency and programming. We have invented here a big data crowdsourcing plan, which we think can be applied in many other directions. And, I think tomorrow’s Google or Facebook-size company will be built using blockchain.”

ICOINFO, established in July 2017 that is partnering Lampix, separately revealed that is on the lookout for robust ICO projects from all over the world, which will allow users to participate in the blockchain industry.

Lampix’s crowdsale token launch for PIX tokens runs until August 18, 2017 and at the time of writing on August 10 (4.42pm in New York) it had raised a total of 15895.46ETH.

Those wishing to participate in the PIX Token distribution or purchase the tokens for investment purposes should fully understand the details outlined in Lampix’s whitepaper, which can can be read here, before investing. For a video about the platform, how it works and what one can do with it can be accessed via this link.