This week Ihodl.com decided to look at the idea of a symbiosis of cryptocurrency and non-ferrous metals from copper to platinum which is represented by the Tiberius project.
About the Project
Tiberius project uses its tokens to give an ownership of a special metal basket selected for unique industrial applications for future technologies and commodity-growing industries. Tiberius Coin consists of a digital (crypto) and physical (metal) component, with the connection supported by blockchain.
The whitepaper of the project points out that the weakness of any cryptocurrency is that it’s not supported by anything and is prone to high volatility and high correlation. The uniqueness of Tiberius Coin lies in its position as a crypto source that provides a direct possession of a metal basket kept in Tiberius's custody on behalf of the holder of the token. The metal can be physically delivered in exchange for token.
The basket of metals can be seen here:
The whitepaper says that the project will be engaged in selling metal by using blockchain. Tiberius will conclude a contract of direct sales of a basket of physical metal. Tiberius will produce and sell physical metals, and won’t sell coins. Tiberius Coin is an instrument of accounting, similar to a warehouse receipt.
The team focuses on the legal aspects of the project as Tiberius token is equivalent to physical metal. Token buyer must conclude three agreements with Tiberius Technology Ventures Ltd. ("TIC"), the issuer of Tiberius Coin. The first is a contract for purchase and sale of a metal basket. An additional clause of the contract of sale is an obligation to place metals in a customs warehouse for storage. The second one is the storage agreement. This agreement will be concluded between the original purchaser and TIC to establish that warehouse receipts will be kept in custody by TIC. The third agreement arranges that the custodian of warehouse receipts will own these securities for every future owner of Tiberius Coin.
Tiberius company is a mining operator, metals trader and investor of Commodities Technology (ComTech), based in Zug, Switzerland. Tiberius is under the jurisdiction of two regulators — FINMA (Switzerland) and BaFin (Germany).
But despite the serious intentions of the team that started working a year and a half ago, according to the roadmap, currently the crew is focused on project marketing rather than on developing a platform that is planned only for the 4 quarter of 2018. At the same time, the team plans to list its coins on various exchanges immediately after ICO.
Overall score: Good idea without realization
Tokenomics
Tiberius token — T-Coin (TCX) represented by physical (metallic) and digital (crypto) components or assets. The task of Tiberius project is to maintain a connection between them. The team intends to decentralize this responsibility through the use of competing independent service providers and auditors.
T-Coin is an ERC-20 standard based on Ethereum platform. Token is used for sale of source metals (IMS) and works with the Proof-of-Work protocol (PoW), which is planned to be replaced with Proof-of-Stake (PoS). At a later date the project claims that it will move to Zilliqa platform which will solve any scalability problem and significantly improve the economy and processing of metadata for the token.
Delivery of a metal basket will be carried out by "canceling" the token using the Tiberius Coin app or the website. The token will be destroyed and, thus, will be removed from circulation, as it will no longer be secured (hence, "canceled"). Each token that is canceled reduces the total number of circulating tokens and, therefore, reduces the market capitalization of Tiberius Coin network, keeping the number of tokens in accordance with the amount of metal stored in the warehouse.
The market price of TCX token will be determined as the sum of the intrinsic value (total market value of metal basket underlying each token) and the market premium (difference between TCX market price and the value of the metals).
Overall score: Promising
Team and Community
The project team looks dignified and consists of 7 people and 5 advisors. The CEO — Giuseppe Rapallo, has been working in Tiberius since 2007. The team also includes CTO, chief digital officer, 3 developers, security officer and others. Advisors are represented by various banking and financial experts from Credit Suisse and Commerzbank, but by no one who has been engaged in the field of blockchain and ICO.
The project activity in social networks is small: its available on Facebook (536 followers), Twitter (3,285 followers), Youtube (only one video in several languages). All activity is concentrated in the Telegram channel with more than 13,000 active users.
The main strength of the team was sending data about the project to news media like Bloomberg, Reuters and Ihodl.com (read the news about the launch of token sale here).
Overall score: Poor
ICO Details
Total Supply Unlimited
Soft Cap $20,000,000
Hard Cap $35,000,000
Additional Emission Yes
Accepted Currencies BTC, ETH, fiat, gold
Token Type ERC-20
TCX Price $0,7
Sale Starts October 1, 2018
Sale Ends October 21, 2018
Summary
Tiberius is the first project that claims that its tokens are supported by a real resource — non-ferrous metals produced by the developer company itself. Such position is inspiring.
However, if you go deeper into the project's whitepaper, it becomes completely unclear how the team will deal with the volatility of metal price (and it is volatile like any product in any market) and what is more important, how it will attract metal suppliers.
We are pleased with a serious consideration of the legal issues of the project expressed in conclusion of real contracts between Tiberius and its users.
Another concern is the lack of any specific information about tokenomics and Zilliqa blockchain platform, which the project will use. But like the majority of ICOs at the moment the project works with Ethereum platform. It is worth remembering that the main platform activities are planned much later after the token sale, that is the implementation isn’t clear.
Thus the Tiberius project once again gives a vivid hope for an innovative and fresh solution, but plunges into darkness after its careful examination.
We wish Tiberius a speedy end of the preparatory work and a really successful launch of its platform because the idea is really very good.
Click here to visit Tiberius page in the list of upcoming ICOs.