If you have followed my Cryptocurrency orientated posts, you will have heard me talk about CoinList (a crypto focussed spin-off from AngelList). I have found CoinList to be a great place to get in early on crowdsales of projects that have already seen some prior vetting with first rate Venture Capital firms. So, these are the sorts of investors that are looking at year or decade long time scales. This is the sort of time scale that interests me, more than the day or week long time scales of many of the launches that take place on the wild internet.

Recently, Creator Coins have started to pick up some attention as the potential next bubble after DeFi and NFTs. I'm still up in the air about the entire concept of Creator Coins... personally, I don't think that they have much worth to me. However, I do appreciate that I don't have the same concept of fandom and community "belonging" that many people seem to have. For instance, I don't see the interest in the tribalism behind identifying as a fan of a football club or a fan of a pop star. It just doesn't figure into my identity.

However, that doesn't detract from the fact that there are fans... and then there are super-fans. This is the economy that Creator Coins seeks to address. I guess in many ways, my wife described it best as it being similar to a perpetual kickstarter?

Anyway, RALLY (RLY) seeks to address this by trying to be the "home" of Creator Coins. So, a specialised blockchain and ecosystem that would cater to fans and creators. To that end, they need to make the actual user interface quite transparent for the masses of technically less literate creators and fans out there!

I'm not going to try and describe the concept in more detail as I'm still sorting the idea and concept in my head. Plus, I'm a bit more focused on the coming Casper and FEI launches in the coming week.

I will direct you to the sale page for more details.

A quick thing to notice about the sale (apart from beginning on April Fools Day... ), is the fact that there isn't yet a fixed sale price. Normally, for the crowdsales we have an initial sale price for the sale round that we are participating in. However, the fact that this is not a pre-sale, but a discounted sale of a token that is already trading on Uniswap and Balancer (as well as KuCoin) means that they will do a time averaged price over the last 15-45 days. Something that we will quickly explore later!

Also, note that the accepted currencies are BTC/ETH and USDC. No Tether this time! Prepare your CoinList wallets accordingly!

The usual sale restrictions apply for US, Canada and China. This is a KYC sale, so don't bother trying to skirt around with VPNs. You will need documentation as well.

What I do like about the CoinList sales are the fact that there are low hard caps on the purchase limits. This stops whales swooping in and grabbing the lion's share in a first come first serve sale.... and the centralised and KYC'd nature of CoinList means that bots and scammers are at a disadvantage. In fact, the sale data is reviewed and anomalies will be investigated and individual sales can be revoked if you are found to be gaming the sale!

Another thing that I do like a lot about the CoinList sales is the release schedule for the tokens. For this one, it is a 6 month cliff for 50% and linear after that. This prevents the quick influencer dumps that you see on the wild internet "crowdsales".

So, we come the price discussion. For most of the initial crowdsales that CoinList launches, you are looking at first public offerings with token prices in the order of 1-10 cents... sometimes higher, but generally that is the case. Here, we are looking at a discounted sale of a token that is already trading on the order of $1. So, a much less enticing option...

... and it will really matter if the price is set by time averaging over 15 days or 45 days (or something in between). If it is 15 days, then the base (non discounted) price will be on the order of $1. If it is longer, then the price will be significantly less... closer to 40 cents? This will make a big difference on the end returns.

On the other hand, you are locked for at least 6 months for 50% of your tokens and nearly a year for the rest. So, the difference between the two prices is more muted than if you were looking for a quick discount and flip.

So, a couple of interesting backers from the institutional VC space.

Personally, I'm a bit up in the air about the viability of Creator Coins... however, having a dedicated space for them might be a good thing if they did take off. I also thought very little about NFTs and collectible cards... but FLOW is doing quite nicely. In the end, these long-shot, long term bets aren't about what I think... but about what other people find useful and valuable. That's a hard thing to quantify, and I think many people are clouded by their own personal judgement on what is valuable... see crypto-twitter for a really good example of that!

So, as I said earlier, I'm more focused on the Casper and FEI launches in this coming couple of weeks. However, this particular RALLY does have some interesting points that I won't mind dumping a few FLOW tokens and just taking a long shot bet on this! I don't find it personally valuable, but who knows....

Handy Crypto Tools

Ledger Nano S/X: Keep your crypto safe and offline with the leading hardware wallet provider. Not your keys, not your crypto!
Binance: My first choice of centralised exchange, featuring a wide variety of crypto and savings products.
Kucoin: My second choice in exchanges, many tokens listed here that you can't get on Binance!
Coinbase: If you need a regulated and safe environment to trade, this is the first exchange for most newcomers!
Crypto.com: Mixed feelings, but they have the BEST looking VISA debit card in existence! Seriously, it is beautiful!
CoinList: Access to early investor and crowdsale of vetted and reserached projects.
Cointracking: Automated or manual tracking of crypto for accounting and taxation reports.