Each day, more and more people are getting involved with cryptocurrencies, create blockchain-based projects, and choose to fund their projects via ICO (initial coin offering). About a week ago, I chanced upon a new project, Birdchain. It promises a revolution in the b2c SMS messaging market by recruiting unused SMS from every person's phone. Why, in particular, this project caught my eye? Probably because it has been in development for ten years by people with in-depth knowledge of this business.
More and more of our daily communication with friends and relatives move from SMS to Messenger, Skype, and Viber. Nevertheless, SMS messages remain widely used in the business world. Companies send messages when they want to inform the users about activity on their account, send a temporary password, 2FA confirmation code or notify about the latest promotions/discounts.
First of all, the SMS reach is staggering. Statistically, 90% of SMS are read within the first 3 minutes of receiving, when the email reaches only ~ 10-15%. Secondly, SMS offers a much better security. SMS is tied to a phone number, so in order to to see its content, users must hold in their hands a phone with a SIM card associated with that particular phone number inserted. E-mail, on the other hand, can be accessed from any PC from anywhere in the world.
Although at first glance, it seems like a meager amount, but imagine how many SMS is sent out by giants like Google, Uber or Amazon, and you'll see a different picture.
Birdchain offers a solution for companies to reduce the cost of SMS messages while sharing profits with people. Although practically everyone has an unlimited SMS plan, hardly anyone ever spends their "unlimited" SMS messages. Birdchain offers to spend the unused SMS messages as company messages, and that way earn some money. The only thing a user has to do is to download the Birdchain app. The rest will be done in the background by the app. According to Birdchain, the app owner, by employing SMS messages which otherwise would not have been used, will earn 30-300 euros a month.
In their White Paper, Birdchain declares that the global A2P SMS market is currently worth around $60 billion and each year grows by another 4-5%. Although the size of the market is staggering, in my opinion, the breakdown by region and explanation on which regions they are planning to enter first and last is lacking.
At the same time, the market growth rate is not particularly impressive; it can be said that the market has reached its peak and is currently stagnating. In the future, no growth of the market is expected, so it's unlikely that it will start to grow at a two-digit rate. The SMS technology itself is not new, and the question is how much longer it will last, and whether we will fully migrate to messengers.
Birdchain's service is b2b, so their customers are companies that want to send SMS messages. Companies find it difficult and time-consuming to sell their goods to these customers – especially if it's a service or an app.
Companies like Uber, Amazon, Airbnb, or Google do not purchase such services directly from any A2P SMS service providers; instead, they use auctions. Auctions are based on the principle of a company posting a request – via a platform – to send an X amount of SMS and is willing to pay 0.0X EUR per SMS. All A2P SMS vendors who participate in such a platform offer their prices.
A vendor offering the lowest price wins and the company uses the vendor's services to send text messages to its clients. What does this mean for Birdchain?
The companies don't have a close partnership with any A2P SMS service provider and what they care about most is low price, so Birdchain, with the lowest price possible on the market, will be able to collect and service all the SMS traffic of such companies. In my opinion, this is a huge advantage, since it makes it much easier to find customers.
In this case, like in any business, competitors can be divided into two categories: direct and indirect. All the currently active A2P SMS service providers could be considered direct competitors. As the market is old, and there are quite a few A2P companies in there to compete with it, it will certainly not be easy. There is also an almost identical project, SMSchain.org with a nearly identical business plan. The main difference is that on Birdchain, anyone with an app can send SMS, and on Smschain, only those who have the appropriate number of Smschain tokens in their account. This project is still at the stage of ICO.
Birdchain ICO starts in less than two weeks on 11/18/2017 and lasts until the 31st of December. It will aim to raise 86.000 ether (~ $25.8 million) by selling 4.6 million BIRD tokens. BIRDs are designed for ordering SMS messages. Companies that want to send SMS via the Birdchain platform will have to buy BIRD tokens through the exchange office or directly from the Birdchain site. All transactions will be made using BIRD. Although at first glance the amount they are trying to raise is staggering, let's keep in mind that it's a start-up that will become profitable at best in about three years.
Birdchain is also set to distribute as much as 46.000 ether (~ $13.8 million) worth of BIRD tokens to large companies in order to bring them to the platform.
As I mentioned, it was their team that drew me to this project. For about ten years, vertexsms.com has been doing precisely what Birdchain is determined to fight - expensive A2P SMS. Experience and contacts in this area are a huge plus, not to mention the fact that over the course of time, they learned to cooperate as well as received some knowledge from their mistakes.
Although at first glance, I thought that keeping the team intact is a huge plus, I am now starting to have doubts, as it seems that all employees will continue working on both – the existing project vertexsms.com and on Birdchain. The lack of advisers is another disadvantage, in my opinion. Typically, I look skeptically at big teams of advisers, because it seems like a marketing trick to attract more money through ICO. But in this case, I believe that collecting $26 million to launch a multinational company, in fact, requires at least a handful of influential advisors. There is, however, one blockchain specialist in the team.
I love the idea, and I believe that the team will be able to create a working prototype of the product. In my opinion, the main advantage of Birdchain is their excellent market knowledge and the plan to attract big companies to the platform. The market itself, though it looks enormous at $60 billion, is worrying because of the lack of significant growth potential in the future. The market is already very old and grows relatively slowly (4-5%), and the future of SMS messages is not entirely clear. Overall, the project itself and the ICO look strong, so I give it a 4/5.
