Bittrex, community, and the future of Tokes

Michael Wagner, CFA
Tokes Platform
Published in
4 min readJun 7, 2019

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On May 23rd, Bittrex announced the delisting of the TKS/BTC trading pair. This delisting is scheduled to go into effect today, June 7th. This came as much of a surprise to our team as it did to our community. While our human resources are limited, we take pride in the quality and quantity of output we produce, and our prospects for the future. Few projects in this emerging industry can boast the many achievements we have accomplished over the past 3 years. The fundamentals of the project are strong, and have never been fully reflected in the trading volume or price of the underlying token. While we have sincerely appreciated our relationship with Bittrex and their management team, the exchange listing in isolation provided little value to the token or our community. This is yet a minor setback in a long series of accomplishments.

What will happen with tokes?

The prospects of Tokes have never been better. We’ve dedicated our efforts over the years to building real value in the form of several software suites, including digital currency payment processing (POS, eCommerce, API), and supply chain visibility tools for regulatory compliance. Our software is on the precipice of adoption through countless opportunities we have been cultivating. One such example is in the case of Nevada’s Assembly Bill 466 (AB466 Overview — Nevada Legislature https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/80th2019/Bill/6890/Overview), for which we held influence over the bill language, and supported through the legislative process. This pilot program, alongside numerous deployment opportunities, are beginning to bear fruit.

Further, and more importantly, Tokes Platform as an entity has both the intention and ability to pursue its business objectives indefinitely. The whole team is fully focused, motivated, and excited about those goals. We will continue building fundamentals, adoption, and awareness, and the exchange listings will come. The project is full steam ahead.

Markets, community, and network effects

An aspect that can’t be overstated is the importance of community and network effects in the crypto-space. Bitcoin would never have achieved the degree of success it has without countless individuals promoting its utility and value. Impassioned followers led to greater awareness, greater adoption, and greater demand.

The Tokes community has always been small, yet enthusiastic. A majority of our followers have been around since inception in 2016. However, given the community size, many of our achievements have gone largely unnoticed. Trading volume was scant, and liquidity thin. While Bittrex was an asset because it created a marketplace, the complete lack of activity demonstrated how artificial that marketplace was for Tokes. It exemplifies the importance of a bigger community to generate visibility and trader interest.

Marketing was a lower priority for us while we concentrated on building. With much of the heavy lifting complete on development, it will become a larger focus in the coming months and years. We have never catered to market manipulation and hype, and we never will. But we are prepared to dedicate more resources to promoting all developed services, and undertaking greater business development (adoption) efforts. Event sponsorships like High Tech in Los Angeles (discussed in this newsletter), highlight the transition to more significant marketing efforts.

Expect to see a lot more coming from us soon.

The future

Exchange listings are easily bought. But simply buying a listing today would place us in the same precarious position we were in with Bittrex. No volume, no liquidity, and little chance for a successful market.

Taking into consideration all that was previously stated, there are some exciting changes in our pipeline. With ambitions of broadening our community through wider distribution, and stronger capitalization of the company, we are currently in discussions with several exchanges to execute concurrent IEOs.

Current promising conversations include:

  • Liquid
  • LAToken
  • P2PB2B
  • Livecoin

A successful IEO campaign will lead to many more stakeholders in the project and more people discussing and promoting tokes. This will reduce barriers when we present to potential clients and it will provide the capital necessary to invest in bigger marketing initiatives.

Finally, we are completing internal discussions around modifications to the underlying tokenomics of $tks. Of particular note, we are considering the following:

  • Token Supply: An increase of supply by 20x, to 1B units. However, all existing token holders will receive a distribution greater than their proportional share of that conversion. Numbers are not locked in, but will likely be 10–20% more. This means all wallets with a balance will receive 22x-24x the total number of tokes they currently possess.
  • Staking Mechanism: our team is developing a staking mechanism via Waves’ RIDE smart contract language that will allow for periodic distributions of tokes to wallets with a balance. Working title, Proof of Tokes (PoT).
  • Burn Mechanism: We fully anticipate charging fees for use of our software, with incentives to pay in tokes. Merchants making periodic payments will redirect a portion of the payments that would otherwise go to us to a permanent burn address. This burn will functionally reduce the total supply over time.

Conclusion

I can’t emphasize enough how encouraged I am about our future potential. Our team is incredibly talented, and motivated to succeed in a big way. We sincerely appreciate all of the support we have encountered from our community, and look forward to delivering exciting results in periods to follow.

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