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N.B: The following Coin Report on Cashaa is community-selected. Cashaa placed 2nd in the recent poll; Bettex won; and NKN placed third. Last week, I published a report on Bettex, and NKN will also have a report written over the coming weeks.
Welcome to the fourteenth Coin Report. In today’s report, I will be assessing the fundamental and technical strengths and weaknesses of Cashaa. This will comprise of an analysis of a number of significant metrics, an evaluation of the project’s community and development and an overview of its price-history. The report will conclude with a grading out of 10. I hope you enjoy the read!
Introduction
Prior to researching this report, I had no idea what Cashaa was. In truth, after last week’s community-selected Coin Report on Bettex, I was a little worried that this one might follow suit in the mediocrity of many aspects of the project; having completed my research, I’m happy to say that I was wrong, but we’ll come to all of that a little later…
Unlike the majority of the reports I publish, this one is focused on an ERC-20 token that was funded via ICO. The only other Coin Report featuring an ICO was the one written on Covesting. As such, I will reference it on occasion to provide more accurate comparisons and evaluations.
I hope this report will prove objective where it must be and fair on more subjective matters. For those who’d like to learn a little more about Cashaa prior to reading this report, here are some primary links:
Fundamental
General:
Name: Cashaa
Ticker: CAS
Algorithm: ERC-20
Sector: Banking Services Platform
Exchanges: HitBTC, TopBTC, Exrates & IDEX
Launch Overview
Cashaa was incorporated as a company in 2016 in London, but raised funds via ICO (and thus created its token) in November 2017. CAS – Cashaa’s native token – was created as an ERC-20 token, with a maximum supply of 1bn. Of these, 365mn CAS were locked for development, whilst the remainder were available for sale. The ICO raised $18.3mn, with an initial cost of $0.10 per CAS (prior to bonuses), with 542mn CAS distributed. The company refunded over $14mn of funds due to strict KYC procedures.
Price-History Overview
Cashaa has around 12 months of available price-history, setting an all-time high against BTC ~2000 satoshis in February 2018. It also hit it s all-time high against the Dollar around the same time at $0.20. Since these highs, CAS has followed the trajectory of the overall market in its decline, with a short bull cycle occuring in the summer of 2018; the price of the token has, however, continued to bleed. We’ll get into the nitty-gritty details of this in the Technical section.
Project Overview
As a project, Cashaa has a clear identity and path, seeking to become a leading banking services platform that bridges the current gap between the traditional financial system and the use of cryptocurrencies.
Though admirable and undoubtedly one of value, the goal is somewhat broad and highly competitive. We shall see how Cashaa is faring soon enough…
Metric Analysis:
Below are listed a number of important metrics, all of which are accurate as of 26th February 2019. For anyone reading this who has yet to read a Coin Report, it might be worth reading this section of the first report, where any potentially unfamiliar terms are explained. For any terms or metrics specific to this post, I will provide explanations besides the figures.
Metrics:
General:
Price: $0.007 (175 satoshis)
Exchange Volume: $29,519
Circulating Supply: 606,355,312 CAS
Total Supply: 606,355,312 CAS
Maximum Supply: 1,000,000,000 CAS
% of Max. Supply Minted: 60.64
Network Value: $4.1mn (1061.12 BTC)
Network Value at Max. Supply: $6.762mn
Category: Midcap
Exchange Volume-to-Network Value: 0.72%
Average Price (30-Day): $0.008
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day): $200,504
Average Network Value (30-Day): $4.978mn
Average Exchange Volume (30-Day)-to-Network Value: 4.03%
Volatility* (30-Day): -0.03579
Average Daily On-Chain Transactions (30-Day): 14.07
Average Daily Transactional Value** (30-Day): $19,729 (source)
NVT*** (30-Day): 207.82
% Price Change USD (30-Day): -2.4%
% Price Change USD (1-Year): -94.6%
USD All-Time High: $0.20
% From USD All-Time High: -97%
Premine % of Max. Supply: N/A
Premine Location: N/A
Liquidity (calculated as the sum of BTC in the buy-side with 10% of current price across all exchanges): 0.781 BTC
Liquidity-to-Network Value %: 0.07%
Amount Available on Exchanges: 8,677,174 CAS
% of Circulating Supply Available on Exchanges: 1.43%
*Volatility is calculated by taking the average price over the given time-period, calculating the difference between it and the highest price and it and the lowest price over that same time-period, and multiplying those figures together. The closer to 0, the less volatility during that period, and vice-versa. Read this for more on volatility.
**Transactional Value in $ is calculated by taking the daily transactional value in CAS and multiplying it by price.
***NVT is calculated by dividing the Network Value by the Average Daily Transactional Value. See here for more on NVT.
Supply Emission & Inflation:
Block Reward Schedule: Zero inflation, as Cashaa was created as an ERC-20 token with an ICO.
Average Block Time: N/A
Current Block Height: N/A
Annual Supply Emission: N/A
Annual Inflation Rate: N/A
Circulating Supply in 365 Days: N/A
Distribution:
Address Count: 12,373
Supply Held By Top 10 Addresses: 41.34%
Supply Held By Top 20 Addresses: 55.46%
Supply Held By Top 100 Addresses: 73.7%
Inactive Address Count in Top 20 (30 Days of No Activity): 18
Analysis:
Unlike the majority of these reports, Cashaa does not have quite the same barrage of metrics to evaluate, given its ERC-20/ICO status. Despite this, there are several important points to highlight; the first of these being the metrics related to transactions:
As CAS is a utility token, it is important to determine the extent to which it is currently being utilised. Using the Etherscan explorer, I found that Cashaa averaged ~14 daily on-chain transactions over the past 30 days. Whilst this is a fairly low number of transactions, it did equate to around $20,000 of on-chain transactional value, giving CAS a NVT of 207.82; around 75% greater than the NVT of Bitcoin at present. Though not necessarily indicative of undervaluation, this is not particularly high, as utility tokens go.
For the rest of this section, I’ll run through the remaining General metrics, followed by Supply Emission & Inflation and finally Distribution.
First up, let’s take a look at Volatility, which I calculated to be -0.03579. This is the second-lowest degree of volatility of the the coins I have calculated it for, suggesting that we may be in an accumulation range; something that can only be confirmed by looking at the rich-list and the chart.
Next, let us take a look at the supply-and-demand-related metrics:
On the demand-side, Cashaa scores rather poorly, with Liquidity of 0.781 BTC, equating to 0.07% of its Network Value. This is the lowest figure for liquidity of all coins previously reported on, suggesting that overall demand at current prices is low.
On the supply-side, there is ~8.7mn CAS available for purchase on exchanges, equating to 1.43% of the circulating supply. This places CAS in the middle of the pack, relative to other coins that this has been calculated for; that said, all of the coins with less supply available on exchanges (Trittium, Altbet and Bulwark) operate with masternodes, providing reward incentives for holders – Cashaa does not.
Now, let us look at the metrics related to price:
Cashaa’s all-time high of $0.20 means that it is currently trading at a ~97% discount, suggesting that there is potentially a low-risk, high-reward opportunity here if the fundamentals and technicals give us a reason to buy.
What about volume, however?
Well, Cashaa experienced $29,519 of Exchange Volume over the past 24 hours and a whopping $200,504 on average daily for the past 30 days. This gives CAS an EVNV of 0.72% and an Average EVNV of 4.03%. Whilst the former is nothing noteworthy, the latter is the third-highest of any coin previously reported on; and certainly indicative of interest at current prices, conflicting with the Liquidity metric.
Now, as Cashaa is an ERC-20 token that was funded via ICO, there is zero inflation. This means there are no headwinds to price growth via daily supply emission; the caveat to this is that 365mn CAS are locked, and when they come into circulation, they will provide some degree of headwinds, though this is guaranteed to be less than 35% inflation.
To take the worst possible case for headwinds to price growth, let us assume all 365mn CAS come into circulation over the next 12 months (this is not the case, as these tokens are released in predetermined percentages at various times). 365mn CAS at current prices is 638.75 BTC, or ~$2.46mn, which equates to 1.75 BTC of average daily supply emission ($6,762). Cashaa’s Exchange Volume and Average Exchange Volume would cover this supply emission by 4.37x and 29.65x, respectively. This indicates that there is plenty of volume to sustain current prices. However, there is not enough Liqudity, as Cashaa’s buy support of 0.78 BTC within 10% of current prices is less than half of the possible average daily supply emission. I stress that this is the worst possible case, and does not follow the release schedule detailed in the Cashaa whitepaper.
To conclude this section, let us take a look at Distribution:
The top 10 richest addresses control 41.34% of the supply; the top 20 control 55.46%; and the top 100 control 73.7%. This is the least decentralised supply amongst the top 100 addresses of any coin previously reported on.
Of the top 20 addresses, 18 are inactive across the past 30 days. Of the remaining 2 addresses, the 8th-richest has added 21mn CAS this past month, and the 18th-richest has added 9mn this past month. The majority, in conclusion, are seemingly comfortable with their positions. Importantly, there is zero distribution occuring amongst the largest holders at current prices.
And that concludes this section on Metric Analysis. Onto the Cashaa Community:
Community:
There are two primary aspects of community analysis: social media presence and Bitcointalk threads. I’ll begin with the former before moving on to the latter.
Social Media:
Concerning social media presence, there are four main platforms to examine: Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and Discord.
Cashaa is present on all platforms except Discord. To begin, let’s look at the various social metrics that I calculated from the Cashaa Twitter and Facebook accounts:
Twitter Followers: 10,018
Tweets: 1169
Average Twitter Engagement: 0.18%
Facebook Likes: 15,979
Facebook Posts (30-Day): 27
Average Facebook Engagement: 0.05%
As usual, I will be using RivalIQ‘s social benchmark report for evaluation purposes.
Twitter:
Whilst the Cashaa Twitter account does boast a moderately-sized audience, it does not experience the engagement expected of Twitter accounts in the cryptosphere. That said, in RivalIQ’s report, we find that the average Twitter engagement rate across all industries is 0.046%, which means that Cashaa’s engagement rate is currently 3.91x greater. Further, the average engagement rate for the Media industry (the most relevant in the report) is 0.013%, thus Cashaa’s is 13.85x greater. However, its engagement rate relative to other cryptocurrencies is quite poor, coming joint second-bottom with GeoCoin of all coins reported on.
Facebook:
Facebook, unlike for many cryptocurrencies, is Cashaa’s largest audience, with close to 16,000 likes. They also commit to regular updates, with 27 posts in the past month. However, once again, it is the engagement that lets them down, with a 0.05% average engagement rate over the past 30 days. This is suggestive of low levels of active community interest at present, despite the large followings on social platforms…
Cashaa’s average Facebook engagement rate is also lower than the average across all industries of 0.16%, and lower than the Media industry average of 0.08%. Not particularly encouraging.
Telegram:
The Cashaa Telegram, however, is very much engaged, with over 100 individuals involved in the constant discussion that takes place, amongst a group of 6407 members. This is undoubtedly the hub of the Cashaa community; the downside of this not being on Discord is that there is a barrage of messages to work through to figure out anything about the project, unlike the clearly delineated and structured channels in a Discord group. That said, the pinned message contains all relevant links and some concise points about the project itself.
As for the community, there does seem to be an overwhelming focus on the price of the token, perhaps because it is ~94% from its ICO price. There is some degree of PR material and conference recordings that are pushed out, including the recent exhibition at Blockchain Summit India. Regarding issues, one member pointed out that there is an issue with IBAN being provided for Business account holders only on the Cashaa platform, rather than Personal account holders – we shall dig into this a little later…
Users are generally happy with support provided by the team; with wallet functionality; and with the wbesite itself. As I say, much of the conversation and thus the issues stem from the price of the token.
In the group, I did discover that the Cashaa CEO, Kumar Gaurav, is also Chairman of Auxesis Group; one of the largest blockchain companies in India. I also found out about an exchange listing on Next. In general, however, it was rather difficult to learn about the project in this social channel, as there is very little discussion on the components of the project.
Importantly, however, and regarding the Blockchain Summit, I did find out that Auxledger (created by Auxesis) have up to 60m active users in India, and that Cashaa will be moving its token to Auxledger’s network from Ethereum.
There is also an official Cashaa channel, with 1741 member, which
pushes out regular updates and PR material.
BitcoinTalk:
The Cashaa BitcoinTalk thread was created on October 15th, 2017, and has since generated 546 posts spanning 28 pages in 499 days. This equates to 1.09 post per day, on average. However, in the past 90 days, the thread has had 6 posts, giving an average of 0.066 posts per day.
Very much inactive.
Development:
For the following Development analysis, I will be evaluating project leadership, the website, the roadmap, the whitepaper and the wallets:
Project Leadership:
There are 20+ team members listed on the website and 12 advisors.
The CEO, Kumar Gaurav, is also the Chairman of Auxesis Group, as previously mentioned. Overall, the team has a lot of cumulative experience in development, management and marketing, which is great to see. Amongst the advisors, Bernard Lietaer, John Henry Clippinger and Tim Campbell are of note, with much of the board having senior experience in companies/environments like Visa and MIT. Overall, very impressed with the strength, depth and balance of the team and board.
Website:
The website is professional, full of relevant information and well-designed. There are details given on the various membership plans. The UI/UX is smooth and clean, with all social links available, as well as a regularly updated Medium blog.
I also signed up for the platform to test it out and found that it was certainly functioning and easy-to-use. The dashboard featured the multicurrency wallet. Overall, I was just happy to see a working product after an ICO.
Roadmap:
The full history of Cashaa is available from 2016 at the click of a button, with an accessible, sleek roadmap design. Further info links are provided, and the content is detailed and concise. The roadmap itself is segregated by
month with progress visible. I’ll refrain from going through the whole roadmap, as it is extensive, but I’ve provided brief snippets below:
Cashaa Limited was founded in London in June 2016.
Jan/Feb 2018: KYC/AML policy development; won Technology
Provider of the Year award at Small Business Awards in New Delhi.
March/Apr 2018: Regulatory compliance finalised; 8507 participants
able to buy CAS tokens in ICO, with remaining participants refunded $14.37m; token audit and distribution; 365m CAS locked with 3-year
vesting period; development of banking functionality; team grew to 28
including staff from HSBC, Barclays etc.
May/June 18: OCT exchange live; FCA regulation underway; African Payment Alliance partners Cashaa with 40 African countries via financial services companies; First Business account users onboarded (Populous World & BoonTech); Bonus tokens distributed to holders (total 192m CAS available over multiple instalments); TechCrunch nomination for Hottest Crypto Finance Project.
July/Aug 2018: Cashaa Compliance API testing; e-KYC for business
customers; wallet functionality development; TopBTC listing.
Sep/Oct 18: Invited to BBVA HQ to present their platform.
Nov/Dec 18: Membership plan details released; Compliant Multisig cryptocurrency wallet goes live; CAS STAKE begins; Business customer onboarding in the UK & EU.
Jan-Mar 2019: All of these are to be completed: Functionality to buy cryptocurrencies with card payments; Business API; rebranding of website + marketing campaign; Asia Business customer onboarding; Phase 1 business account issuance; Personal account onboarding.
Overall, I am once again impressed not only by the presentation of the roadmap but particularly by its content; plenty to be excited about and plenty that has been accomplished.
Whitepaper:
https://cashaa-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/cashaa/pdf/cashaa_wp_v2.pdf
The document is 40 pages long, which seems rather excessive. That said, it is very professional in its format.
The Executive Summary focuses on the problems of traditional banking and those that it leaves in the dark – cryptocurrencies can solve said problems but are struggling to at present “due to poor usability, non consumer-centric approach and improper legal implementation.”
Vision and Mission: Cashaa’s focus is on providing financial services to businesses and individuals.
Problem: Some of the copy here is broken and in need of proof-reading. The section discusses how traditional banking does not have the infrastructure or understanding of digital assets required and relies on its old infrastructure: there is a lack of AML/Compliance API for cryptocurrencies; and for businesses/individuals involved in crypto, there are no banking services available; plus the gateways between fiat and cryptocurrencies are still being built.
Solution: Cashaa’s solution to the aforementioned problem is a single account for old and new money systems. One thing I didn’t like here is: “World needs Cashaa solution!!” – this just reads as unprofessional and is written in broken English. The tagline is “Global Multi Currency Crypto Friendly Banking Platform.”
Products: Cashaa’s products are a single-sign-in platform and mobile app that will provide services like IBAN, a multicurrency wallet, corporate and personal debit cards, and CAS-Invest. Each account with Cashaa will be assigned an IBAN but will be functional for multiple currencies. CAS Tokens will be “used and/or earned”: owning CAS allows customers to get a free IBAN account; increase account limits; enable free local/international
transfers; and free foreign exchange. There are five plans: World Traveller; Premier; Smart Value; Basic; Blue (each attributed to holders of 1mn CAS, 500k CAS, 50k CAS, 25k CAS and 0 CAS, respectively).
There is also a 3-key multi-signature wallet with inbuilt AML. The aim of this will be to increase transactional ease and convertibility. Plus, CAS tokens will reduce transaction fees and allow fee-free reversals.
About Cashaa: The company was founded in 2016, and is based in London, with other offices in Estonia and Mumbai. There is 200+ years of cumulative experience amongst the team.
Token: CAS, the token, was launched with a 1bn maximum supply, with 365mn locked for the team and development. 542mn CAS were distributed in the ICO, at a cost of $0.10 per token, prior to any bonuses. This works out at 244 satoshis, or 6632 ethtoshis.
Overall, the whitepaper is very useful, informative and well-written but should be shorter; there is lots of repetition.
Wallets:
As an ERC-20 token, Cashaa can be stored on all ERC-20-enabled Ethereum wallets.
Technical
Whilst Cashaa made its all-time high against Bitcoin at the very beginning of its price-history, it also experienced a mini cycle in the summer of 2018, where the cyclical high of 1200 satoshis was formed. Since then, price has bled along with the rest of the market, with a bottom eventually being found at 120 satoshis. From this point in September 2018, Cashaa has experienced continually rising volume despite price being range-bound between 120 satoshis and 280 satoshis for the vast majority of the past 5 months.
Regarding risk-reward, entries here would have ~25-30% of downside risk, with soft stops placed in case of a Daily close below 120 satoshis. An upside target of the recent cyclical high at 1200 satoshis gives a potential reward of ~680%. This gives a whopping reward:risk of 22:1. Of course, with price making lower highs even within this range, there is a significant chance that the low at 120 satoshis does not hold. Conservative traders could await a breakout on volume before entering a position.
Conclusion
This report is now approaching 4,000 words, and it is time to draw it to a close.
My final grading for Cashaa is 8 out of 10.
Lastly, here is a link to a Google Sheets file with any significant data from previous reports compiled for cross-comparative purposes. I will keep this updated as I continue to write these reports.
I hope this report has proved insightful and that you’ve enjoyed the read! Please do feel free to leave any questions in the Comments, and I’ll answer them as best I can.
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What’s it do? It looks like it wants to be BTC with no practical use other than faster tx times and a controlled inflation mechanism?Either of which are counterintuitive to long term growth of a crypto. Alot of the hash rate on the ethereum chain will be used for stable coin (fiat) payments making this even less viable. A controlled inflation mechanism would work properly if any exchanges properly reported the amount of crypto they held but zero sum querying will show it doesn’t matter initially how much you take out of circulation etc, it’s the public perception of scarcity that actually determines the value of any given crypto as a metric for quantifying value.
Hey Nik
Thanks for your report on Cashaa, appreciate you time and effort to bring in extensive and detailed report. For more insight, I would request you to get in touch with Kumar Gaurav who is a great guy. One more interesting point you missed out is athat the 4th biggest Hungarian MKB bank wanted to invest in Cashaa and Kumar Guarav has reject yhe offer and has decided to be with the community.
Regards
Chetz