ICO Review: COV Covesting Platform for Asset Managers and Investors

Cryptocurrency market cap crossed 200 billion USD, which is more than market value of US based Citibank Reuters reported. This new record value was reached, as pioneer of cryptocurrency Bitcoin hit a record high of $7,500 USD. Although cryptocurrency has been around since 2009, 2017 is the year that ignited the cryptocurrency market. The sector is attracting more and more investment with no signs of slowing down. Since Bitcoin is trading at $7,500, it’s too late now for many small investors to invest in this currency. But that doesn’t mean that no opportunities exist for smaller investors. (Covesting)

There are plenty of other options available for investment, as there are over 1000 cryptocurrencies. Judging the right cryptocurrency at the right time is always a dilemma for majority of investors. It’s a volatile market, Bitcoin which is standing at $7500, was at $1000 in March this year, witnessing a eightfold increase in price. Be it a stock market or cryptocurrency trading, the dilemma for small and medium investor is that they are often at the losing end. It’s important to understand the dynamics of market, like when to buy and when not to panic when there is a sell off. However, most investors learn to trade by loosing capital in the process. The market can be an expensive teacher.

Problems for Cryptocurrency Investors

Cryptocurrency trading at the moment is taking place at different exchanges, all have their own rules and regulation. Investors usually don’t have much time to understand new rules because the rules can change with little or no warning.There are more than thousand cryptocurrencies trading in the market, choosing the right one is not an easy thing for every investor.
As cryptocurrency began to emerge, thousands of ICO’s were launched. Some of them gave a nice return to their investors but most of them after raising money were either not able to take off, abandoned by their founders or proved to be scam. Many critics believed that 90% of ICO’s will go bust and I agree. Having said that, there are many innovative ideas coming in ICO’s.

Problem for Digital Asset Managers

It’s difficult for digital asset manager to start their own personal fund, as it requires in depth technical knowledge, legal compliance, and capital. As a result, only few digital asset managers are able to build an influential reputation among cryptocurrency investors, whereas a majority of asset managers (with low profile reputation) are forced to look for investors in online forums, social networks, or among friends. Cryptocurrency is a new emerging market as compared to mature markets like Forex and Stock Markets, it will take some time before digital asset managers build a strong enough reputation necessary to attract investors.

Covesting – Where Investors meet Traders

Covesting is trying to revolutionized the investment industry by bringing together peer to peer asset management with cryptocurrency. It’s an easy to use platform that’s bridging the gap between professional traders and investors. It’s a win-win solution for both investors and asset manager, where asset manager can get his commission from profitable trading, while investor is assured that his investment is in good hands. Investors can follow up to 20 different professional traders at a time. Investors can see the history of performance of every asset manager and based on his performance investors can make a choice.

How Covesting works

Covesting working model has been kept simple, so that investors can easily understand and use it. Here is a summary of how Covesting works. Investor register at Covesting by filling a subscription form, he can then use COV, BTC or ETH to fund his account. After registering at Covesting, next thing is to choose trader of your choice. You can view profile of many successful Asset Managers and based on preferences an investor can select up to 20 traders. You can start following traders of your choice by clicking “subscribe”. You have to specify the percentage you want to allocate to the each model you choose. Your allocated percentage will be replicated automatically to every model you choose. That’s it. Now you sit back and see how your selected traders are performing. You can at any time leave a trader or choose a new one. Your are the boss of your investment and you have better control of your money.

In order to get a better assessment of Covesting vision, I reached out to Tim Voronin, COO of Covesting, to answer a couple of questions.

What inspired you to start Covesting?

“After working in investment banking for many years, we clearly identified the problem of many investors, which is the lack of knowledge for successful trading. Cryptocurrency trading provides enormous opportunities for profit and we want to provide novice investors a unique tool to participate by introducing a one of a kind peer2peer asset management platform. We are inspired by the success of our former employer – Saxo Bank; as well as a vision to make investment management better and more transparent.”

What are the challenges in the fintech industry of your start-up?

“We treat every challenge as a new opportunity to develop and become more knowledgeable. We have number of challenges that we are going through – such as ever-changing regulatory framework and competition, but we enjoy going through all of them and continuously becoming stronger.

How do you plan to scale the business?

“We are currently experiencing a huge transition from the initial idea of creating a copy-trading platform for cryptos, to a more global and scalable cryptocurrency project. We are launching a Crypto Intelligence portal which will become a one of a kind resource for knowledge sharing in the cryptocurrency space. This will include everything starting from video tutorials, a 101 on crypto-trading, webinars, educational materials, daily trading ideas provided by the top contributors and influential crypto traders, as well as a community forum. Apart from that, we will aggregate liquidity from multiple exchanges as soon as our ICO is finished (or maybe even earlier) and provide the tightest spreads and best liquidity possible for copy-trade executions. Based on this aggregated liquidity, we will build our own trading terminal and exchange to repeat the success of Saxo Bank in terms of a multi-exchange platform with a social component and maximum community involvement. Going forward, we aim to grow into the largest crypto trading community and one-stop platform for trading and asset management.”

Information on upcoming ICO

Covesting Token
Covesting Token (COV) is ERC20 token built on Ethereum blockchain that will be used within the Covesting platform.

Closing View Point

Cryptocurrency has a huge potential to grow in the future, with market cap of 200 billion USD and it is expected to cross 1 trillion USD barrier by year 2019. Every rising sector attracts investors from around the world, as was the case with sectors like oil and gas, stock exchange and gold. Cryptocurrency will also attract all sort of novice investors in this field. These investors will seek assistance of asset managers on how to invest in cryptocurrency. Covesting will be an ideal platform for such investors as well as for asset managers. Covesting is expecting to have over 5,000 active users and 50M USD of capital replicating trades from asset managers by end of year 2020. This user growth will create a strong demand for COV tokens, which in turn will increase its price. Personally, I think these are very conservative numbers. If management can deliver with the right partnerships, on boarding institutional accounts, and leveraged marketing, this could create an interesting opportunity. As a reminder, never invest more than 1% or 2% of your cryptocurrency portfolio in any ICO, no matter how good it sounds.

Covesting Website

Covesting White Paper

Disclosure: At the time of writing this article, I do not own a position in Covesting. I am not being paid or offered any incentives for writing this article. I am not an investment advisor. This is my personal opinion only.