In this post, we’ll take a look at Substratum’s CryptoPay partnerships with the National Christian Foundation and HurricAide. As a side note, I just want to say things get a bit weird in the end, so be sure to read the entire post.
Initial Thoughts on Substratum’s Amplify Exchange (AMPX) ICO
Substratum recently launched the website and released the whitepaper for its upcoming Amplify Exchange (AMPX) ICO. I’m in the midst of putting together a long-form analysis of why I think this is a money grab. In the meantime, here are a few initial thoughts after taking some time to go through and think about the token metrics of the AMPX ICO.
How to Display Cryptocurrency Prices in Google Sheets
A few days ago, I was using CryptoFinance to import cryptocurrency prices into Google Sheets. Unfortunately, the import function kept on timing out due to a CoinMarketCap API error. I suspect this has something to do with CMC’s recent move to a tiered API system which limits non-paying users to 6,000 calls per month. After a little research, I discovered the stock =GoogleFinance function supports major cryptocurrency pairs.
ICON Partners with SK-Planet to Build Blockchain Services
Earlier today, ICON Foundation revealed that they have signed an MOU with SK-Planet to “work together to create new customer values and business opportunities by linking ICON’s blockchain technology with Korea’s leading mobile services.” This news comes just four months after ICONLOOP’s announcement regarding implementation of its CHAIN ID authentication system into Samsung Pass. Together, these two developments suggest that ICON is absolutely dominating the blockchain mobile services niche in South Korea.
A Look Into Substratum’s 60 Million SUB Token Burn
Last September, Substratum revealed their proposed token burn strategy, which involved three separate token burns at key project milestones.
- September 24, 2017 — Initial 60 million SUB burn.
- October 4, 2017 — 60 million SUB burn following Coss.io listing.
- TBA — 60 million SUB burn following Bittrex listing.
SUB is an ERC-20 token, and there are two ways to burn such tokens.
- ERC-20 token contracts have an optional
.burn()function that can be used to decrease the number of tokens belonging to a specific address — in most cases, a developer reserve address. - ERC-20 tokens can be sent to an address with an unknown private key. This method is by far the most popular way to perform a token burn. Using this method, ERC-20 tokens are typically sent to the Ethereum zero address.
Substratum CEO Reveals AMPX ICO Can Be a Private Sale
Justin Tabb, CEO of Substratum:
Maybe we will just private sale it. We have enough support to do it.
My thanks to @hodler_krypto for sharing this screenshot from a Telegram channel with Substratum executives and community moderators.
Thoughts on Substratum Community Management
Over the past year, Substratum’s form of community management has been continuously criticized for being too aggressive and “ban-happy”. In addition to a number of long-time Substratum supporters, I was also recently banned for expressing concern about the upcoming AMPX ICO — Substratum’s second public fundraiser.
Substratum Crowdsale Wallet Activity & SUB-ETH Price Action on April 29 — May 2
Update (September 4, 2018): The day after this article was published and circulated, Justin Tabb tweeted about receiving email correspondence regarding a SIM swap investigation. If you choose to continue reading the article, please do so with this timely development in mind.
A few days ago, I wrote a piece detailing my suspicions about Substratum’s AMPX ICO. After the post hit #1 on the cryptocurrency subreddit*, it got over 50,000 page views and I received dozens of emails and messages from people around the world who shared my perspective.
A Substratum Update from Singapore
Justin Tabb, CEO of Substratum:
SubstratumNode, we announced, will reach its first production version before the end of 2018. So that’s very exciting guys. You know we don’t make predictions if they’re not true.
From the whitepaper — “Substratum will become a fully Open Sourced project upon our launch of version 1 at the end of 2017.”
Today is September 1, 2018 and the latest release is v0.4.0.
Substratum is Losing Vision & Focus
Substratum is currently trying to build a decentralized Internet, a payments processing platform, and a decentralized exchange. I think these goals are overly ambitious, but that’s just my opinion. Let’s get into it.
Disclaimer: Stop reading here if you’re a SUB bagholder. If you choose to continue reading, I am not responsible for hospitalization costs due to high blood pressure. You’ve been warned.