This document will discuss the value of Sweetcoin (where does it come from, how to calculate it, what are the main drivers of value) and also address several questions raised by the crypto-community, such as: ‘is there a lockup for founders?’; ‘why are there 6 stages of the token release?’;’ why are the tokens more and more expensive at each stage?’; ‘isn’t SWC too expensive compared to other ICOs?’, or ‘is pump-and-dump possible with SWC?’.

We strongly suggest reading the whitepapers (or at least the first one) and the Crowdsale Paper before reading this article.

Nothing in this article is meant to be advice or a recommendation to purchase SWC. The purpose of this article is to explain how Sweetcoin works, how its value should be analyzed and look at different growth scenarios affecting its intrinsic value. Our desire is to address the misunderstandings and misstatements in social media about the economics of Sweetcoin and Sweetbridge in general.

Readers should remember that any token project is high risk and should be thoughtfully considered before buying — most will fail.

If you are a crypto investor who enjoys buying tokens and holding them, then you need to understand Sweetcoin is a very different kind of token. It is a discount token. This means its intrinsic value lies in the discounts it will provide you or others, not in speculative value.

Executive Summary

Sweetbridge is a blockchain-based protocol stack for global commerce and supply chains. Simply stated, it is creating a protocol stack that works in tandem to solve basic problems in commercial activity that can now be done without intermediaries and without external validation as a result of the blockchain.

The cornerstone of the Sweetbridge ecosystem is a discount token called Sweetcoin (SWC). SWC is unlike any other token in the market today.

This is because Sweetcoin has a calculable intrinsic value.

Sweetcoin’s value comes directly from its ability to grant monthly discounts that grow as the revenue in the Sweetbridge network grows. This model demonstrates that the crowdsale prices of SWC are likely to be lower than the minimum 2 year intrinsic value to a member that uses the token for discounts.

Unlike most blockchain tokens, which only have a resale value based on investor speculation, there are three values for SWC.

The cumulative discounts on products and services received when users lock the token in their Sweetbridge wallet

The resale value of the token to another user who wants to receive discounts

The market’s view of the speculative value of SWC from future network growth

Reasonable quarterly growth rates over time in the Sweetbridge network produce significant increases in the intrinsic discount value of SWC because its discount value increases whenever the network grows. Like Bitcoin, Sweetbridge allows independent nodes in its network to release (like mining) SWC when they grow the revenue in the network. Therefore, both users and nodes have an incentive to grow the network.

We believe the long term fundamental economics of SWC are superior to the vast majority of tokens in the market today. Since every individual, organization and government could benefit from using at least some of the Sweetbridge liquidity and settlement protocols, the future revenue of the Sweetbridge network could be significant. Sweetbridge is relying on the same economic process that causes miners to invest billions in Bitcoin and Ether networks. If network participants see the incentives, adopt the protocols, and grow the decentralized network through increased commercial activity, the discount value of Sweetcoin could rise through similar economic dynamics. The key is whether the community adopts the protocols and uses them to drive discount value growth.

What is Sweetbridge?

Sweetbridge is “A blockchain-based protocol stack for global commerce and supply chains”¹. It is an operating system for commerce that provides unlimited liquidity for asset backed loans. It is designed to be a platform for development of real commercial applications and services much as Ethereum is a platform for developing smart contracts. Sweetbridge is creating the new tools for commerce that will make these interactions simpler, fairer and less expensive for everyone.

This might sound technical and even overwhelming, but Sweetbridge is simply creating a set of technologies² that work together to solve basic problems in commercial activity that can now be done without intermediaries and without external validation as a result of the blockchain. Sweetbridge’s founding team has some ideas as to how people might use those technological tools, but is releasing the tools into the open source community, and expects its users to use the tools for even more exciting and original use cases.

The problems in commercial activity are solved with two core technologies. First is a common identity protocol and KYC³ service that ensures entities are who they claim to be, and second is a secure journal protocol that has smart contracts that manage the legal title for assets and liability agreements. These two core technologies and services work together to enable a global accounting system that links the accounting state, the legal state of assets and the settlement state to one system that can never be out of alignment.

By combining these three separate record keeping systems into one we reduce a (n2-n)*p problem⁴, requiring a minimum of 12 comparisons to validate all states between just two parties, to a p problem or 2 comparisons, at least a sixfold reduction of effort and risk.

The Sweetbridge protocol stack sits on top of these two core technologies and services. The protocol stack consists of 5 layers (think of them as 5 services, or functions): liquidity, settlement, accounting, resource sharing and optimization. It seems like a very ambitious project until we recognize that the 5 layers of the protocol stack are simply use cases enabled by the two core services. Sweetbridge is not planning on creating everything itself. Instead, it provides a reward system for others to build businesses and technologies on top of its protocols.

Sweetcoin uses a variation on the same cryptoeconomics that Bitcoin used to create an economic game that mines for revenue growth instead of mining for mathematical consensus.

The scale of global commerce and supply chains is enormous: some $54T, or ⅔ of the world’s GDP. Creating a solution that is truly transformative is a monumental task and can’t happen all at once. Sweetbridge decided to start with deploying the liquidity protocol and supporting products, as this is solving two of the biggest problems in the world today, the cost of liquidity and the lack of capital.

The liquidity protocol is described and explained in detail in the whitepapers. But for this article, we can say that it’s similar to a fully decentralized, global, peer-to-peer credit union. Also, it is intended to be fully compliant with laws, native to the internet and crypto community, economically sound, and available to any individual adult, duly registered company, or government in the world. If you still think that Sweetbridge is a niche project, you should read this paragraph again.

What is Sweetcoin?

Sweetcoin is a discount token. It is unlike any token on the market today. Technically, it is not a utility token, you don’t spend it nor do you need it to use the products and services available on the network. Sweetcoin is a loyalty and rewards system that provides monthly discounts to users who activate it by locking the token in their Sweetbridge wallet for a minimum of a month at a time. The more Sweetcoin a user holds the greater their monthly discount. Every month the token remains locked in your wallet you receive a discount per token. These discounts grow as the network grows and that incentivizes users to grow and use the network.

These discounts can be used when buying any good or service through the Sweetbridge wallet to eliminate or reduce fees. This includes fees for interest, exchange fees and fees for products and services from participating partners, etc. Sweetbridge hopes that the discount protocol will incentivize thousands of partners to offer Sweetcoin holders discounts. These discounts are like a combination of credit card cashback, discount providers and airline miles all combined, but with cashback as high as 100% if you have enough Sweetcoin.

Like Bitcoin or Ether, Sweetcoin is released slowly over time and has a maximum number that can ever be released. But Sweetcoin is not released based on solving mathematical puzzles. Sweetcoin is released based on growing revenue within the Sweetbridge network.

When a Sweetbridge node (an independent Sweetbridge Financial Services entity) increases the revenue of the whole network, that node gets to sell a new Sweetcoin. Anyone can start or become a Sweetbridge Financial Services entity, provided they agree to a common charter and set of economic rules. Coins are released at a rate that is never more than 25% of the network growth rate. This means that like Bitcoin or Ether it gets harder to mine (earn) a new Sweetcoin over time.

Each Sweetcoin grants a specific amount of discount each month. For the first 12 months, each Sweetcoin will have a minimum discount value of $0.07/SWC per month. As the platform develops and grows, the value of the discount per coin increases and decreases, depending on the total amount of fees generated by the platform. All the activated SWC tokens will receive the cumulative discounts equal to 50%⁵ of the Sweetbridge network’s total fees, distributed evenly through all the activated coins.

Assuming 20M SWC activated and $100M of total fees in the system, the discount per token equals 50%*$100M/20M SWC = $2.50/SWC. This mean that the more business the protocol generates, the higher the discount per SWC.

Sweetcoin is designed to drive the same level of investment as Bitcoin did for mining.

But instead of billions of dollars per month being spent on computer hardware and electricity, Sweetcoin is designed to incentivize billions of dollars being spent on consulting, sales, advertising, marketing, and business development by individual nodes to grow the network.

Intrinsic versus speculative value

Unlike the vast majority of cryptocurrencies and tokens in the market today, Sweetcoin has an intrinsic value. Intrinsic value means it has a value that is built into the design of the cryptocurrency or token system. For example, tokens that can be exchanged for a commodity like gold have an intrinsic value– the value of the gold.

Most intrinsic values are produced by linking the value of a token to something else, but in the case of Sweetcoin the intrinsic value comes from its ability to reduce future expense via a discount.

Potential size of network

Every entity on earth could benefit from the Sweetbridge protocols. The Sweetbridge protocols are designed to reduce risk, lower cost and simplify borrowing while increasing the interest people can earn on money that is not needed. Sweetbridge is also creating a new class of financial asset — discounts. Trillions are spent on interest each year — worldwide debt is over $164 trillion, more than 225 percent of global GDP according to the IMF — so the potential buyers of discounts on interest alone is enormous. However, Sweetcoin can be used to discount the Sweetbridge fees for any product or service in the Sweetbridge network.

Therefore, the Sweetbridge network has the potential to generate more real-world economic activity than any token-based project in existence today. It is because of the potential size of the market that SWC starts off with a price above $3.00. However, to protect the buyers of Sweetcoin the network must grow before more tokens can be released. That is why new tokens only get released when the network grows.

Where does the value of Sweetcoin come from?

The intrinsic, real value of SWC comes directly from the savings it can generate for the users, as explained above. A discount on a service you already use is an avoided cost and contributes to positive cash flow. A good analogy would be if you install solar panels on your roof and use less or zero grid electricity, you have lower or zero electricity bills. Avoided costs or lower bills don’t carry any counterparty risk. Unlike investing in a company or property and collecting dividends or rent, avoiding costs is like you are paying yourself. This is why discounts create cash flows with a very low risk profile when compared to other tokens.

How to calculate it?

Let’s discuss the following scenario:

You buy one Sweetcoin and hold it for 5 years.

Then you sell it to another user.

There are 3 aspects of the value created by SWC to consider:

Realized Value: The value of actual discounts enjoyed while using the network over those five years.

2. Resale Value: The price someone will pay after five years for the coin, based on the fact it can generate savings for them.

A good analogy for Sweetcoin would be commercial property. It generated rent income for the owner but can be also sold to someone else because it continues to generate income.

These 2 aspects constitute the intrinsic, utility value of Sweetcoin and are all generated by the fact it can generate positive cash flow for the holders, who activate their coins in the system.

3. Speculative value: The difference between the utility value (1 and 2 defined above) and the market price. If the SWC is traded at a price higher than the utility value, the speculative value is positive. If it’s traded below the utility value, it’s negative.

Importantly, we must recognize that speculative value is part of the price of nearly anything with a market and a long-term value. In this paper, we include speculative value only to demonstrate its relative insignificance compared to the intrinsic value of Sweetcoin.

Growth rate

The discount value generated by each Sweetcoin is directly driven by the amount of business conducted on the platform. Therefore, the growth rate of the network is the key variable determining the value of the token.

There will be several growth rate scenarios analysed here. For each scenario, a quarterly discount value per SWC will be calculated. During the Sweetbridge Crowdsale there will be 15.7M SWC offered to the public. The remaining 44.7M SWC will be offered to the public depending on the growth of the network. A 4% growth of the activity allows for 1% growth of the SWC supply⁶.

The following quarterly growth scenarios have been analysed: 0%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, and 50%. This means the growth is exponential. It’s slow in the beginning and very rapid at the end. Also, please note, that 50% quarterly growth would mean that the business activity of the platform more than doubles every 2 quarters.

The value of the quarterly discount per SWC for different growth rates is illustrated below.

Due to the fact that the growth ratio is exponential, the above linear scale chart is dominated by the curve representing the highest growth rate. Using a log scale is more useful, as presented below.

After 20 quarters (5 years) a quarterly discount per SWC is below $1 for the growth rates between 0% and 10%. It’s above $10 for the rates over 30%, and above $125, for the growth rate over 50% per quarter.

As a comparison, additionally a ‘logistic curve’ or ‘s-curve’ growth scenario has been included. The logistic function was “studied… in relation to population growth. The initial stage of growth is approximately exponential; then, as saturation begins, the growth slows, and at maturity, growth stops.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function ]. Network growth and new product adoption often follow the logistic function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations.

The S curve for the calculations here has been chosen arbitrarily, only as a comparison, starting with the assumption of achieving a similar annual growth rate (35%) as the 10% quarterly growth rate. In the 40th quarter, the amount of discount per SWC equals approx $3.500, similar to the 37% exponential growth. This is illustrated below.

Realized Value

The Realized Value is calculated as the sum of all the discounts generated by 1SWC. Naturally, the longer the token is activated (5 years vs 1 year), the greater the cumulative discount is.

The Realized Value for different growth rates is shown below, on a log scale.

The difference between the exponential growth and the s-curve growth can be observed on the following chart, using a linear scale.

It is very clear now that the longer the token is activated the more important the growth factor is.

Future Value

Extrapolating the Realized Value forward in time we can calculate what is the value of future discounts. For each year 0 to 5 a Net Present Value (NPV) of the next 5 years (year 1 to year 5, year 2 to year 6, and so on) of discounts can be calculated. In order to bring a future value to present it must be discounted. This results from the fact that the same amount of money received today is worth more than received in 20 years. Every future value has to be discounted, divided by a number that reflects things like the risks involved in the project, cost of capital or cost of lost opportunity (buying SWC instead of investing in a house flipping project). For the purpose of this analysis we’ll be using a discount rate of 25%, which is more or less something venture capital funds would use when accessing their potential investments.

Here is the future value illustrated on a log scale:

And another chart, with a linear scale to illustrate the s-curve growth:

Resale Value

In our analysis the resale value will be calculated assuming the Sweetcoin is sold in 5 years from each point in time (year 5 for year 0, year 6 for year 1, and so on). The resale price is calculated taking into account the perpetual character of the discounts generated (tokens never expire or depreciate). To calculate this price, we can use an analogy to commercial property, where the price equals the annual income divided by the expected rate of return. We’ll use the same 25% discount rate as used for the Future Value above.

The Resale Value follows a similar pattern to the Future Value, and it is similar in discounting future revenues. Not for the immediate five years, but for all the years after year 5.

Total Utility Value

The total intrinsic or utility value is the sum total of all the 3 aspects calculated above. Here is how it looks each year for different growth rates.

We can interpret Year 0 as the point in time when the liquidity protocol is launched. There are no accumulated discounts yet, so the Realized Value is zero (see the Realized Value chart above). All the Utility Value in year 0 comes from discounting future gains: directly, during the immediate 5 years of using the platform, and indirectly, by selling the coin at the end of year 5.

If the SWC is held over the 5-year period after the platform launch (years 1 to 5), users benefit from all the Realized Value and the discounted future gains after year 5. The future gains are exponentially higher in years 6 to 10, due to the exponential network growth.

It is clear that the longer the Sweetcoin is activated and used the more valuable it is.

It’s interesting to observe what happens when the platform growth follows the S-curve. The value of SWC is much higher compared to the exponential growth path, that generates the same quarterly discount per coin in year 10. Please compare the 37% growth curve and the S-curve below.

Speculative Value

Let’s define speculative value as a premium paid today for the possibility of greater resale value in 5 years based on more optimistic or pessimistic growth assumptions. The utility resale value is based on historic and current data about the network growth. If the market price is higher than that, it means the market expects the platform to grow even faster, so it makes sense to pay now for higher resale value in the future. Here is the speculative value for different historic growth rates and different expectations about the future growth rates.

Let’s look at the positive Speculative Value. The chart below shows the Speculative Value when the parket is assuming just a 5% higher growth rate in the future (but not 5 percent points higher; x*(1+5%), not x%+5%).

And this is what happens, when the market expectations about the future is 5% lower:

This time we can observe an exponential decline in value, also for the S-curve growth.

Value for non-users

What happens, if someone buys SWC and does not use the platform at all, so there is no value received from discounts? In this case the only value token holders receive is the resale value and the speculative value.

Here are the numbers for the positive Speculative Value.

The values, even for non-users are very high. Here is the comparison of the value the platform users can enjoy vs the non-users.

It is clear that by using the platform the SWC holders can enjoy over 6 times higher value of SWC compared to non-users. This is especially apparent for the lower growth rates, that should be expected in the early days of the platform.

So, by design, SWC incentivises holders to use the platform more, so they can enjoy more value generated by SWC, at the same time increasing the platform adoption that leads to the increase in the discount value of SWC… Interesting, isn’t it? This is how well thought out financial incentives could create a Facebook-like adoption rate.

OK, what about the negative Speculative Value for the non-users? Here it is:

It almost look like the same chart for the positive Speculative Value… The utility value of SWC, even for pure speculators, outweighs greatly the negative speculative value.

Obviously, using the coin in the system is a much better idea than just holding it. This is especially evident for the S-curve growth rate.

Total SWC Value (Utility and Speculative) for users

Here it is, the final set of charts. First, the Total Value (U+S), with a positive Speculative Value:

And now the negative Speculative Value:

Well, both charts look very similar and show the same thing: the discount value of SWC could be high, very high or extremely high, depending on the platform growth.

Even a stable, zero percent growth rate leads to a discount value of $4.20/SWC in year one. And even then, assuming no user attrition, in year 2 the discount value rises to $5.04 and reaches $7.56 in year 5 (still with 0% growth). It should be noted however, that this is only the utility value for token holder who will actually using the platform to enjoy discounts. The speculative component on the value in this scenario is zero.

However, is it possible to believe there will be higher than a zero percent growth rate in adoption for a platform that offers low to zero interest free loans and a stable cryptocurrency backed by (crypto and perhaps eventually other) assets? As a side note: The value of just ETH (not to mention all the other asset classes), that need to be deposited in the platform, in order for the liquidity protocol to start growing and offering discounts higher than the initial level of $0.07 is around $130M. Compared to the current market cap of ETH (about $66B as of May 17th 2018), the required market adoption rate is 0.2% (two tenth of one percent) for the first asset class.

On the other hand, the highest value of 1SWC calculated by the model is $514,253.05. Yes, over half a million dollars per coin. This, however requires the platform to grow 50% a quarter, which means more than doubling the economic activity every 6 months. Realistically, the most likely outcome will be one of the lower growth rates and it is also likely that growth will not be the same for every quarter. The numbers in our examples are used to show that SWC could ultimately have a higher value than Bitcoin and because it is based on intrinsic economic value, it would likely be much more stable if the network is successful.

Negative Growth

What happens to the value of Sweetcoin when the use of the liquidity protocol declines? Let’s assume a scenario, where after an initial growth period the platform participation peaks out and then declines.

The chart below shows what happens to the discounts generated per 1SWC in a scenario described above. The initial 20% growth rate slows down to 0% at the end of year 2 and then the platform usage shrinks, reaching a decline rate of -15% in year 3.

The value of discount per 1SWC grows when the network grows and falls as the platform usage shrinks. But it doesn’t go down to zero. There is a minimum amount of discount of $0.07 per month per 1SWC that is built into the liquidity protocol. Users who are planning on activating their Sweetcoins will still enjoy discounts on services, despite the network decline.

Below is the chart representing the Total Value, utility and speculative, per 1 SWC, for the platform users, who active their tokens.

It’s clear that most of the Total Value is generated by Realized Value (actually using the platform over 5 years). The Future Value diminishes when the network starts shrinking. Speculative value is zero, which is understandable. Buying a discount generating token and not using it to get the discounts doesn’t make sense when the platform shrinks.

Summary

The value of SWC primarily comes from its intrinsic value as a discount token, not from speculation. The value is driven by the growth rate of the platform — this should be a powerful incentive for users to help grow the platform. The economics of the Sweetbridge platform support the crowdsale price of SWC without speculation if used to obtain discounts. Even at 0% growth rate SWC is worth more in discounts for users than the Crowdsale asking price range ($3.00-$3.99). Activating the token is much more profitable than just HODLing, but even just HODLing will generate positive value that exceeds the Crowdsale price if there is at least a modest growth rate.

The economic incentives for users to recruit other users and for nodes to invest in building the network are substantial. Every time the Sweetbridge economy grows, the discount value and resale value goes up.

Q and A

Last but not least, let’s answer the questions mentioned in the beginning:

Q: Is there a ‘lockup’?

A:

1. No, SWC can be transferred at any time as it is not a security but the purchase of a future discount. It can only be used, however, by members of the Sweetbridge economy who have passed KYC screening.

2. There is a 4-year vesting period for 5,084,486 SWC paid to employees and advisors in exchange for reduced salary or cost.

3. In order for Sweetcoin to be used to receive a discount it must be locked up for at least a month and as soon as someone unlocks their Sweetcoin they lose their discounts. Therefore, we can assume that at any given time a very large percentage of the Sweetcoin supply will be locked up, making it rare. Unlike BTC or ETH Sweecoin users have a financial incentive to hold their Sweetcoin until they don’t need it any longer. Also, since Sweetcoin users receive two returns; the return from cash avoidance, and the return from resale, users will be more likely to buy it than investors which should make it more stable than BTC or ETH in price.

Q: Why was the first private sale (phase 0) so cheap compared to the Crowdsale?

A: Phase 0 was actually very expensive. The founders invested over $1M out of pocket cash into the project. Most project founders doing ICOs and crowdsale receive all their tokens for free. Phase 0 was purchased solely by founding contributors for USD. Many projects reserve 20% of the tokens for founders, employees and advisors. Sweetbridge only gave founders 3M tokens with a 4 year vesting schedule and founders believed so much in the project that they purchased additional tokens as well. All of the remaining 8M tokens for founders and advisors are being exchanged for lower than market salary cost, consulting cost or advisory expenses.

Q: Why are there 6 stages of the token release?

A: Every release stage is related to the project development stage. Sweetbridge is selling tokens for specific activities and goals, and only after reaching the required milestones do the next stage of tokens get released. This way the public can see how the funds are spent, what are the results achieved and the project team can gain credibility and build a successful track record.

Stage 0–3 releases were tied to internal milestones around product development and regulatory work. Stage 4 starts the rollout of the minimal viable product and the start of building a user base. Stage 4 is broken into up to 30 tranches. Each tranche equates to a future revenue goal of about $40K per month to break even on the discount value. Therefore, the Stage 4 tranches will be released slowly so that the minimum discount value of each Sweetcoin does not cause the platform to take longer to reach break-even.

Q: Why are the tokens more and more expensive at each stage?

A: As mentioned above, each stage is less risky than the previous ones. The most risky was the very first one (phase 0). The founders had a vision they decided to pursue. There was no project, no software, only a small team, and no clients yet. It’s natural that the risk discount factor (as mentioned previously) has to be much greater at an early stage than at a later stage.

Currently (mid-May 2018) Sweetbridge has an all-star team, potential clients, alliance partners, followers, community and a beta version of the first product. It’s obvious that SWC is worth more now, than at phase 0–3. In the same way if the platform reaches 1M users and generates billions in economic activity the Crowdsale prices will have seemed to be a deal of a lifetime.

Using a minimum discount per month of $0.07 the cumulative value of a Sweetcoin over 60 months would be $4.20 in discount value and at least $4.20 in resale value for a combined undiscounted value of $8.40 over 5 years with no speculative or actual network growth. Using a 25% discount on a future stream of cash flows calculation the actual value of SWC is $4.52 ($2.26 in future discount value + $2.26 in resale value of the future discounts).

As more users join the network the risk drops and the prospects for more users generating more revenue in the future increases. When viewed through this lens the intrinsic value of Sweetcoin is actually being sold at a significant discount.

Q: Isn’t SWC too expensive compared to other ICO tokens?

A: The unit price alone, expressed in $, doesn’t really mean anything. It’s like saying one $100 bill is more expensive than a hundred $1 bills. If anything, the total amount of capital raised should be compared. The $54M Sweetbridge is raising during the Crowdsale of tokens to users should be compared to other ICOs taking to account the fact SWC has real utility in a platform that potentially can have a real network-effect adoption curve. Not to mention the value of SWC can be quantified (as shown above), whereas most other coins or tokens are selling nothing but pure speculation.

Q: Is ‘pump-and-dump’ possible with SWC?

A: Any assets or commodities that are traded on a market can potentially be pumped-and-dumped, including SWC. However, because the utility value of SWC can be quantified, the speculative, ‘hype’ value of SWC can also be calculated and the potential buyers can be informed about it. Sweetbridge is planning on monitoring this aspect of SWC, as mentioned in the Liquidity Protocol Specification

In addition, Sweetbridge can only be used by verified Sweetbridge members within the platform, meaning that speculators would have a hard time finding other speculators willing to outbid real users for Sweetcoin.