As shown above, the new UI will be much more professional and competitive with exchanges already in the market. Personally, I really like the colour scheme and layout. Very promising. This will probably be the most significant customer-facing update that they will have done and I expect a significant spike in interest in COSS and the exchange.

ICOs

Coin developers can list their coins on the exchange. The team has been adding new ICOs to their platform at a pretty rapid clip. This helps to onboard new users to the exchange as well since these ICOs are usually not listed on the main big exchanges at their launch. Upcoming ICOs include https://www.aditus.net/ and https://lalaworld.io/ .

Merchants

COSS already has about 600 merchants in their merchant listing. These are merchants that use the COSS token to accept cryptocurrency transactions. While this part of the platform has not grown much in the last couple of months (as of my knowledge), I believe once the new exchange is more or less up and running and there is more awareness about COSS, the team will be working hard to increase merchant adoption.

Current coss.io merchant list page

The Community

The COSS telegram group has 1157 members at the time of writing. An alright size but significantly smaller than some of the overhyped ICOs. The COSS Telegram group is probably the most civil and enjoyable one out of the many that I have been part of. The community is also quite supportive towards new members and the team. There are always people willing and available to answer queries (in addition to Rune himself). When the team encounters technical difficulties, the members do not just start aggressively complaining or reprimanding the team unreasonably. Usually they are more patient and understanding compared to some of the other groups I have been in.

After the recent Etherdelta fiasco, one of the COSS Telegram group members informed the group that he lost about 2000 COSS tokens on that platform. He didn't ask for anything, only saying that he was sorry that he won’t be able to join us on our COSS journey. Almost immediately, some good Samaritans asked him for his public COSS address so that they could send him some COSS to make up for what he had lost. I’m sure he has more COSS tokens now then when he started. One of the best acts of community that I have seen in this space.

Market Capitalisation

At the time of writing, the market cap of COSS has been hovering at about 14–16 million USD. In comparison to the other tokens that also offer a form of fee split/indirect dividend functionality, this is extremely small. By comparison;

Binance Coin : 539 million USD

- Use of Quarterly profits to buy back own tokens and burn them

- Use of Quarterly profits to buy back own tokens and burn them Iconomi: 246 million USD

- Use of Quarterly profits to buy back own tokens and burn them

- Use of Quarterly profits to buy back own tokens and burn them KuCoin: 91.5 million USD

- Awards token holders with a percentage of trading fees

- Awards token holders with a percentage of trading fees TenX: 425 million USD

- Use of Quarterly profits to buy back own tokens and burn them

- Use of Quarterly profits to buy back own tokens and burn them COSS: 16 million USD

- Awards token holders with a percentage of trading fees

From the comparison we can see that KuCoin has the greatest similarity of token structure and fee split when compared with COSS. With KuCoin, the cut of the transaction fee that is returned to the token-holders is 50%. After 6 months, the fee split percentage will be reduced over time before bottoming out at 15%. With COSS however, the fee split is planned to be fixed at 50%. The revenue split from the trading fees is controlled by a DAO, meaning the COSS team cannot change the split percentage according to their own whims in the future. This is one of the key attractions for me. When the transaction volume reaches the hundreds of millions, maybe billions one day, that 35% will make quite a big difference in the token holder’s weekly ‘dividend’.

Even with this fee-split advantage, we can see from the list above that the market cap of COSS is significantly smaller than any of its competitors that provide a similar offering. This leaves the investors with a lot of room for a healthy return on their investment.

Regulation

COSS is a Singapore based company. This is a good thing. The Singapore government has always been an advocate of Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. The Monetary Authority Of Singapore (MAS) does not see the need to regulate cryptocurrencies at the moment. The approach taken is more about regulating the activities around cryptocurrency instead of the cryptocurrency itself.

The COSS team itself is big on compliance as well. They are always working hard to be on the right side of the law so that in the event that regulation is eventually implemented, COSS and COSS token holder’s risk is minimal and the project can still move forward.

What’s Coming Up

UI Revamp

- The soonest and most significant update will be the new UI update expected before the end of 2017. A heavy hitting marketing campaign has also been hinted at once the UI is launched to attract new users and to increase trading volume.

- The soonest and most significant update will be the new UI update expected before the end of 2017. A heavy hitting marketing campaign has also been hinted at once the UI is launched to attract new users and to increase trading volume. Fiat Gateway

- As mentioned in the whitepaper as well as in the latest update by Rune on medium, a Fiat gateway will be implemented in the future. There is no timeline yet but the team is figuring out the nitty gritty regarding the mechanics of it as well as ensuring compliance. It is a priority for the team and they have promised more clarity in Q1 2018.

- As mentioned in the whitepaper as well as in the latest update by Rune on medium, a Fiat gateway will be implemented in the future. There is no timeline yet but the team is figuring out the nitty gritty regarding the mechanics of it as well as ensuring compliance. It is a priority for the team and they have promised more clarity in Q1 2018. Additional Fee Generating Products

- Today, COSS is just an exchange. However COSS promises to be more than that and aims to handle remittances, merchant payment gateway, direct fiat/crypto Credit/debit card etc. All the transaction fees through these other fee generating products will also be subject to the revenue split model and we, as token holders, are entitled to 50% of that fee. If you believe that cryptocurrencies will become more mainstream in the future and accepted by many merchants, this is the coin you should be invested in. Imagine a time when merchants all around the world are using COSS to accept crypto payments. You will be entitled to a cut of all these transaction fees generated by the thousands(if not more) merchants around the world.

- Today, COSS is just an exchange. However COSS promises to be more than that and aims to handle remittances, merchant payment gateway, direct fiat/crypto Credit/debit card etc. All the transaction fees through these other fee generating products will also be subject to the revenue split model and we, as token holders, are entitled to 50% of that fee. If you believe that cryptocurrencies will become more mainstream in the future and accepted by many merchants, this is the coin you should be invested in. Imagine a time when merchants all around the world are using COSS to accept crypto payments. You will be entitled to a cut of all these transaction fees generated by the thousands(if not more) merchants around the world. Moving out of Beta

- If you didn’t know it yet, the entire COSS platform is still in BETA. They will be out of BETA soon with the new UI, better engine and most of the kinks straightened out. We will soon have a much more professional, user-friendly and stable platform to trade.

Potential Risk

I would not have made an investment in COSS without first understanding the potential challenges and risks involved. I’d advise you to do the same.

COSS is a centralised exchange. This in itself isn’t an inherent risk or negative thing. However, in 2018, we will probably see the launch of several decentralised exchanges, such as Kyber Network (KNC). No one can predict how successful these exchanges will be an these decentralised exchanges come with their own set of problems as well. The current batch of decentralised exchanges that are up and running honestly provide quite a substandard user experience compared to the centralised ones. As always its good to invest with both eyes open and do your own research. Personally, I believe that there will be enough room for both centralised and decentralised exchanges.

With that being said, there is nothing to stop the COSS team from moving their exchange from a centralised one to a decentralised one, should there prove to be significant advantages. Binance (a centralised exchange) has also already stated their desire to move to a decentralised structure in the future.

There is also the risk of falling further behind existing large centralised exchanges that have already been running for quite some time. That would be less than favourable. Network effects play a huge role in the successes of these exchanges. Volume brings customers, customers bring volume, volume brings liquidity, customers bring ICOs, ICOs bring volume etc. Hence I would like to see COSS speed up the progress and really knock it out of the park with their marketing campaign. It would also be great if the team could make sure that their platform can handle the additional load before the marketing launch so as to not turn new users away from the platform due to overloading.

In Summary

Pros

Fixed 50% Revenue split of ALL transaction fees

New revamped UI before the end of the year

Very low present market cap in comparison to competitors

Very healthy, friendly and active community

Responsive team

A lot of upcoming improvements and feature additions to look forward to

Platform to move out of BETA

Cons

Current UI is BAD

Low awareness regarding COSS at the moment

Many kinks in the platform to be worked out

Competition with existing higher-volume exchanges

Arrival of decentralised exchanges

The Final Word

I have been slowly moving to make COSS at least 25% of my portfolio since November. I have already received a couple of weekly fee splits. The amount received today is very small but it shows me what I can expect in the future. Since November, with the trading volume steadily increasing, I have already seen an increase in the weekly fee split received. Its quite a good feeling receiving free tokens every week in your COSS wallet. If you only need one reason to invest in COSS I would have to say its the fee split.

You can make a sound bet that the trading volumes of all cryptocurrencies will increase in 2018 and this puts exchanges in a great position to benefit. The value of the COSS coin is very much related to the volume of trading on the exchange itself. Hence, a COSS token holder stands to benefit even more.

Sure, buying such into such a small cap token is more risky than getting one of the large cap coins. But you don’t get those outsized returns by buying into cryptos that are already so highly valued. With so many upcoming improvements to the UI, engine, platform and the marketing campaign coming up, I have very high hopes for COSS.

Have fun, good luck and may we see each other on the moon (: