Prologue

Twenty years ago the dot com boom began. Investors as well as everyday people were throwing money at any company with ‘.com’ in its name. Along with solid projects, many startups with no stable vision and purpose were on the fasttrack to an IPO. The ongoing euphoria and greed blinded many.

The problem was, all these people were rich ‘on paper’. At this point you need one major player to pull the trigger by cashing out shares to fiat and you get the recipe for a market crash.

The result?

We witnessed Amazon go from $106 per share to $6 in less than 2 years. That’s a -94% loss.

At the same time, Adobe went down from $40 per share to $9. That accounts for -77% loss.

Apple went from $5 to $1. That’s a -80% loss.

The list goes on.

The point is, even though the aforementioned companies were making great products at the time, they were all slashed down by the massive market crash.

Fortunately, there is always sunshine after the storm. Dot-coms did a great job revealing which businesses are here to stay and which ones were nothing but money grabs. Companies with a true vision, a purpose and wise fund spending have passed the heavy stress test of the market.

The current state of crypto pretty much mirrors those past events. Our favourite projects such as Basic Attention Token, 0x and Request Network are massively down since their recent all time highs.

Does the current bear market affects their operations? No. And we have the numbers to prove that.

BAT Project has reached new heights in terms of Brave browser downloads both on desktop and mobile.

Thrilled that Brave for @Android now has over 10 million downloads! 😍 Thank you to our users for choosing to browse faster and safer, and for valuing privacy protection! https://t.co/ME6ZkOYfLx pic.twitter.com/nBmpMFEcBa — Brave Software (@brave) August 24, 2018

The amount of trades on 0x protocol went from 25/day in December of last year to 2000/day in August of this year and is still growing

source: https://0xtracker.com/

The average token burn of REQ went up from 8/day in April this year to 66/day as of the time of this writing and keeps growing.

These are clear signals to us that the projects we picked are going in the right direction behind the curtains. That’s exactly how companies like Amazon survived the rough times.

Here at London Letter we are hustling to deliver a crypto project to you with the highest chance of surviving all types of crypto market crashes.

Without further ado, let’s welcome the next project that meets our requirements…

Kyber Network

If we had to pinpoint one of the main reasons why companies fail it would be bad timing.

Take sixdegrees.com as an example – the very first social network platform founded in 1996. It was a great idea and it actually had thousands of users registered. The problem was, they were too early on the market, as only a small portion of the population had an internet connection back then. Not to mention the fact that internet users at the time did not want to expose their identity.

Another example:

Pets.com – they showed up in 1998 and tried to quickly dominate their niche by spending tons of money on TV ads. They even bought a Super Bowl ad spot.

How could they have failed with $300 mln backing up their big plans?

Even though their marketing campaigns made everyone talk about pets.com they did not foresee the problem of the early stages of the internet. People were not used to paying for stuff online with their credit cards. It was not as straightforward of an experience as it is today. Not to mention waiting days for the delivery.

The traffic pets.com was getting did not convert into enough sales to survive.

The list of dot com fails goes on and on.

The same principle of bad timing applies to crypto as well.

There are many projects out there that are probably too early on the market.

We have to ask ourselves does the market really need another Tinder or privacy coin in the crypto space when we still have not figured out the best way to send tokens?

We believe that now is the time to invest in fundamentals, like payment processors, exchanges or protocols which lay the foundation for more advanced applications in the future.

You don’t do heavy lifting on your first day at the gym, right?

Kyber Network not only has the perfect market timing, it also allows us to invest in it at bargain price.

Why should you care about Kyber?

Back in the days when your papa wanted to travel outside the country he had to exchange

your national currency for a foreign one.

It was not an easy task.

You had to drive to a currency exchange, stand in line and wait your turn, all the while hoping the company did not shave you on the fees and spread.

Luckily for us, this process has massively changed over time. With the rise of the internet, you can exchange money in your personal bank account at the current rates.

Not that long ago people were still afraid of paying with their credit cards in foreign countries. If there is anything that comes close to that type of fear, we could easily compare it to an accidental push of the internet button on our pre-smartphone-era device, a mistake that would cost us a fortune.

Today we pay easily and instantly using credit cards for goods in foreign currencies and the banks charge a tiny, barely noticeable fee.

Fintech has realised that the speed and ease of use gives them advantage over their competitors and the process of optimizing user experience won’t stop.

The papa problem is now occurring with crypto

Have you ever tried to buy something with your beloved crypto? Say you hold some Basic Attention Tokens on your Ethereum Wallet and you’d like to buy a powerbank that costs 0.1 ETH.

People who don’t know kyber would probably take the long way around:

1. Go to their preferred crypto exchange

2. Send BAT tokens to this exchange

3. Wait for confirmation (and expose your tokens to a slight hack/bug risk)

4. Pick ETH/BAT trading pair

5. Set an order, wait for it to fill

6. Withdraw 0.1ETH

7. Go back to the online store, happy to buy that powerbank

8. You see the price has changed to 0.11ETH, as it is being constantly adjusted to ETH/USD value

9. You realize you just spend 20 minutes to get that 0.1ETH

10. You say ‘screw this’ and buy a powerbank on Amazon with FIAT instead

Same process, but with Kyber:

1. Go to Kyber Swap

2. Pick BAT <> ETH Swap Pair

3. Click Swap

4. 0.1 ETH is right there, in under 30s

5. Buy the powerbank

Surprised that there is no ‘sending and waiting’ step? So were we at first. We’ll explain that later on but trust us – it works as straightforward as it sounds!

Kyber Network allows everyone to exchange Ethereum ERC-20 tokens immediately on chain and it massively shortens the required time to do that.

You don’t go to Forex in order to buy Euros for a holiday trip. In the same way, you don’t want to go to a typical crypto exchange in order to buy a different currency.

There is a need for a service like Kyber Network on the market, but the community has not realised it yet. We have an opportunity to take advantage of this fact before crowds of investors jump on board.

Our dedicated readers know that we strongly believe in tokenisation of businesses, a future where company shares are represented in the form of digital tokens with different utilities. In order to interact with them you will need to use their token. This is getting complicated as more and more projects are being created upon the Ethereum Blockchain.

In today’s world where everything happens nearly instantly within a click or a tap, the speed is crucial, especially when it comes to crypto adoption. Decentralised Applications (DApps) will not only compete against each other in order to acquire customers, but also compete against centralised apps as well.

Nobody is going to spend 15+ minutes waiting to interact with an application.

That’s why we need Kyber, which massively shortens the process of token exchange. Not to mention apps like Request Network that together with Kyber can shorten the whole purchase process to less than 30 seconds.

The speed and ease of use is what the user experience is all about. And very poor user experience is what hinders crypto from mass adoption.

Everyday people don’t care about stuff reserved for tech wizards and investors like us.

Do you think the masses give a dime about this latest cool hashing algorithm or the fact that they can send money with one push of a button?

Kyber Network is helping companies bring that user experience to their customers.

Because of this, we see Kyber working more in the B2B sector than the B2C sector.

Kyber serves a role similar to Visa, but only for token exchange. A tool that other companies can utilize. The same way you don’t see Visa being a local store in your neighbourhood we don’t see Kyber being utilised directly by everyday consumers.

Some may argue that we have Visa cards in our wallet. Yes, that’s right, but these are issued by the banks and companies that Visa works with. A bank works directly with customers while Visa handles all transactions and currency exchanges in the background.

Kyber specifically handles token exchange in the crypto space, which will soon be in high demand.

The problem Kyber solves:

The year 2017 was a year of big promises. These promises came (or did not come) to fruition in 2018 and will continue to happen in the years to come. This is where the crypto companies are put to the test by launching their products. The amount of apps built upon Ethereum keeps rising and the amount of ERC-20 tokens goes in hand.

All these apps have their own tokens and it is getting overwhelming even for crypto veterans to smoothly operate in the space. A service that helps users to better navigate between apps in terms of payments will be highly lucrative for you as its early investor.

Look up at the sky at night.

All the stars, each tiny bright dot, represents a crypto project with its own token. Each of them being far, far away from each other, trapped in their own, unique ecosystems. Kyber can bridge them all, allowing us to travel to each star at lightspeed, instead of using traditional fossil fuels.

This is a very interesting concept that also applies to our lives.

Humankind is always looking to make things faster and easier. Be it production or transportation – the one who figures it out first is fated for success… granted he can convert his potential properly. And dear reader, let us assure you, Kyber can most certainly accomplish that.

Kyber’s Product

Aside from good market timing, the business is all about the product. Kyber’s product is a service of instant token exchange. As stated before, their angle is to work with other businesses, but they also launched Kyber Swap which makes it easy for everyone to take a grasp of how their service works.

Let’s take a closer look.



This is how Kyber Swap panel looks with MetaMask active in the background. Kyber reads the amounts of tokens on our Ethereum wallet (left panel) and quickly displays all the numbers in the dashboard.

From here, with one click on the ‘Swap’ button we can change our 0.5 ETH for 315.9 KNC (at the time of this writing). This exchange also works for any other token you possess.

Let’s press the ‘Swap’ button and see how this works!



After clicking the ‘Swap’ button we are quickly presented with a confirmation pop-up. All set? Let’s confirm the swap!

Then, another Meta Mask pop-up presents us with the summary of the activity we are trying to complete. Let’s confirm!



Another pop-up informs us that the Swap has been broadcasted to the network. In less than 25 seconds we are presented with a final message:



Phew! That’s it. We know it might look like it takes eternity but that process took us less than 30 seconds. Plus, this is still more like service preview for geeks and investors rather than than tool from which most of the kyber’s network activity comes form.

Let’s sum up what just happened here:

1. We converted ETH for KNC at the current best market rates available

2. Transaction occurred on-chain, meaning that our ETH did not leave the wallet to go to some external exchange, which would expose it to risk

3. It costs 0.5$ in gas fees – compare that to the centralised exchange withdraw fees

We see thismore as a demonstration of Kyber’s product capabilities rather than a tool that will make revenue. This process of a safe and near instant exchange is already tied to apps and services where people use Kyber Swap without even knowing it.

We will talk more about existing projects that have implemented Kyber in a moment.

Compared to many crypto projects out there that exist only on a whitepaper, Kyber Swap is like: ‘Hey, this is us and this is our product that already makes us money.’

In crypto, working products or demos are nothing but marketing funnels. Once potential investors land there and see for themselves the product which actually works and generates revenue, their investment decision is pretty much made up.

Seasonal crypto enthusiasts are likely to turn around and look for the next fugazzi moonshot coin.

But the wise investors who do the research before investing their hard earned money are more likely to stay and invest in Kyber, as it is one of the few projects out there with working product.

Soon, the market will mature and so will its investors. People will invest in projects that deliver on promises rather the ones that brainwash crypto newcomers with quick profits.

These days pretty much no one cares about crypto, compared to the attention it got in late 2017. Thanks to that market attitude we can buy Kyber Network Crystal (KNC) early on before other investors realise that crypto as a whole will shift from scammy moonshots to more stable and legit types of businesses.