In terms of population and landmass, Southeast Asia is one of the most significant geographic regions on the planet. 2016 figures show the region to have a total population of approximately 641 million which amounts to roughly 9% of global population. The landmass covers an area of approximately 4.5 million sq.km which is a whopping 3% of the earth (considering that 70% of our planet is water, this figure becomes even more significant). After South Asia and East Asia, the region ranks as the third most populated area in the world.

With blockchain technology fast establishing itself as the most talked about emerging technology in the world, there is a desire by many stakeholders to see that its adoption becomes more widespread. According to recently compiled figures, more than 75% of the Southeast Asian population is unbanked. This means that they have no access to banking services and as such do not contribute to the economic growth and prosperity of the region. As far as trying to instigate development within a region goes, having three-quarters of the population unbanked is a serious issue.

Pundi X, a brand new blockchain startup has come up with an idea to not only solve this problem but also improve the adoption of cryptocurrencies in mainstream payments. Despite the popularity of cryptocoins today, it is still a difficult process for many to acquire these tokens. Bitcoin mining is no longer feasible with small mining hardware due to the large mining facilities that have monopolized the system. There is still the general consensus that much of the cryptocurrency world is still only understood by developers, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts, leaving the layman none the wiser. Pundi, by virtue of this blockchain, aims to make cryptocurrency retail services available to a larger section of people.

Pundi X’s mission is to make buying cryptocurrency as easy as buying bottled water. As the Walmart and 7-Eleven of cryptocurrency, we want users to buy and use cryptocurrency anytime anywhere.

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Concept (4.1/5)

The Pundi X business model is designed to open up the cryptocurrency market to a much larger audience thus improving the adoption cryptocoins in the mainstream retail scene. By so doing, Pundi X will essentially become the largest cryptocurrency sales network, offering offline, decentralized POS services for token retail in shops, cafes etc.

The Pundi X ecosystem is built upon three core protocols and they are:

1. Mobile App — The Pundi X Mobile App is a smartphone app that can be used to buy and sell cryptocoins like bitcoin, ether, Litecoin, and PXS. The app can be downloaded from Google Play.

2. Card — This functions as the wallet for the Pundi X system. It is capable of facilitating cryptocurrency payments via NFC technology, and even through contactless technology.

3. Platform — This is the full build platform that encompasses all the software and hardware protocols involved in the functioning of the Pundi X ecosystem. All POS device functions emanate from this platform and it will be made available via SDKs and open APIs for easier integration when fully distributing the platform to different locations.

The Token

The Pundi X business model is designed to open up the cryptocurrency market to a much larger audience thus improving the adoption cryptocoins in the mainstream retail scene. By so doing, Pundi X will essentially become the largest cryptocurrency sales network, offering offline, decentralized POS services for token retail in shops, cafes etc.

The idea behind the project is sound and the proposed execution has a lot of technical and business merit to it. It also offers the added incentive of making cryptocurrencies a lot more accessible to the common man as well as solving the problem of the high percentage of unbanked people in Southeast Asia.

Team (4.0/5)

The Pundi X team operates out of two locations; Jakarta and Shenzhen. The Jakarta office is home to management and operations while the Shenzhen office hosts the R&D portion of the venture. There are 15 staff members in the Jakarta office and 14 members of staff in the Shenzhen office.

The management staff includes the following:

· Zi Ban (CEO) — “Zac” as he is fondly called in the group has over 12 years tech experience. He was also the former chair of the W3C HTML5 Interest Group.

· Huang Pu (CTO/COO) — Huang is a serial entrepreneur with a B.Sc. in Engineering.

· Constantin Papadimitriou (President Advisor) — Constantin has over 17 years of experience in the Fintech niche, having been the Founder and CEO of Infinetworks and E2Pay; two of the largest Fintech firms in Indonesia. He has advanced degrees in Computer Science.

· Danny Lim Wei Xiang (CFO) — Danny is an expert in Accounting and Finance with extensive experience in product design from his time at Lenovo and Baidu.

Overall, the team has a mixture of talented individuals from various backgrounds like technology, Fintech, Entrepreneurship and product designing. However, a pinch of Blockchain related experience might be useful to have. The current experts in the team seem to be capable of making this project a huge success.

Competition (4.1/5)

Pundi X has a lot of competitors who mostly run crypto debit cards. However, Pundi X seems to have gone beyond the scope of the operations of these competitors by developing their own functioning framework. Many of their competitors are already facing multiple legal problems due to the fact that major players in the online payment processing market like MasterCard and Visa Card do not let these services run on their platforms. But the good thing is that the POS device is quite unique in the market, which makes Pundi X more competitive.

To sum up:

Pundi X is a great attempt at actualizing blockchain banking which could potentially revolutionize the payment processing industry. There is also the added bonus of bringing cryptocurrency closer to the common man and bridging the gap between the blockchain world and the mainstream business scene, especially in retail. The management team does seem a little light on cryptocurrency experience but they make up for that with their robust technical acumen in Fintech.

Pundi X Token sale will start from 21 January 2018 8 AM UTC. For more info on token sale, click here.

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Rakhee Pal

FundYourselfNow

Bitcointalk user name — fundyourselfnow