How Jetcoin Institute made ‘fandom’ a commodity, and rewarded fans

In the middle of a Champions League Group D match, a young fan runs onto the Sporting Lisbon pitch. Before the security guards notice, he lands near Barcelona star Lionel Messi. While Messi is making a great effort to stay calm, cool and unruffled, before he knows it, the fan kneels and kisses Messi’s left foot. While the supporter is being escorted by a steward off the pitch, Sporting fans are already chanting the name of Real Madrid star Christiano Ronaldo who began his career at the Portuguese Club. This is September 2017 and fans worldwide continue to make statements, their strong presence filling up stadium gates, television sets.

Everything revolves around fans!

Fans are responsible for stadium gate revenues, television viewership and are the biggest buyers of celebrity merchandise and labels. Fans in our world are essentially consumers. And even though they play a huge role in the success of stars, they almost never have a say in the revenues earned by stars and their agencies.

Don’t fans deserve to be rewarded for their loyalty? Eric Alexandre, managing director of Elite Model Look Singapore, decided to answer this question once and for all. Being in the business of talent hunting, Eric knew the importance of fans in a celebrity’s success story. He also understood the struggles of emerging talents during early stages.

Eric decided to change the script. He launched a whole new way of talent hunting where fans and talented people would interact more closely to the extent that they would benefit each other through the collaboration.

Birth of Jetcoin Institute

Eric spearheaded the Jetcoin Institute — an organization aimed at financing the development of young athletes and artists through a new cryptocurrency called ‘Jetcoin’. He, along with his trusted partners, created a whole new ecosystem that would empower individuals in the three fields of music, sports and media. Such individuals backed by the institute will in return give a part of their image rights to the institute.

But wait, how do the fans benefit? Fans can become Jetcoin holders through the Jetcoin platform and can purchase these image rights. As these talented young people mature in their respective fields, they will generate revenues, a share of which would be distributed to the Jetcoin holders or fans.

Disrupting the traditional fan-celebrity relationship

It’s baffling that there was a dire need of disruption in the traditional fan-celebrity and agency-celebrity relationship and yet no one really bothered. Or was it deliberate? At the end of Elvis Presley’s career, his manager Colonel Tom Parker was collecting a cool 50% of the King’s earning. Billy Joel’s manager was stealing money right from under the musician’s nose. More recently, Beyonce showed the door to her own father and manager Matthew Knowles for stealing her money.

Sports business is a mega money-churner, with talent management agencies warming their pockets at the expense of the player’s talent and hard work. The best sports agencies listed in the Forbes’ 2017 have collectively negotiated player contracts to the tune of more than $43 billion. As a result, they have netted $2.1 billion in commission for themselves.

How is this justified? When Eric conceived Jetcoin Institute, he knew he needed a brand new digital currency so the transactions were fair and there was no monopoly. Jetcoin Institute empowers fans and supporters with a unique opportunity to directly benefit from the success of their favourite stars. It disrupts the traditional relationship between fans and celebrities by enabling practically anyone to launch a talent and support the talent throughout his/her development journey. No middlemen, no agency, no managers. Only a Jetcoin Institute to source talent, fans to refer more talent and fans to ‘invest in’ talent only to be rewarded later.

The Jetcoin Institute’s beginning

Jetcoin Institute was launched in 2014. Jetcoin became the first digital currency to sponsor a Serie A Italian football team, A.C. Chievo Verona, in the same year.

Making his venture’s ambitions clear, Eric, in an interview with CryptoCoinNews had said in 2014 that, “We are looking at a variety of talents in various fields such as soccer players, motor sports, tennis players, models….. we are also looking at the music industry where there are highly brandable figures like DJs. ……moreover, we are going to make artistes get closer to their fans.”

Jetcoin wasn’t introduced to be just another kid on the block(chain) — pun intended. Using blockchain technology, Jetcoin decentralized the world of sports and entertainment and tilted the power balance by establishing the first platform where anyone can own IP rights of promising athletes and talents.

Meanwhile, in the same year, 2014, Jetcoin Institute went on to sponsor the 10th birthday bash of L’Officiel Singapore and sponsored the soft launch of UK-based record label Hed Kandi.

Eric and his team were now determined to get a serious pool of talent by way of sponsorships, brand collaborations with music, sports and media industry.

Eric and his team were now determined to get a serious pool of talent by way of sponsorships, brand collaborations with music, sports and media industry.

How Jetcoin Institute became a trusted brand?

Jetcoin Institute created a platform — a mobile app for people interested in supporting global talent that’s being launched. These users download this app, set up their accounts to start. People use Jetcoin or JET Token which is an ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum platform. The institute releases these tokens only after signing a new talent called Jetcoin Champion. Jetcoin announced its first pre-sale in April 2015 at a promotional price of US$ 0.02. The Pre-sale sold 6.5 million JETs at 0.02CTS.

Jetcoin Institute continued its string of sponsorships in 2015 too when it became one of the main sponsors of virtual crypto seminar “Mind the Gap.” But Jetcoin Institute was eyeing something bigger than that. Jetcoin became main sponsor for Sky Grand Prix Singapore Formula 1 along with Gentlemen Soiree and Barclays Accelerator events.

We all have heard about sports sponsorships, player transfers, brand endorsements involving paper currency. Only a few days ago, we also learn that Pricewaterhouse Coopers has accepted its first Bitcoin payment for its advisory services.

But Jetcoin Institute was thinking ahead back in 2015. The institute partnered with Italian Serie A football team Hellas Verona which became the first club in the world to accept Jetcoins in payment for sponsorship. Hellas Verona fans were now buying Jetcoin contracts affiliated with champions on the Jetcoin online platform. As the contracts earned revenue through the success of the champions, fans could exchange Jetcoins to purchase unique rewards and experiences with their chosen champions or with the soccer clubs. Jetcoin practically equipped anyone to own IP rights to up and coming athletes or teams.

In 2016, Jetcoin launched the Jetcoin Wallet 1.0 which allowed users to access his/her balance of Jetcoin/JET NO JTC. The Jetcoin Wallet 2.0 was launched in the 2nd quarter of 2017. Now Jetcoin owners could use Jetcoin/JET tokens to buy IP rights to emerging talents, share and sell rights too. During the same quarter, Jetcoin (JET) ERC-20 was implemented on Ethereum.

Meanwhile, Jetcoin sponsored Sky Grand Prix Singapore F1 2016 and 2017. But it truly caught eyeballs with the announcement of its first airdrop that happened at the JET Lounge during Singapore Rendezvous, the inaugural luxury lifestyle showcase event. This was the first partnership of Jetcoin and Singapore Rendezvous which featured luxury brands like Lamborghini, Ferrari, deLaCour, Perrier-Jouet, Leica and other luxury yachts, timepieces, super and classic cars. Sponsored by Jetcoin, the stylishly conceptualised JET Lounge was designed as a 220 sq metre lounge facing the marina, replete with entertainment and art.

Talent search collaborations

The next important step on the growth trajectory of Jetcoin Institute was to list Jetcoin on exchange platforms. This was achieved in 2017 when the Institute partnered with Decentrex, Ether Delta, Idex, Coinmarketcap, Coss, MyEtherWallet.

Jet Institute won more confidence among the talent community when it collaborated with Serie A Hellas Verona on their first ever talent search programme. This was followed by a talent search programme with Singapore Academy.

By the end of 2017, Jetcoin Institute became the main sponsor of official party of Singapore Rendezvous featuring DJ Motiv8 the Original Black Eyed Peas DJ. Continuing its presence in its endeavour to hunt musical talent, Jetcoin Institute collaborated between original DJ/producer of BEP, Miss Myanmar (Asia’s next top model finalist) and CC Sound Factory (award winning music producer) for a dance track.

Many miles to go…

Six-time Grammy award recipient Lady Gaga had once famously said, “I don’t view myself as queen; I view myself as one of my fans.” Little did she know back then that ‘fandom’ would truly become the future of sports, music and media. All thanks to Jetcoin Institute. Fans are not consumers anymore, they are investors of talent. In the words of Founder, CEO, Eric Alexandre, “….and maybe one day, one of our artists is going to have a dinner with you as a selected Jetcoiner, making Jetcoin the worthiest crypto-currency ever, at least from an emotional point of view!”