Many areas in crypto are saturated with coins attempting to solve the same problems. There are numerous privacy, supply-chain, social platform, energy, decentralized internet, and identity coins/tokens.

This is the sixth article in a continuing series focusing on crypto assets that are entirely unique.

Key Points:

What is it?

“Auctus’ mission is to put retirement savers back in control of their retirement plan, by offering access to a global investment platform that allows users to create optimized portfolios of bonds, stocks and cryptocurrencies, by providing the information needed to take well informed decisions, by using blockchain to increase transparency and automation, and ultimately increasing trust towards the chosen retirement plan. Robo advisory, transparency, automation and record keeping are thereby an integral aspect of the Auctus Platform, as well as a marketplace that allows the retirement community to come together without middlemen. Auctus’ vision is to create a platform from the community, for the community and aspires to be as decentralized as possible and as much community driven, owned and managed as feasible.” ¹

ICO Information:

Ticker: AUC

Token type: ERC20

ICO Token Price: 1 AUC = 0.26 USD (0.00050 ETH)

Fundraising Goal: 3,900,000 USD (7,500 ETH)

Sold on pre-sale: 2,000,000 USD ( AVERAGE BONUS — 13,6% PRE+PRIVATE)

Available for Token Sale: 51%

Recent Events:

“Auctus is launching Auctus Labs with the aim of replacing centralized components with decentralized ones, in an attempt to fully decentralize the Auctus Platform”. ²

Auctus aims to be the first retirement platform built on blockchain. I spoke to a Ludmila Lopes, head of marketing, to clarify a few points listed in the whitepaper.

Can you clarify “robo advisory”? It is a term used dozens of times in the whitepaper.

“Robo-advisors (robo-advisers) are digital platforms that provide automated, algorithm-driven financial planning services with little to no human supervision. A typical robo-advisor collects information from clients about their financial situation and future goals through an online survey, and then uses the data to offer advice and/or automatically invest client assets.”

Is there a fiat gateway planned for the future?

“It depends on how financial rules will evolve. At first, we are planning on having tokenized assets.”

How will the volatility of AUC token effect the platform? Are there plans in place to mitigate this?

“Yes, we will rebalance the price (in AUC tokens) to access the platform based on volatility”

I know MakerDAO has a stable token, is that something Auctus may work with them on in the future?

“Yes, we have a big interest in DAI token to be used in the automated rebalancing feature”

Strengths:

Strengths assigned to any project built on blockchain. Transparency, transaction time.

Cryptocurrency doesn’t stop at international borders. Anyone around the world can access the platform.

Targets the right demographic. The demographic that is most heavily invested in Cryptocurrency is also the least likely to plan for retirement. Hopefully a platform like Auctus can bridge that gap.

Collaborating with many highly respected projects.

Shortfalls:

After reading the whitepaper and speaking to a team member its very clear that the whitepaper is a tentative roadmap, subject to constant change. While this is common in crypto, it seems to already be changing only a few weeks after ICO.

“In addition to being a platform currency, which enables efficient and frictionless transactions between participants, the AUC token will also be used to help preventing users from paying in advance for bad services or advice. In cases where the nature of the service or tool purchased involves portfolio suggestions and predictions (of returns and risk), the transfer of tokens between the user and the provider can be bound to the results.”

Auctus prevents users from paying in advance for bad service/advice by holding AUC in escrow. Holding a highly volatile asset in escrow could just as easily make you lose money.

The whitepaper has some “interesting” statements, examples below:

“We have seen many other companies exchanging Ethers (ETH) for fiat currencies right after the token sale, thus placing downwards pressure on ETH’s price. We believe that the strength of the Ethereum network and community is an integral part of our success. We view ETH offloading as unhealthy for the market and also economically disadvantageous for our project. We will therefore keep our funds to a large extend in ETH and only exchange to conventional currency whenever expenses need to be made.” ¹

I was told by a team member:

“Well, the text explains itself, dumping ETH causes an increase of volatility that can be prejudicial for utility tokens”

Its a very strange statement to make. Even if all of the Ether raised in the ICO were to be dumped at once, chances are it wouldn’t effect the market all that much.

“Companies like Fidelity, Prudential or Vanguard have long-standing reputations in the retirement asset management space. They offer large-scale solutions. Even though some of them show interest for new technologies, they are usually late adopters in terms of technology and won’t be taking any risks for the sake of innovation.” ¹

Companies survive by innovating, suggesting that they won’t because “they won’t take risks for the sake of innovation” without facts to support that statement is an interesting position to take. Specifically in terms of Prudential, this is not the case as they are working with blockchain technology and have a running dialogue with Auctus. Clicking on the hyperlink will take you to an article written by Auctus, directly contradicting what was written in their whitepaper.

Conclusions:

Its an interesting concept, with a lot of community support. As of now, they don’t have much to show. According to their roadmap the platform will be completed in Q3, 2019.

With constant deviation from the whitepaper, it seems like more of a concept in development, not so much a product in development.

Disclaimer:

I was not paid to write this. I hold AUC tokens. Always do your own research.