Cryptovest
Published May 16, 2018 04:04PM ET
Updated May 16, 2018 04:30PM ET
Homemine ICO Review: Plug in Your Appliances and Mine
The landscape in which HomeMine are playing is the ‘passive mining’ space.
Passive Mining can take the form of anything from buying & holding coins, trading currencies to make profit on the margins, in-game tasks to earn coins, clicking captchas to earn coins, investing in ICO’s (pump and dump strategies), running a Masternode, staking, lending, airdrops, blogging, etc.
It can also take the form of cloud mining where you rent capacity in server farms you don’t own or your own devices that have a dual function, one being to passively mine whilst you do other stuff on that device.
The device side of passive mining belongs to the IoT (Internet of Things) or M2M (Machine 2 Machine) sector. It would seem the most obvious approach for successful passive mining but due to high costs to manufacture devices, and high prices to acquire these devices, the return on investment didn’t deliver. One example is Qarnot, who came out with a heater that mines in 2018 but it costs $3,600.
However, the sector is now rapidly evolving and recently a Chinese manufacturer (Midea Group) filed a patent that will enable passive mining inside everyday household appliances like air conditioners or coffee makers. If manufacturers decide to cut out the speculators and develop reasonably priced appliances directly, this could see an enormous shift in the mining sector. It would be mining put back into the hands of everyday people.
This is the area HomeMine wants to address with its $42 plug extension lead that passively mines.
h2 2.ICO Proposition/h2Ticker : MHT
Token Type : Utility
Token Price : $42
ICO Hard Cap : $38.4m
ICO Soft Cap : $5.2m
Total Tokens : 1m
Tokens for sale : 1m
Here’s how it works:
So, it’s fairly simple to use. Even an ‘ICO advisor’, sorry, a ‘small child’ could use this!!
Keys things to note:
Here are the product components HomeMine plan to build:
Pros
Cons
Feasibility of the Business Model
The initial six months from launch for the business model look viable, as you can earn an ROI for buying the device within 30 days. Based on HomeMine’s projections of 1m units working by the end of month 1, the ability to generate enough revenue to almost cover energy costs looks good.
But in the White Paper, HomeMine give the same warning a number of times. They warn that as the network grows, as they sell more devices, add more miners, and the ability to generate the same levels of income will get harder. As someone thinking about investing in their ICO, or acquiring a HomeMine device, that worries me. Just how difficult will it get if they have 100m devices running out there? Will it mean my ability to cover my energy costs went from 87% down to, say, 12%?
I think they need to clarify this issue on their ICO website, for investors. It’s key to the sustainability of their business model.
The other thing troubling me is, you have to pay HomeMine 1% of all coins mined out of your earnings but they don’t clarify if that’s 1% of the total coins you specifically mined or 1% of the total coins mined by everyone? Because if it’s total coins mined by everyone, that could seriously eat into your earned revenue disproportionately.
Again, it needs clarifying by the HomeMine team.
h2 4.ICO Team/h2OK, here’s where I stumble. Everyone knows I’m tough on ICO teams in my reviews but for good reason. As VC’s will tell you time and again, ideas are common, but it takes a great team to build a unicorn.
When I went looking for this team on Linkedin, I couldn’t find them!
I couldn’t even find their website on Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
Their website address is buried in their Twitter page.
It was only when I went to their website and clicked their Team LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) icons that I managed to find profiles. Warning: it looks like they threw these professional profiles up overnight. Why? Because no one's endorsed them.
I couldn’t find any record for the company (Sequoia Cryptotechologies) the founder is meant to have previously run for four years. Their Blockchain Engineer doesn’t seem to have ANY Blockchain experience on his Linkedin profile.
They don’t have one single advisor.
So the calibre of this team makes me nervous, more so because I think they are potentially holding a great idea. Their website looked so amateurish, so awful, it made me fearful for their ability to market this product - to shift units.
h2 5.SWOT/h2Strengths :
I think the idea has a lot of potential, if they can deliver it and market it properly.
They are a mission Startup, and mission Startups have a far greater chance of becoming Unicorns. Customers who love products, sell products.
Weaknesses :
I’m not totally convinced this is the right team to execute this idea. I’m also concerned about the mid- to long-term viability of the business model for miners.
I’m also not sure it’s such a smart idea to get HomeMine pre-installed in manufacturers’ appliances. This limits the miner to using specific appliances when the existing unit HomeMine has specified eight sockets, any appliances, which gives the miner total freedom. So from a business strategy side, I’m not clear on what the upsell is for moving to this pre-installed model.
Opportunities :
I think a smarter B2B strategy would be to get the HomeMine unit pre-installed in business machinery, business technology, that the employee is unaware of as they use that equipment but the company is using to offset their energy bills.
Threats :
I think if someone comes out with a unit that allows more appliances to be connected or sells a bundle of 5 units for the price of 2, whilst also allowing miners to mine any coins they want, i.e., lite coins, this would undermine (pardon the pun) HomeMine’s current proposition.
I also think it’s worth watching what that Chinese manufacturer plans to do. If they can do retail appliances with mining chips pre-installed with no additional retail cost to the consumer, it could be game over for HomeMine.
h2 6.Conclusion/h2I like this White Paper. It makes a proper attempt at defining a business model (although it would have been nice to see their income stream in amongst that data). It also lays out a competitor landscape. Very few white papers do this.
I really like the concept. In theory it’s a no-brainer. But the outstanding questions around their business model and ability to execute, to market this product, leave me worried.
I almost feel like they are going to ICO too soon. As a potential investor I want them to have finished selecting a mining chip and hardware components before they ask me for money. I want them to have tested this thing so they know it will work without overheating and burning down someone’s home.
I want them to have completed building a prototype.
I want them to have engaged major online retailers like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) about selling this unit. But I recognize they can’t do that without having built and tested a prototype first.
Hence, why I think they are a little early for ICO.
But we are where we are. They are going to ICO now. So am I going to have a punt, absolutely, because if they fail, I’ve only lost $42, if they succeed, I wait a year for a device to arrive that offsets my regular energy costs. That’s got to be worth a gamble.
h2 7.Score 0 – 5/h2
Written By: Cryptovest
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