BMJ Score: 3.9
Market
Transparency
Team
Token
Adoption
Quick Summary
73 crypto investors read thisCommentary
Online gaming brings in $109 billion with 8% growth annually. The market definitely has problems, including a lack of monetization for gaming skills, a disparity of fund distribution (the top 3% of gaming community receives 90% of the prizes), and a lack of community for finding talented gamers. Bountie has created a platform to revolutionize the gaming industry by providing multiple ways to help gamers earn money by playing and creating game content. In addition to playing, individuals can contribute to the decentralization of the project by acting as referees and earn 1-3% of pot money. There is also a reputation system to stop trolling behaviors, and Bountie is the first of its kind in which higher rep players get access to more. All rewards from games will be instantly paid via smart contracts, a huge improvement in this space. While the team is large and has experience in gaming, ecommerce and tech, we worry that they lack blockchain experience. They are also all based in Singapore, which could create difficulty expanding internationally. This being said, the partnerships and advisors are impressive. Another positive is that their MVP exists and can be leveraged. Ultimately, we like that Bountie is differentiating by inventing a new economy for mainstream gaming to monetize and decentralize profits for the average gamer. As people already spend hundreds of hours gaming, individuals have nothing to lose by earning crypto in that process.
Investment Information:
- How to invest: To register for the presale, you must first join the whitelist at the following link.
- Discount: 15% bonus throughout presale
- Eligibility: Residents of the US may not participate.
- Token Price: 1 ETH = 7,475 BNTE (includes bonus)
- Jurisdiction: Singapore
- Investment limits: Min investment 1 ETH; Max investment 10 ETH
Market: 3.5
- Problem addressed/solved: Bountie wants to tackle six key problems in the eSports gaming industry. They’re going to focus on a lack of monetization, limited replay value, no gamer search engine, lack of competition, and a decline in career opportunity. Bountie provides detailed descriptions of the problems on page 14 of their whitepaper.
- Target customers/customer/ segments/verticals: The Bountie ecosystem will be built around gamers, partners, and Bountie itself. The target audience will be gamers, with an emphasis on those gamers who are already involved in eSports and don’t rank in the top 3%.
- Value creation: Bountie creates tons of value for gamers, particularly those who have been unable to qualify for sponsorships or prize money but still want to earn income while they play. Bountie gives those players the opportunity to earn as they play and then use those crypto funds anywhere with the help of the Bountie debit card. Bountie also creates a safe and “unhackable” system via the blockchain and smart contracts, ensuring the secure storage of player tokens and data.
- Competition: Bountie will undoubtedly hit competition from both traditional and blockchain gaming platforms. The eSports industry is less than two decades old and therefore has many startups already vying for market share. Acquiring their partnership with Twitch puts Bountie a step ahead of those blockchain projects that have yet to partner with an organization with such strong name recognition.
- Market size/potential: Bountie will primarily target the Asia gaming market, which, at 47% of gaming revenue, is by far the largest region, with China expected to generate $27.5 billion, or one-quarter of all revenues in 2017. Esports revenues overall are expected to reach US $696 million this year and will likely grow to US $1.5 billion by 2020 as brand investment doubles.
- Regulatory risks: The project will have to ensure PCI and GDPR compliance for sharing users’ information and protecting finances.
Transparency: 4.5
- Investor value: Investors could see the value of their tokens rise as more players join the Bountie platform and continue to earn and transact in BNTE. Token holders will also receive a Bountie debit card that they can use in real-life transactions.
- Disclosures: Bountie has the basics of disclosures in their whitepaper and one-pager. They do have a unique set of extra papers called “market research” and “risk factors” that most projects don’t take the time to create. Having said that, their roadmap is definitely bottom tier and something they should update in the future.
- Caps: Soft cap: 2,000 ETH; Hard cap: 130M tokens (20,000 ETH)
- Token distribution: 65% crowdsale, 15% partners & advisors, 10% team, and 10% operations.
- Use of proceeds: 45% development, 25% marketing, 15% security and legal, and 15% eSports arena.
Team: 4
- Track record: The Bountie team consists of 20 members and 7 advisors, which is much larger than the majority of projects in the pre-ICO stage. Each member has a short paragraph on his or her qualifications for the position and an associated LinkedIn URL. The CEO, Lex Na, doesn’t immediately impress based on his past accomplishments/positions. He was a former Senior Marketing Manager and Director at a few different corporations. The strongest resume among the executives has to be the CTO, Remek Lipinski. Remek has more than 20 years of professional experience in a wide range of fields spanning Engineering and Information Technology. He’s served as a CTO, Software and Hardware Engineer, Co-Founder, and more.
- Integrity: What stands out about the team is their dedication to constant communication and transparency. Their YouTube page has a new video approx. every 1.5 weeks and their Twitter/Facebook updates are even more frequent. The size of the team shows how much Bountie plans to grow as well. On the downside, however, the core team does not have much blockchain experience and are all based in Singapore, with few international ties.
- Lex Na, Co-Founder and CEO (LinkedIn)
- Darren Lee, Co-Founder and COO (LinkedIn)
- Remek Lipinski, CTO (LinkedIn)
- Jose He, Co-Founder and Chief Performance Officer (LinkedIn)
Team Members
Token Mechanics: 3.5
- MVP: The Bountie demo is operational and available for anyone to try at the following link. It should not be considered an MVP as the majority of features are available and it has a very advanced design that’s gone through a couple of iterations already.
- Token use case: Bountie tokens can be used to buy into tournaments and buy game products. You can buy them on Bountie’s platform, win them from other players in Bountie-sanctioned tournaments, win them by being one of the top 10 in the Bountie gaming leaderboards, get them as rewards from doing Bountie daily quests (eg. playing 10 games, getting 50 kills and winning a game, daily login bonus), earn them from referral programs and rewards, tell a friend and share the Bountie love, then earn Bountie Tokens, and get them from promotional and marketing giveaways.
- Value-added: The Bountie token certainly has a lot of use cases on the Bountie platform. As we’ve seen with the most popular game of 2017/2018, Fortnite Battle Royale, in-game “currency” can become something of great value. Fortnite uses a term called “V-bucks” that gamers can purchase with fiat currency and then use on the platform. In a similar manner, Bountie will have the BNTE token as the sole means of transaction on the platform in order to increase its real value. Then the tokens can be transferred to a crypto wallet and used anywhere with the help of the Bountie debit card.
- Decentralization: A decentralized blockchain will ensure all tournament and gamer profile data will be stored on the blockchain to promote transparency and efficiency.
- Token Supply: Max supply of 200 million BNTE
User Adoption: 4
- Technical difficulty/investment expertise needed: The Bountie project wants to revolutionize the eSports gaming industry and fix a few of the lingering problems that exist for gamers today. The best way to understand the full scope of Bountie is to visit their YouTube page and at least watch the “Bountie: Get Paid to Play” and “Bountie Corporate Video.”
- Halo effect: Bountie boasts some impressive partnerships in the gaming industry, including the likes of MSI (Gaming Hardware) and Twitch (streaming and Esports Arena Partner). For those investors who are unfamiliar with Twitch, it’s a live streaming platform (subsidiary of Amazon) that has 15 million daily active users. Bountie would be working together with Twitch as a Tournament Partner and Twitch is Bountie’s Streaming & Esports Arena Partner, starting off with the first tournament on Q4 2018 in Bangkok, Thailand.
- Buzz: Bountie has prominent features on Forbes, Yahoo, TechinAsia, and many more. They also have a solid presence on social media among their Twitter (2,900), Facebook (5,500), and Telegram (20,066).
