BMJ Score: 3.5
Market
Transparency
Team
Token
Adoption
Quick Summary
112 crypto investors read thisCommentary
Swinca strives to lower the barrier of entering the real estate market and allow investors to make profits by owning properties globally. The real estate market is growing and will continue to have demand. For those who can’t afford the high capital minimums of buying real estate, Swinca provides a solution whereby individuals can acquire properties all over the world without worrying about maintenance of the actual property. Swinca promises high returns with no minimum investment. All properties are tokenized and secured on the blockchain, and the platform brings liquidity to the market while making transactions instant, transparent, and cost-effective. While we really like this use case for blockchain, there are several competitors in this space. Some of the notable competitors include LAtoken, Propy, and Real. Swinca differentiates with the fact that the project does not have a minimum required for investors and allows investors to choose the type (rental or buy) and location of property. Another unique aspect of Swinca is that it accepts fiat currency and will actually pay monthly returns in fiat currency as well. Is this enough of an added value for Swinca to capture the market? We are not sure. The team is verified on LinkedIn and has several advisors and partners. However, there is no MVP and the roadmap is very sparse. We like the token behind the platform because it is a property-backed coin that acts as both a utility and equity token as holders receive dividends proportionate to the amount of token they hold. Ultimately, this is a great idea, but Swinca does not have the lead time in this space. The fact that the project does not have a working MVP concerns us as to whether it will be able to differentiate from its competitors and capture the market.
Investment Information:
- How to invest: Interested parties simply need to follow the link and register to participate in the presale (KYC process to follow).
- Discount: Initial presale price is ⅓ of the initial main sale price.
- Eligibility: Restricted countries include the US and China.
- Jurisdiction: Switzerland
- Accepted forms of payment: ETH, BTC, and USDT.
- Minimum purchase volume: 500 SWI tokens.
Market: 2.5
- Problem addressed/solved: Swinca has recognized a variety of problems in the real estate market. Some of the most pressing issues that the project plans to solve are as follows: lack of liquidity, long transaction times, high barriers to entry, lots of intermediaries, and high minimum investment thresholds that keep many people out of the market.
- Target customers/customer/ segments/verticals: Swinca wants to reduce barriers to entry and make the real estate market open to all investors. Therefore, the market is investors, particularly those with less capital, who want to get in on the real estate market without having to jump through hoops or prohibitive minimum requirements.
- Value creation: Swinca is a simple, easy-to-use platform that requires no minimum investment. Swinca’s goal is to give anyone access to any real estate investment opportunity worldwide. Users can transparently choose in which portion of the property they want to invest and then experience returns that aren’t hampered by middlemen or high fees.
- Competition: Swinca anticipates better returns on investments than most traditional competitors that don’t offer blockchain for their real estate assets. On the other hand, many other blockchain startups are attacking the real estate industry in the hopes to tokenize assets as well. Swinca wants to differentiate itself via its two-token model, which allows investors to hold tokens that represent their stake in real properties or hold tokens that will increase in value depending on the performance of the project.
- Market size/potential: The current state of the real estate market has exceeded analyst expectations, especially considering the recession in 2008. The market has made an incredible recovery and is ripe for innovation as real estate has changed much over the past couple of decades.
- Regulatory risks: Regulatory risks revolve mainly around the validity and regulatory issues with leveraging crypto as an asset. This could face a tough market due to the already-complex regulatory landscape of real estate.
Transparency: 3.5
- Investor value: One of Swinca’s most appealing aspects is that you can take part in both its SWI and NCA tokens. Investors who want to take a less risky strategy can utilize the NCA token and use them toward properties on the platform that will give the investors passive income. On the flip side, you can take the riskier route and bet on the performance of Swinca via purchasing SWI in the ICO or from echanges once the tokens make it there.
- Disclosures: Swinca has well-organized and straightforward documents in both its whitepaper and one-pager. Swinca has one of the few ICO websites that’s fun and interactive when scrolling. There are plenty of bright pictures of properties and a few videos that either explain the project or have some team members discuss their role within the company. Having said that, the project seriously needs to improve its roadmap. It does not provide any useful information and should be revised as soon as possible.
- Token distribution: 50% pools and masternode, 35% presale and main sale, 5% employee and advisors, 5% founders, 3% marketing & bounty, and 2% private sale.
- Use of proceeds: 60% buying properties, 25% operation expenses (-Product development (50%) - Marketing (45%) - Offices, furnitures, operation costs (5%), and 15% Swinca bank reserve.
- Caps: Soft cap: $10 million USD; Hard cap: $75 million USD
Team: 4
- Track record: Swinca has a sizeable 18-person team that consists of early- to mid-career professionals. We’d like to note that the team has more blockchain and marketing talent than most other teams. Many projects try to rush into this space without the proper blockchain talent, and, just as bad, don’t put an emphasis on marketing their projects to investors. This is not the case with Swinca. The CEO, Jerome Lopez, has held the title of CEO two previous times before Swinca. His background and education focus more on finance and economics versus real estate. Having said that, Olivier Meric is the real estate director for Swinca and has extensive experience in that field. His connections have helped Swinca acquire partnerships and will likely be a huge factor as the project continues to grow.
- Integrity: All team members have LinkedIn profiles (although some have very few connections) and most have credible experience that they can use on this new project. Swinca doesn’t give any real reasons to question the project’s integrity, but as we’ve said before here at BMJ, make sure to pursue the top team members and ask hard questions of them to make sure that they’re all in on this project and its future success.
- Jerome Lopez, CEO & Founder (LinkedIn)
- Olivier de Bellefon, Real Estate Director (LinkedIn)
- Francois Gineste, Blockchain Expert (LinkedIn)
- Alain Phoumalavong, COO & coFounder (LinkedIn)
Team Members
Token Mechanics: 4.5
- MVP: Swinca has no mention of a beta/MVP on its site or whitepaper. Not even its roadmap can give investors an accurate depiction of when a test version or even some UI/UX screenshots will be available.
- Token use case: Swinca has a two-token model wherein the SWI coin is internal and external to Swinca's platform and represent Swinca's performances and growth on the whole. The NCA token (Properties shares % 1 NCA = 1$ Price always fixed to 1$) is only internal to Swinca's platform and represents specific shares of a specific handpicked property. SWI coin will also be used for fee payments, as a means of transaction, and to give holders an investor priority pass.
- Value-added: Swinca has designed its model to create a risky, high potential coin in SWI and a more stable, passive income coin in NCA. It’s an extremely innovative way to approach the tokenomics and will ultimately give users more options as to how they want to diversify their portfolio. They can shoot for the moon with SWI and bet on the growth of the platform, or acquire shares in properties with NCA to receive monthly income.
- Decentralization: Since Swinca's asset records are stored in the blockchain, buying, renting, and receiving dividends become easy, fast, and decentralized.
- Token Supply: Max supply of 400 million SWI.
User Adoption: 3
- Technical difficulty/investment expertise needed: Swinca’s objective fits the general mold of other blockchain startups that seek to disrupt the real estate industry. The project wants to remove those pesky barriers to entry and give millions of people access to tokenized properties whereby they can earn monthly income or invest for the future. Swinca provides a basic breakdown of its project at the following link.
- Halo effect: Swinca doesn’t appear to have like-minded partners that could help it along, but the roadmap states “Partnerships in December 2019”, which must indicate the team’s intentions to partner with other companies one year from now. As of writing, there are a few different real estate companies on the site that have agreed to use Swinca once the platform development is complete.
- Buzz: Swinca has a combined 18,000 followers on its Facebook and Twitter accounts, and the accounts consistently receive 100+ per post. It’s not the best engagement in the world, but at least the project is reaching a sizeable audience. The link for the Telegram wasn’t functioning properly at time of writing, which is actually a bigger problem than most people think since Telegram is a huge news outlet for the majority of these projects.
