ICOrating

BANKERA Basic Review (http://bankera.com/)

ICO dates (15.10.2017 — 14.11.2017)

Web: icorating.com

Email: info@icorating.com

Twitter: @IcoRating

Reference links

Project details

Name: Bankera

Ticker symbol: BNK

Project type: Blockchain-based digital bank

Extended description of the company:

Bankera is developing a blockchain platform offering traditional banking instruments, which will use fiat money and cryptocurrencies.

[1]

Company: Finalify Ltd. (British Virgin Islands) [4]

Website: http://bankera.com/

White paper: https://bankera.com/Bankera_whitepaper.pdf

ICO details

Public ICO start: 10/15/2017 [13]

Public ICO end: 11/14/2017 [13]

Token sale duration (weeks):

4.3

Token type: ERC 20, NEM Mosaic [4]

Total number of tokens:

25,000,000,000 [3]

Tokens available for sale (Pre-Sale + Public ICO):

70% (10% Pre-Sale, 30% - Public ICO, 30% - SCO) [3]

Goal of fundraising:

Funds raised through Bankera's ICO will be used for Bankera's development as a project. Most of the funds raised will be used to increase the capital (requirement of banking legislation) and obtain a banking license.

[4] [2]

Price of 1 BNK: Not announced. It will depend on the number of tokens sold during the pre-ICO (8/28/2017-9/28/2017), but will at least be EUR 0.012 [https://bankera.com/index.html#ico].

[1], [2]

Accepted for payment:

EUR, USD, GBP, DASH, ETH, BTC, NEM and other currencies through the partner, SpectroCoin.

[35]

Bounty: The program starts on August 18, 2017. All payments are made from August 28, after the start of the pre-sale ICO. On the basis of the white paper, 25% of all the tokens will be spent on the Bounty program [2].

[5]

Role of the tokens:

Proof-of-Membership, Access to Profit Distribution

Team

Staff (number of people)

7

Advisors and partners (number of people)

9

GitHub: n/a

Social media

Twitter: Posts: 392, followers: 3127

Telegram: Posts: 23, members: 1700

Medium: Posts: 7, followers: 142

Reddit: Followers: 43

LinkedIn: Followers: 264

Facebook: Followers: 15,456

YouTube: Posts: 7, subscribers: 1122

Project information

Bankera is a blockchain platform with classic banking instruments. It has no banking license. According to the project's team, Bankera will offer payment accounts, debit cards, currency exchange at interbank rates, processing, loans, deposits, as well as cheap investment products (ETF, crypto assets investment, etc.). Bankera will support both fiat money and cryptocurrency.

[1]

Project partners: - SpectroCoin (https://spectrocoin.com/ru/) – partner for process and infrastructure, founded in 2013 (https://spectrocoin.com). An active cryptocurrency exchange platform with the facility to order a VISA card that has more than 300,000 users.

[50]

According to the project's website, Bankera has a minimum viable product (MVP) on the basis of SpectroCoin software (https://spectrocoin.com/?utm_campaign=mvp&utm_source=bankera). The MVP is a bitcoin exchange service and a wallet.

In addition, Bankera is a subsidiary of SpectroCoin (cryptocurrency exchange, digital wallet, debit card and payment processor). The project was launched in 2017.

[38]

Project advisors: - Lon Wong (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lonwong1/) – President of the NEM.io Foundation, General Director of Dragonfly Fintech. - Antanas Guoga (https://www.linkedin.com/in/antanasguoga/) – member of the European Parliament. - Eva Kaili (https://www.linkedin.com/in/eva-a-kaili-4465853/) – member of the European Parliament, Chair of the Scientific and Technology Options Assessment Bureau (European Parliament). - Modestas Kaseliauskas (https://www.linkedin.com/in/modestas-kaseliauskas-64597b115/) – former General Director of the State Tax Inspectorate, Lithuania, Tax Partner of TaxLink (Mazar correspondent); - Marc Kenigsberg (https://www.linkedin.com/in/marckenigsberg/) – founder of BitcoinChaser. - Jochen De Weerdt (http://linkedin.com/pub/jochen-de-weerdt/4/970/749) – mining expert. - Damon Rasheed (https://www.linkedin.com/in/damon-rasheed-1431b7b0/) – General Director and founder of Rate Detective. - Eugene Dubossarsky (https://www.linkedin.com/in/eugene-dubossarsky-09208a1/) – head of the professional communities Sydney Data Science group (2,000+ members), and Sydney Users of R Forum (1,500+ members), also Datapreneurs (400+ members). - Warren Lush (https://www.linkedin.com/in/warren-lush-6a3b425/) former head of PR at PartyPoker, fulfilled similar duties for Ladbrokes and Sky Sports; worked for Rt Hon William Hague MP (former Leader of the Opposition and Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs).

[1]

Resume

We recommend waiting (not buying). There are risks concerning the early stage of the development strategy, the team composition and also the technical aspects. These risks are described in detail in the relevant sections. More than 56% of the project's website consists of paid traffic. The project is gaining attention through attractive referral programs and its large number of advisors.

Conclusion

The Bankera project is based on the SpectroCoin project. The team attracts paid and referral traffic, which resulted in 470,000 website visitors. Even now, however, the visit rate has started to decrease.

Strengths of the project: - the project has a large number of advisors. - according to the project's team, there is a minimum viable product. Weaknesses of the project: - not every team member specifies that they work with Bankera in their LinkedIn profiles. One gets the impression that there are separate Bankera and SpectroCoin teams. - the project has no open platform algorithms or open repository. - there is a lot of paid traffic, which makes it impossible to estimate the actual interest of the blockchain community in the project; - there is little information and few figures relating to the market in the official documentation.

[6]

Market and industry

According to Research and Markets, the blockchain industry will grow from USD 210.2 million in 2016 to USD 2.3125 million by 2021, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) being 61.5%. [http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/blockchain-market-to-grow-at-a-cagr-of-615-by-2021-bfsi-sector-is-expected-to-dominate-the-market-during-the-forecast-period---research-and-markets-300470481.html]. Blockchain banking is a new area of development for the financial industry. Experts say it is much faster, much more efficient and less liable to errors than traditional automated clearing houses (ACH). Such banking may save money and time for banks, and make payments almost instant for consumers. Besides, the decentralized nature of the blockchain makes it much harder for criminals to carry out fraud [https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/08/27/future-of-digital-banking/#.tnw_dkU9ixYG]. According to Deloitte, 80% of all banks intend to initiate projects relating to Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), which is the basic technology supporting the blockchain. Over the last three years, blockchain-based fintech startups attracted over USD 1.4 billion in venture capital investments. More than 2,500 patents were filed for the same period. Globally, more than 90 central banks currently participate in DLT-related discussions. [https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/in/Documents/financial-services/in-fs-deloitte-banking-colloquium-thoughtpaper-cii.pdf].

In this event, Bankera plans to become the first bank to be able to create an infrastructure to work with both cryptocurrencies and fiat money.

[2]

Comment:

The company has no clear market entry strategy. This is confirmed by the absence of a serious market description in the white paper. The official documentation contains general information (e.g. the Building A Bank clause).

Competitors

We must consider that Bankera's technology is based on the function of the creation of virtual wallets, virtual currency exchange, and assistance in the use, purchase or sale of currency (SpectroCoin). The following are competitors: - Blockchain (www.blockchain.com) - Bitpay (www.bitpay.com) - btcc (www.pay.btcc.com) - HolyTransaction (www.holytransaction.com) - CoinsBank (www.coinsbank.com) - BIT.AC (www.bit.ac) - BitGo (www.bitgo.com) - Wirex (www.wirexapp.com/ru-ru/) According to Bankera, the project is one step ahead of any cryptocurrency exchange,

as Bankera will be offering proper banking solutions, such as IBAN accounts,

payment cards and payment processing not only for cryptocurrencies, but also for fiat

money, payment cards, etc. Besides, Bankera plans to offer credits and deposits in

order to enable its customers to receive interest rates in the deposit currency, or

borrow funds at a reduced rate.

The difference from traditional banks is that Bankera will be the first crypto bank. In

order to confirm this strategy, the project offers the pledging of crypto assets to

receive a loan.

[51]

Resume: Compared to direct competitors, Bankera has well-known advisors (Lon Wong and Antanas Guoga), more ambitious project development goals, and more active promotion in social media.

Engineering features of the platform

The project is based on blockchain technology. Bankera is a cryptocurrency exchange system and a wallet. The project is based on the SpectroCoin infrastructure.

[2]

Technology description

Bankera's partner in terms of infrastructure (SpectroCoin) provides various bitcoin-related services: the creation of virtual wallets, a virtual currency exchange, and assistance in the use, purchase or sale of currency.

[40]

According to the project's team, 10 process solutions are implemented on the platform, with the use of the following process solutions and cryptocurrencies:

Technologies (libraries, algorithms) used

Languages: Java, PHP

Libraries: OpenSSL, REST API

Algorithms: OAuth2, IBAN [International Bank Account Number]. Used for international payments. Meets ISO13616 standards. IBAN was initially used to simplify and expedite international payment processing in EU states.

Process flow diagram of the platform

[41]

Comment: The project's documentation contains no technical description of the platform. According to Bankera, the minimum viable product is based on SpectroCoin's crypto banking practices.

[2]

Technological Roadmap

Since the technical part of the project is delegated to SpectroCoin, the documents contain no information about future releases.

The team, however, mentions what will be accomplished after the ICO: - the possibility to use IBAN [International Bank Account Numbers] through SpectroCoin; - the possibility to obtain a digital wallet for fiat money, which will be turned into a bank account in one or two years; - the possibility to receive loans, including on the security of crypto assets; - the possibility to deposit currency.

[2]

Comment: Bankera's sources contain an abstract description of the plan of development of the future platform. We requested detailed information about the technical development from the support service, but our request remained unanswered.

The project has no open repository.

Since there was no information on the technical part of the Bankera project, we decided to describe work on the SpectroCoin repository. Currently, the repository for this project consists of 12 units. Since 9/9/2016, 11 of the 12 units have not been worked on actively. The last unit was active on 2/7/2017.

[43]

Screenshot of the repository

Comment: Bankera has no precise description of its development, which brings doubts about whether the project has been sufficiently engineered.

Conclusion: In our opinion, completely outsourced development may result in substantial risks on the part of the contractor. Currently, the contractor's repository is just as inactive, although according to Bankera's white paper, SpectroCoin's developments are ongoing.

The absence of a plan for platform update releases is an obvious disadvantage.

Documentation

We have analyzed Bankera's website and documentation for sufficiency and consistency so that an investment decision may be made.

The documentation contains the white paper and the crowdsale terms and conditions. The white paper is in English, Chinese, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian and Greek. The white paper in Russian is distinguished by low-quality translation and partially abridged information; we recommend reading the English version. The other documents are in English only. The project description contained in the documents is quite detailed. However, no analytics on the future market and promotion plans have been covered. The roadmap contains only banking support plans. There are no references to figures used by the project to justify the demand. There is no confirmation of a problem to be solved, and no confirmation of potential demand for Bankera either.

The website also provides information about the project, project's plans, the public ICO, team and partners. The website has an additional advantage: it has a separate section dedicated to the bounty. The website is translated into eight languages, including Russian.

Conclusion:

The documentation provides some insight into the project. In our opinion, the project presents token operation formats that are too complicated; this may ward off investors. The best way to ask questions to the team is to use their own chat facility on Bankera's website at https://chat.bankera.com/channel/community.

ICO

Public ICO start: October 15, 2017

Tokens to be issued, %

70% (10% Pre-Sale, 30% - Public ICO, 30% - SCO)

Token type: ERC 20, NEM Mosaic

Accepted for payment:

EUR, USD, GBP, DASH, ETH, BTC, NEM and other currencies through the partner SpectroCoin

Cost of 1 BNK: The price of BNK will depend on the number of tokens sold during the pre-ICO (8/28/2017-9/28/2017), but will at least be EUR 0.012 during the ICO (after 11/14/2017).

Crowdsale period:

four weeks, until November 14, 2017

The project's tokens (BNK) will be issued in exchange for a number of cryptocurrencies mentioned above. The tokens are Proof-of-Membership, Access to Profit Distribution. BNK makes it possible to pay for Bankera's services and products at a reduced rate. Besides, a weekly fee of 20% of the net income from Bankera's and SpectroCoin's transactions will be accrued to BNK holders. Allocated fees will be distributed through a smart contract with holders of Bankera (BNK) markers.

[1], [2]

Token issue limit:

25,000,000,000

According to the project, Bankera's advantage is that: - information about expected payments will be collected in real time. This will improve loan offers for client companies - the technological core of the platform will not be connected to SWIFT, SEPA or payment cards, which will result in flexibility of the system - it will be possible to use IBAN [International Bank Account Numbers], which

SpectroCoin's customers will possess (this company’s IT and regulatory

infrastructure will be a base for Bankera)

- a wallet for fiat money will be organized, and in one or two years it will be turned

into a bank account;

- banking services such as loans and deposits will be offered;

- it will be possible to take out a loan on the security of crypto assets.

[1], [2]

Planned maximum amount to be raised:

927,000,000 EUR

Planned minimum amount to be raised:

25,000,000 EUR

Tokens are to be sold in installments: - Pre-Sale: from August 28, 2017, until September 28, 2017 - 2,500,000,000 BNK; - ICO: from October 15, 2017, until November 14, 2017 - 7,500,000,000 BNK; - SCO: dates n/a - 7,500,000,000 BNK

Comment: In our opinion, the project only vaguely describes the function of the tokens and the benefits of their purchase. This may affect the demand, and consequently the project's success. The technological aspect of the project, which is its key advantage, is being developed by a separate company, which increases risks relating to the successful fulfilment of Bankera's obligations.

Bounty

Program start August 18, 2017

Allocation of % according to the program

The program starts on August 18, 2017. All payments are made from August 28, after the start of the pre-sale ICO. On the basis of the white paper, 25% of all tokens will be spent on the Bounty program [2]. Bonus for a YouTube video: - 400 - 3,000 BNK, depending on the quality of the video content. Bonus for a Twitter / Facebook post, depending on the number of followers: - 100-250 followers - 25 BNK; - 250-500 followers - 50 BNK; - 500-1,000 followers - 100 BNK; - 1,000-2,000 followers - 150 BNK; - 2,000+ followers - 200 BNK. Referral program: - 5% of all Bankers (BNK) purchased + 10% of all receipts. - 25 tokens are accrued for every person joining the Bankera.com information channel using your link.

[5]

According to bitcointalk.org, in order to participate in the program one needs to: - create a Spectrocoin.com account, where all payments will be made; - respond to the topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2100246.0) with one's own video review and SpectroCoin wallet address. The Bankera team notes that in order to participate in the referral program, one needs to [1]: - Have a SpectroCoin account; - Attract users to the project's website or Chat channel (https://chat.bankera.com/channel/community) by posting links with

a referral SpectroCoin.com ID (https://bankera.com/bounties-ru.html).

Conclusion: In our opinion, the bounty program incentivises the community too much. Such behavior indicates a short planning horizon for the project, which may result in an insufficient investment amount to complete development.

Allocation of tokens and capital

Tokens and capital will be allocated as follows:

Allocation of tokens and capital

70% - will be offered for sale: pre - ICO - 10% of tokens; public ICO - 30% of tokens; public SCO - 30% of tokens. Project management + % bounty - 25% of tokens. Tokens for the project team will be distributed over time. Project's advisors- 5%.

[2]

Conclusion: Tokens are sold as a currency and/or conventionally as shares, making it possible to receive 20% of profit from transaction fees (distributed with the help of smart contracts), and do not affect the distribution of interest in the company. The incentivisation system is in place to ensure that the sooner the tokens are bought, the more profitable they are.

Development plans

The roadmap devotes little attention to market entry. Judging by the roadmap, the main emphasis will be placed on fundraising during the ICO and the introduction of banking (obtainment of a license, provision of banking services). - Stage one: development of IT infrastructure - completed. - Stage two: pre-ICO - starts on August 28, 2017, ends on September 28. - Stage three: support for P2P transfers, mobile wallets and membership requests - to be completed from September to October 2017. - Stage four: ICO - planned for the middle of October 2017. - Stage five: full banking potential - Bankera is looking to obtain a banking license to provide loans and offer deposit services by the year 2019. - Stage six: investment platform. According to the banking license, Bankera is looking to provide investment services along with such financial products as ETF, crypto token funds and even investment robo-advisors. - Stage seven: new kinds of money. Bankera expects that around the year 2020 it will be able to support new kinds of money, which will be connected with a combination of services to be provided. These include currencies relating to economic growth, and the use of ETF as a means of exchange.

[2]

Conclusion: The documents and presentations contain no clear sales and marketing strategy. This is despite the fact that the team and advisors include marketing and promotion specialists. The pre-ICO financial goal has almost been reached.

Team

The team consists of seven members and nine advisors. Information about the main team members on LinkedIn is as follows:

- Vytautas Karalevičius (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vytautas-karalevičius-7a949436/) - General Director, Co-Founder of Spectro Finance, affiliation with the project not specified - Mantas Mockevicius (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mantasmockevicius) - Director for Agreement and Execution Procedures, Partner and Chief Financial Officer of Pervesk, participates in three projects - Justas Dobiliauskas (https://www.linkedin.com/in/justas-dobiliauskas-2209504b/) - Chief Technology Officer, Chief Technology Officer of Spectro Finance, engaged in three projects, affiliation with the project not specified. Justas has nine years of experience in software development for medium and large financial institutions, as well as five years of experience with blockchain technologies and crypto terms. He is an expert in P2P technologies, and has a Master's Degree in security of information systems; - Craig Grant (https://www.linkedin.com/in/grantcraig/), Vice President for Business Development, PR Manager at Currencycloud. Craig has experience in the payment processing industry, including three years of work with Skrill (currently member of the Paysafe group) as Senior Business Development Manager; - Egle Eidimtaite (https://www.linkedin.com/in/egle-eidimtaite-504745a0/), Vice President for Business Development: Executive Director for Business Development at TG LAB, participates in four projects! Egle has three years of experience of business development in the electronic game industry. Before joining the corporate world, she was working in the European Parliament. - Ruta Cizinauskaite (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruta-cizinauskaite-33a6ba84/), Vice President for Marketing, is working with SpectroCoin. Ruta is an expert in B2B and B2C marketing, with experience in both the corporate and state sectors. Prior to joining Bankera, she had accumulated experience with social networking services, SEO, project management and sales, working with a startup in Brussels, at a US Embassy and with the Lithuanian government. - Tse-Hsin Lu, (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tse-hsin-lu/), Vice President for Public Relations, is working with SpectroCoin. Tse-Hsin is an expert in digital marketing.

Conclusion: Mantas Mockevicius is indicated on LinkedIn as a Chief Financial Officer and Partner. The Head Vytautas Karalevičius is indicated as the Founder of Spectro Finance (SpectroCoin). The large number of advisors in our opinion results from the desire to reinforce the project's PR positions, and not from a need for advice. This may be an indirect sign that the project has not been sufficiently developed.

Marketing

Information on the project is available on various popular services, such as Twitter, Telegram, Medium, Slack (the channel is closed!), Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube. The project has an open bounty program. The project's team may be contacted via their own chat facility, and on the bitcointalk forum. On other social networking sites, the team's activity is average and/or comes down to posting.

The format of articles about the project shows that they are mainly sponsored by the project, or advertise the ICO of another project.

[38] [44]

Comment: Compromising publications have been spotted on forums in the community and on YouTube: a scam is suspected. The project's team responds to the suspicions weakly and/or passively defends its honor.

[45] [46]

Analysis of the traffic of Bankera's website on the basis of Similarweb.com showed:

Bankera's traffic sources (Similarweb.com)

[6]

Comment: Half the traffic (53%) comes using a direct link to the website.

Search engine traffic:

According to SimilarWeb, of the 23.14% of the search engine traffic, 56.45% is paid traffic. It means that traffic is actively attracted with the help of advertising on search engines.

[6]

Referral links: 14.01%

Comment: SimilarWeb also proves that the community's interest in the project is only half natural. Currently, interest is being stirred up due to the technological partner SpectoCoin, the well-known project advisors and the advertising tools (referral program, sponsored articles on various internet portals), but not due to the project as such. The bounce rate (a web-analytics term meaning the percentage ratio of the number of visitors who left the website right from the landing page or after viewing no more than one website page) of the project's website is 66.25%.

[6]

Conclusion: In view of the conducted analysis of the project's marketing activity, we may conclude that Bankera is conducting an active advertising campaign. Interest from the blockchain industry is at average level, the sources of the interest primarily being SpectroCoin and the well-known advisors.

Contacts

You may contact the developers via the following links:

Website: http://bankera.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bankeracom

Telegram: https://t.me/bankera

Medium: https://medium.com/@Bankera_blog

Slack: Channel closed

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bankera/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/25000232/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bankeracom/

Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2091093.0

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3lEI3rq1W4fPFYPu9ZezFg

Useful links

1. Website: http://bankera.com/

2. White paper: https://bankera.com/Bankera_whitepaper.pdf

4. Crowdsale terms and conditions:

https://bankera.com/Bankera_Terms_and_Conditions.pdf

5. About the bounty

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2100246.0; https://bankera.com/bounties-ru.html

6. SimilarWeb https://www.similarweb.com/website/bankera.com#search

13. TokenMarket

https://tokenmarket.net/blockchain/ethereum/assets/bankera/

34. https://www.icorating.info/single-post/2017/08/22/Bankera

35. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2091093.60

36. http://bitcoinchaser.com/bankera-blockchain-banking

37. http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/Bankera-Announces-Pre-ICO-Details-for-Its-Revolutionary-Blockchain-Based-Regulated-Bank-1002289886

38. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bankera-announces-pre-ico-details-for-its-revolutionary-blockchain-based-regulated-bank-300510539.html

39. https://ru.pokernews.com/news/2017/08/tony-g-vyvodit-kriptovaljutu-bankera-na-legalnyj-rynok-27169.htm

40. https://spectrocoin.com/en/about.html

41 https://spectrocoin.com/ru/integration/spectrocoin.html#/introduction/bitcoin-wallet-api/resource-identifiers

43 https://github.com/SpectroFinance/SpectroCoin-Merchant-Java

44 http://bitcoinprbuzz.com/press-release-bankera-blockchain-bank/

45 https://forum.bitcoin.com/scam-accusations/spectrocoin-scam-of-100-bitcoin-t7310.html

46 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2126829

48 https://www.capgemini.com/news/consumers-set-to-save-up-to-sixteen-billion-dollars-on-banking-and-insurance-fees-thanks-to/

49 https://www.capgemini-consulting.com/blockchain-smart-contracts

50 http://www.cryptomining.net/crypto-news/262-spectrocoin-kriptovalyutnaya-obmennaya-platforma-s-vozmozhnostyu-zakazat-kartu-visa.html

51 https://geektimes.ru/company/wirex/blog/278620/

The information contained in the document is for informational purposes only. The views expressed in

this document are solely personal stance of the ICOrating Team, based on data from open access and

information that developers provided to the team through Skype, email or other means of

communication.

Our goal is to increase the transparency and reliability of the young ICO market and to minimize the risk

of fraud.

We appreciate feedback with constructive comments, suggestions and ideas on how to make the

analysis more comprehensive and informative.