The Investment migration industry still does not accept Bitcoin or other crypto-currencies as form of digital payment for CBI/RBI/EB-5 programs, except a very few agents and property developers accept as fee. The lack of knowledge and difficulty in understanding cryptocurrencies by the industry professionals, makes it difficult for the industry to design, develop and implement a crypto digital payment platform. Crypto currency usage have exploded in recent years and looking into the future, sooner or later, the industry needs a new crypto currency on its own.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency in the world with the largest market share, followed by Ethereum and Ripple. But Bitcoin has many problems. While only very few countries have banned Bitcoin, Banks in several countries have blocked buying and selling bitcoins, citing issues with criminal activity, money laundering, drug trafficking, tax evasion and other illicit activities. Last year Wannacry virus, locked millions of PC’s and Cash machines around the world and demanded Bitcoins as ransom. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are anonymous and No AML/KYC checks is being carried out on these payments which presents a high risk for the industry and therefore Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies cannot be a viable solution for our investment migration industry. We therefore propose, our own clean new Cryptocurrency for the industry, compliant with all AML/KYC rules. We have named it ‘Citizenship Coin’.
Citizenship coin
Citizenship coin is the solution created specific to the CBI/RBI industry. Citizenship coin is a peer-2-peer crypto currency and is decentralized (no one controls it) giving full financial freedom, enabling cheaper, faster digital payments within the industry. Normally fiat currency payments involve banks as middle men, but with crypto currency, payments are directly sent between two persons, businesses, with no middle men involved. The payment transactions are verified, confirmed and stored in blockchain by network of computer nodes spread across the globe. The use of cryptocurrency replaces today’s banks. In a recent article, IMF Head foresees the end of banking and the triumph of Cryptocurrency.
Free Open Source
Citizenship coin is a free open source software for CBI/RBI industry (closed to public) and because of this Government’s, Citizenship Agents, Real estate developers promoting CBI/RBI, can collectively collaborate, setup and work together and run the Citizenship coin network, and yet no single entity can control the network.
KYC/Due Diligence
All blockchain coin transactions are subjected to Know your customer (KYC) and Anti-money laundering (AML) rules.
Real Estate
Real estate companies offering investment migration programs can increase sales by accepting industry standard cryptocurrency like Citizenship coin for its speed, cheaper transaction costs, less delays and less paperwork. The use of crypto currency in the real estate industry involves directly buyer and seller, thus eliminates middlemen or intermediaries or brokers. Some agents sell at vastly inflated prices, unknown to the foreign buyer causing potential losses to the buyer. The trillion dollar Crypto blockchain industry has created many self-made millionaires and real estate industry should not lose them by not accepting cryptocurrency. A robust, low cost digital crypto payment system, makes it cheaper and easier for future property buyers giving the much needed boost to the real estate market. Crypto payments can be easily scaled to handle large volumes of payments at much cheaper costs.
Greater attention is now being paid by Governments and other stakeholders around the world considering the unprecedented volume of investment that has occurred in this year in Cryptocurrencies, several countries have announced new crypto currency regulations. According to SEC.gov, Developers, businesses, and individuals increasingly are using initial coin offerings, also called ICOs or token sales, to raise capital. These activities may provide fair and lawful investment opportunities. Citizenship coin may soon well be widely accepted digital currency, within the investment migration industry.
CBI/RBI Programs
Currently Citizenship by Investment (CBI) and Residency By Investment (RBI) schemes, actively run in over 20 countries in the world.
- Asia: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore
- Europe: Spain, Portugal, Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Belgium, Netherlands, Latvia, Italy, Hungary, United Kingdom
- Oceania: Australia, New Zealand, Vanuatu
- Americas: United States, Canada, Bahamas
- Caribbean: Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, Grenada
- Middle East: Jordan, Turkey
Tied to Euro
The value of one citizenship coin is currently pegged to one euro during the initial launch.
1 CTZ = 1 EUR
The limited supply of coins, market demand and amount of circulating coins in the market may cause value of citizenship coin go up in the future years. Investing in Citizenship coin project at the initial phase, should be attractive for major investors.
Major Cryptocurrencies
Citizenship coin will also support exchange to other major crypto currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple, with KYC/AML rules. Citizenship coin will equally compete with other coins for the industry use. We accept Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin for ICO, according to EUR value of these currencies, as CTZ is pegged to Euro
1 BTC = 7700 CTZ (as 1 euro equals 7712 euro at the time of writing)
1 ETH = 663 CTZ ( 1 euro equals 663 eth at the time of writing.)
Benefits
Here are the important benefits of Citizenship coin:
- Send and receive Citizenship coins anywhere in the world at any time. All you need is a single computer with internet connection. No bank holidays. No borders. No bureaucracy. Citizenship coin allows its users to be in full control of their money.
- Receiving coins is free while sending coins also quite cheap. For example it costs only 0.1 Citizenship coin as a transaction fee to send 100,000 Citizenship coins and confirmed by network within 10 minutes.
- Citizenship coin, there are no “accounts” to set up, and no e-mail addresses, user-names or passwords are required to hold or spend Citizenship coins. The wallet software available for download can generate several unique receiving addresses to the user, so payments are not tied to one single account address.
- Citizenship coins can be freely exchanged to major fiat currency such as Euros, Swiss Franc for a nominal 1% commission.
- Citizenship coins is only limited to 105 million coins ever produced and the mining difficulty algorithm will halve the total produced every four years. During the first four years about 52 million coins can be minted, next four years 26 million and after 12 years it will get increasingly hard to mine coins, which will require significant computing power and electricity.
- Citizenship coin transactions cannot be reversed, unlike electronic at transactions protecting sellers from chargebacks or fraud like credit cards.
- Citizenship coin will support other major crypto currencies Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum provided KYC/AML is established and not subjected to EU/US sanctions.
- Citizenship coin transactions are stored in Blockchain (immutable ledger of transactions) agreed by all blocks.
The sending and receiving address of Citizenship coin looks like this (generated by your wallet software):
1PHYrmdJ22MKbJevpb3MBNpVckjZHt89hz
Mining
Citizenship coins are created by the process known as ‘mining’. Industry professionals using the source code can profit by mining citizenship coins and sell them. For each block created, the network rewards 250 citizenship coins, about 6 blocks can be generated an hour. This process requires advanced computer technical skills. Here are some of the technical details of the coin.
Alternative Payment to Banking
Citizenship coin is backed by strong Euro currency and moving to Euro platform will reduce dependency on US dollar. In Oct 2017, Imidaily.com, reported Crypto currency payments are the solution to Caribbean’s correspondent banking problems. Crypto currencies reduces dependency on banks and their payments, providing alternative digital payment framework.
Caribbean News Now recently reported, Cryptocurrency as a Way to Fill the Void in Caribbean Banking Services. Caribbean governments, have shown surprising initiative in welcoming crypto currency and exploring its uses to improve local economies as well as the Caribbean’s presence in a field where there is yet to emerge a clear leader.
Crypto-currencies speed up payments when banking systems are down, in the event of natural disasters and Hurricanes. In 2017, Barbuda and Dominica faced catastrophic damage from the Hurricanes and the recovery efforts are slow and time consuming process to receive aid. In the future, the crypto currencies will play a vital role to receive basic recovery supplies for the affected people. Digital Coins can be paid to receive urgent supplies. Therefore, it is imperative for countries, to implement crypto payment system, who face Hurricanes or natural disasters every year.
Coin Exchange Agency
We propose to setup our own coin exchange agency. Citizenship coin project requires significant investment from investors to design, develop and implement the currency network and setup a currency exchange. Rather than depending on external currency trading exchanges, with proper funding, we propose to setup our own Citizenship Coin Exchange Agency, ie. to convert citizenship coins to fiat currency, transacting millions of citizenship coins in circulation every day with a small conversion fee of 1%. Unlike other crypto currencies, citizenship coin will not be traded with openly with other exchanges as the value is tied to euro.
Conclusion
In our opinion, Citizenship coin project will only benefit the CBI/RBI industry in Europe, Americas and in the Caribbean. Currently the investor visa market is a $5 billion dollar industry.
Into the Future
Citizenship coin may well be widely used crypocurrency within the CBI/RBI industry in the future in several countries listed below, where active investor visa schemes are up and running..
Thus, rather than looking at only monetary benefits, we have decided to dedicate Citizenship coin as a free, openly accessible, exciting new technology to the CBI/RBI industry and to exclusively benefit the countries running CBI/RBI programs and people.
Raising Funds
The startup Citizenship coin project is still in the initial experimental phase of development and we are looking to raise funds for the startup this year. The ICO for the project will start on April 18 and we plan to raise $1 million initial fundraising. Please see our whitepaper on what we plan to do using the investment.
Initial Coin Offering
The pre-ICO for Citizenship coin started on 18 April 2018 with the sale of 1 million coins! Minimum purchase is 100 coins.
100 Citizenship Coins (CTZ ¢ ) = €100 Euros
ICO Roadmap
18 April 2018 – Initial Pre-ICO sale of 1 million citizenship coins
19 Oct 2018 – ICO Phase 1 starts with sale of 10 million coins
20 March 2019 – ICO Phase 2 start with sale of 10 million coins
Sep 2019 – ICO Phase 3 sale of 20 million coins
Dec 2019 – Final sale of 9 million coins ending the ICO
Implementation with raised funds
- Legal – 10.00% Company incorporation and legal team
- Coin Software development: 20.00% Hiring a team of employees for, Mobile App development, Wallet software
- Coin Network Operations: 25.00% Network, Security, Hosting, Servers, Running Nodes
- Coin Marketing, Sales: 15.00% Promotion, Advertising, Customer Support and Speaking at conferences.
- Citizenship Coin Exchange: 25.00% (Setup exchange to convert EUR to CTZ and CTZ to EUR by levying a small 1% rate.)
- Training and Education: 5.00% (Educate and offer training to professionals in the CBI industry on crypto-currencies.)
Sources:
- https://bitcoin.org/en/how-it-works
- https://citizenshipcoin.org/whitepaper.pdf
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country_or_territory
- https://medium.com/the-mission/countries-approving-cryptocurrencies-b5bbca1a5a03
- https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
