Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency and what is an ICO?

By now you’ve certain heard of Bitcoin, it started this year at about $800 and as I write this, it is sitting about $6,200. Ethereum is a different style of blockchain technology from Bitcoin but is the most important platform happening in this space right now and has lead the explosion of “altcoins”, with something like 3,000 different cryptocurrency tokens available now. Ethereum started the year trading at about 10 cents and is currently over $300 and has gone over $400. Clearly there is money going on, but how much money?

In the last few months, somewhere around $2 billion has been raised in the ICO market. An ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering, it is a bit like an IPO but is unregulated and a bit wild west. People are creating crypto currencies for environments and then pre-selling them. Other people speculate on them outside of their intended utility, which can see incredible price gains. I recently watched one that was selling tokens for an environment to buy objects to be used in Augmented Reality games. They raised $25 million in 15 seconds. I saw 3 other games with various objective utility use cases that started their coin at $.01 and saw it get over $1, and that was without the game being released, over a 100x rate of return.

In Irvine there is a local Meetup group for Ethereum and Blockchain technology that has over 800 members and each of the meetings, which are held very frequently, draw about 150 people. This doesn’t even count the large Meetup groups in San Diego and Los Angeles. The interest level is huge around here, but avoid this meetup, it is a MLM pyramid presentation disguised as a cryptocurrency event. That is all a very long lead up to tell you about my own ICO, which is the first one to happen in Rancho Santa Margarita, and likely most of South Orange County.

My company is SAAV Games my ICO is called SAAVcoin and the ICO starts at 8am on October 22 and runs through December 23. You can buy into the ICO at $.01 per SAAVcoin and use a debit/credit card or Ethereum to do it. There is a 10,000 SAAVcoin bonus for the first 1,000 people who get 50,000 or more SAAVcoin. What is SAAV all about?

We have created a multi-platform (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac & Linux) time-management game along the lines of Lords of Ultima, called Agame. This is a MMORTS that is a virtual world set in feudal Europe, featuring historically-appropriate battling clans and barbarian tribes. It uses military forces and strategy from that era; players will have the ability to accumulate goods such as consumables, buildings, and military resources, over time. An in-game open market allows trading with other players.

By tying the in-game currency to the external crypto-currency, we’ve created a new element of play that now has you managing your finances against potential inflation or deflation. Knowing when to buy your coins at the best price to be able to use them later in the game, or sell your resources or coins when the market is right. The coins are exchangeable in the real world on a cryptocurrency, and there is a finite supply in the game where the pressures of supply and demand will change their price over time. While the utility of the coins are within the game for game play, they can and will trade on the open market and people might use them for speculation. The ICO is meant to raise funds to accelerate the completion of the game, which currently is running on the aforementioned platforms with basic functionality. This is a rare ICO where the use case is obvious and utility is clear. Once the ICO is done, then you will not have an opportunity to get the SAAVcoin token at this guaranteed price again, or with this bonus. Purchase link and additional information available here.