Bankorus Initial Coin Offering (ICO)

Interviews

by Jessica Amir

Bankorus CEO, Gregory Van den Bergh discusses its initial coin offering (ICO) & plans to create the first artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced robo-advisory platform.


Jessica Amir:
Hi I’m Jessica Amir for the Finance News Network. Joining me from Bankorus is (ICO) CEO and co-founder, Greg Van den Bergh. Hi Greg, welcome.

Gregory Van den Bergh: Thank you so much for having me.

Jessica Amir: Could you just explain what Bankorusactually is?

Gregory Van den Bergh: Bankorus is the world’s first AI based platform for private wealth management, built on a blockchain. It’s a marketplace for high net worth individuals to access crypto, primarily security tokens. We’re based in Asia and currently our software has already been used for the past four years, by over 200,000 private wealth management firms. We are the market leader in China for private wealth management software, and our software everyday handles around $30 billion.

Jessica Amir: I believe you’ve already got some of China’s top advisory firms on board?

Gregory Van den Bergh: Noah Wealth Management, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker NOAH, they’re the largest private wealth management firm in China. And so all of their advisers, as well as clients and people internally, are using a piece of software that we’ve developed to manage their risk, manage their portfolio analysis etc.

Jessica Amir: Now to the ICO itself. How much are you looking to raise, how’s the process going and how can people get involved?

Gregory Van den Bergh: We at ICO focus on the security tokens space, it’s a very fast growing space. However, there’re only a few ICOs that have focused on that, all of them were extremely successful. There is Polymath, which recently listed, they’ve raised $85 million and are currently listed at a $1 billion valuation. We will only be raising $35 million at a $135 million valuationand currently, we are selling our token for about 13 cents per token. For people who would like to get involved, please go to our Telegram group chat, it’s t.me/bankorus, like dinasorus.

Jessica Amir: To the coin itself, how will it actually be used?

Gregory Van den Bergh: Our first use case is the Bankorus token is used as the main network currency, within the market space, within the platform. So we use the token to pay different vendors, that they carry id for verification and accreditation of investors, in our own token. As well as the users can pay for transaction fees with our token, and will receive initially a 50 per cent discount when they use our token.

Secondly, we similar to a private bank, have different tiers of membership members can get first access to new products, different benefits, different concierge services, depending on what level they are in.Thirdly, every single quarter, we take 20 per cent of all the net transaction fees and make it available to the token holders, who have made in the last quarter at least three transactions, to claim back the fees.

Jessica Amir: How will the proceeds from the raising be used?

Gregory Van den Bergh: Primarily we’ll use it for two ways. One is to build out the platform, build out the product and the technology. And the second way is to go global, initially across Asia and then later on to other continents as well.

Jessica Amir: Now to who’s been backing Bankorus, you’ve already got some famous names on board. Tell us about that?

Gregory Van den Bergh: There are a lot of great supporters. The key ones are JD.com, which is the third largest Internet company in the world by revenues. The Amazon of China, they have over 266 million customers using JD.com and they together with us, are building an accelerator for the blockchain. The second great supporter is the former CEO of Morgan Stanley’s private bank. So Morgan Stanley is one of the largest private banks in the world, with over $3 trillion of management. And the former CEO of the private bank of Morgan Stanley is an investor, as well as an adviser to us.

Jessica Amir: There’re thousands of ICO projects, all with varying levels of risk. But just explain why Bankorus is so unique?

Gregory Van den Bergh: First of all, we’re an existing business. We’ve been operating for over four years and we’re the market leader in our niche. We have 200,000 family offices worldwide that are using our software day by day, as well as our software handles over $30 billion of assets under management.

Secondly, we are an experienced team. My co-founder Eagle An, he before built out Standard Chartered for 10 years in China to one of the top foreign banks, in private wealth management in Asia. As well as, he was the acting head of wealth management for CreditEase and he built out CreditEase, which started as a peer-to-peer platform, the first one of its kind in China, into the second largest private wealth management firm in China. So we’re very happy that he is on board as well, and several people with a track record of success doing this.

Jessica Amir: What’s the size of the market opportunity?

Gregory Van den Bergh: Currently the total wealth of high net worth individuals is over US$60 trillion. The amount of that that’s currently in crypto is only $50 billion. So there’s a huge amount of money waiting to be moved into crypto, whether it’s utility tokens like Bitcoin or Ethereum, especially security tokens. Because security tokens that have an actual asset as an underline, such as real estate, private equity, venture capital, are what makes private wealth management firms very very interested, in moving a lot of assets of their clients into crypto. Because a security token is the most trustworthy, efficient and liquid way for people to buy products and handle your investments.

Jessica Amir: Last question Greg. Can participants expectin 2018 and beyond?

Gregory Van den Bergh: For 2018 our goal is to be the main security token platform foirhigh net worth individuals, especially focused on Asia. Beyond that the key vision that we have is that yo, as an individual can own your entire wealth in the form of tokens, whether it’s security tokens, or digital token. And Bankorus, as the main platform the one stop shop where you can buy, as well as manage your entire your wealth.

Jessica Amir: Greg Van den Bergh, thank you so much for the update and good luck with the ICO.

Gregory Van den Bergh: Thank you very much for inviting me.


Ends

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter?

Would you like to receive our daily news to your inbox?