Temple Melville, CEO of The Scotcoin Project CIC and David Low were on hand to answer questions about Scotcoin and crypto in general when they met Dr Lisa Cameron, MP in an APPG (All Party Parliamentary Group) meeting.
This is the text from David Low’s speech:
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is David Low. Also here today is my Scotcoin colleague, Temple Melville.
I’m not sure of the exact format of this meeting, so I’m going to deliver a presentation similar to the one we gave this morning to an audience of Scottish business people and which oriented around the history of Scotcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. Given the diversity of the audience, we took a broad-brush approach and answered questions afterwards.
So, here we go….
Scotcoin was created by a gentleman called Derek Nisbet in 2013 as a crypto for Scotland. It’s timing caught the upswing in crypto awareness and Scottish nationalism and generated a lot of interest amongst independence supporters as well as crypto speculators. It lived on the bitcoin blockchain and, if the truth be told, it wasn’t very user friendly or efficient, but it did have the advantage of being live and widely held and, consequently gained a fair bit of traction in what was and remains an emerging currency class.
2014 was, of course, the Scottish referendum year but it was also the year which saw Alistair Darling eviscerate Alex Salmond over the currency question in two televised debates. One of first thoughts watching the debate was wouldn’t it be great if Scotland had its own crypto currency, more so as currency was a reserved matter under The Scotland Act and crypto wasn’t? It wasn’t until the following year that I became came aware of Scotcoin. Temple told me that its creator, Derek Nisbet had determined he’d bitten off more than he could chew and that he wanted to sell the IP, his holding of Scotcoin as well as a significant amount of unissued currency. He also said wanted to be paid in BTC so, flush with our bitcoin profits we agreed to buy him out.
What we’d actually bought was a Scottish based crypto-currency listed on an international exchange with a market value of over $300 million and in the global ‘top 50’ of cryptos by market capitalisation…… but we’d also become part of a global casino that never closed. Valuations and transaction costs rose ever higher with no cognisance for any underlying fundamentals. It was all about momentum and was destined to end badly at some point in the indeterminate future.
So, what did we do?
We decided to de-list Scotcoin from the exchange to try and shed ourselves of all the speculators jumping on the bandwagon. We decided to re-access what we wanted to do with the token and where we wanted to be positioned on the crypto arc.
So, what did we decide?
After several false starts and costly errors it became obvious that for any currency or crypto to be sustainable it has to be all of a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account. This effectively meant we had to create a new Scotcoin as transaction costs using the bitcoin protocol were now prohibitively expensive. We also considered it crucial that the new token would be around forever and a day and not dependent on any small group of people and after much consideration we elected to use the ethereum blockchain to create 5 billion new Scotcoin tokens. We incentivised holders of the old token to migrate to the new one which took a couple of years and is now complete. We have emerged with around 6,000 holders around the world owning around 2 billion Scotcoin with the balance of 3 billion unissued and held in treasury by The Scotcoin Project CIC.
So, what is The Scotcoin Project…….?
TSP is a community interest company registered in Scotland. It has an asset lock in its articles of association in favour of seven specified Scottish based charities all operating in the UK third sector. This means that on a dissolution of the company the assets would be dispersed to these nominated charities.
At this point it is probably worth mentioning that there are now more than 24,000 crypto-currencies in existence listed in over 600 exchanges. To put that in some kind of perspective there are only around 200 or so government issued fiat currencies in existence of which the USD dominates. A fiat currency is one issued by a central bank which is not backed by a physical asset like gold or silver.
Scotcoin distinguishes itself in this ever-expanding crowd by being firmly anchored in the third sector ethical space with a focus on food, clothing and shelter for the disadvantaged amongst us and although it has a Scottish base it also has a global outlook.
The TSP modus operandi is centred around its Advisory Panel and the controlled distribution of Scotcoin to those most in need. It has been likened to quantitative easing from the bottom up wherein those with the least get the most and those with the most get nothing.
You may now be asking what can you do with the Scotcoin you’ve been given which takes us back to the three defining characteristics of any currency; the ability to save, to spend and to price goods and services?
In pursuit of these objectives TSP has developed a business model and means of delivery of these requirements..
Scotscan
Firstly, we have developed an app called Scotscan which is available on both IOS and Android devices. This enables the instantaneous transfer of Scotcoin between any two parties who have downloaded the app. Effectively, this means holders can pay for goods and services with no transaction charge and recipients can either retain the Scotcoin received or sell it on the exchange.
In short, you will be able to save, spend or price Scotcoin in exchange for good and services delivered by our preferred partners.
Listing
Secondly and subject to prevailing market conditions we plan to re-list Scotcoin on an established exchange later this year. Our intention is to pair the currency against Tether which is a USD stable coin. That is to say, the value of a Tether token should always be the same as a USD and the value of Scotcoin will be priced against the USD.
I mentioned earlier there were over 24,000 existing crypto-currencies with a total market value of over $1 trillion. However, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether represent around 75% of the total market capitalisation. These are the tokens of importance and significance and which the TSP Advisory Panel considered important for Scotcoin to align with. A meaningful number of the other tokens can be properly described as shitcoins as they have no obvious plausible or commercial reason for their existence.
The current working exchange rate for each Scotcoin token is five cents which would put an opening valuation on the currency of $250m of which $100m is already issued and the balance held unissued in treasury by TSP. As part of our market management requirement there will also be a commitment at Listing not to release more than 20 million of Scotcoin in any given year. The beneficiaries of these controlled releases will be determined by our Advisory Panel working in conjunction with the TSP executive board.
Post listing, a new TSP CEO will be appointed with a mandate to roll out our preferred partner programme wherein national and international companies sign up to accept Scotcoin as an alternative means of payment for a range of goods and services across the economy but with a focus on food, clothing and shelter. This means that individuals and organisations will be able to exchange their Scotcoin for these goods and services. Our trial programmes and market research confirm a healthy interest in participation given the receipt of value, market liquidity and a transparent pricing platform.
