PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF AND YOUR PROJECT TIMECOINPROTOCOL

My name is Masato Kakamu. I’m CEO of a company called Globalway Inc. in Japan. 

This company I founded about 17 years ago back in 2004. Globalway is an internet company.

We do B2C business to consumer and B2B business to business and C2C consumer to consumer internet businesses. That business is successful and we went public back in 2016 and we have employees more than 100 and we are doing well in Japan.

We came up with a blockchain project idea about running a skill-sharing type of economy platform called TimeTicket.

We want to decentralise TimeTicket but I thought that the sharing economy market itself has a lot of problems not only the skill sharing side.

Basically, big companies dominate the market and the small players cannot survive. And then they take a lot of fees from the users and all the data, trading histories and review data, are kept in that particular marketplace.

The users cannot export their trading histories and review data. So they are “locked in” to that particular application.

We are thinking, to decentralise the centralised system. To decentralise the sharing economy protocol.

That’s why we started the project called “TimeCoinProtocol”.

There are some regulations in Japan. It was difficult for us to issue tokens and sell tokens and trade tokens in Japan because Globalway is a listed company in Japan.

So we did a lot of studies and then we thought that Zug in Switzerland was the best place for us to start the business.

That’s why we set up the company in Switzerland.

It’s called TimeTicket GmbH- the company name. TimeTicket GmbH, our Swiss subsidiary runs this blockchain project.

So the TimeCoinProtocol decentralises the sharing economy platform. Even though we created the best sharing economy protocol, it is difficult for third-party application providers to build dApps and then keep business running.

Why? Because it costs too much money to acquire users.

By running internet businesses for a long time, we know user acquisition costs, to try to maintain active users, are very difficult and costly.

So what we are thinking is we also ourselves need to create some dApps to acquire enough active users so third-party dApp providers can get benefit out of it.

We have TimeTicket which generates several million dollars revenue every year and our business has grown more than 30 times over three years and we have 400,000 users right now and we want to export the user data – of course with users permission – to the protocol side in the future.

Also we are going to build another skill-sharing dApp running on the TimeCoinProtocol (like TimeTicket) for international versions like Chinese, Hindi and English.

And then we can acquire a lot of users in the international market so third party dApp providers can get benefits.

Also we started a dApp called “eSportsStars” which is an esports matching application.

We had originally released it back in October last year and we have about 10,000 users under test marketing and its user-base is growing and we had contracted with some creators and VTubers and we have a YouTube channel and we already have 100,000 followers which is registration and it’s getting popular.

So we are looking for creative VTubers who are good at esports, gaming, animation and so on.

After we have gained a lot of users and popularity we’ll open the protocol to third party dApp providers to increase the pace of creating the TimeCoin ecosystem.

We set up a company in Switzerland then our project needs to be reviewed and approved by FINMA, the Swiss financial regulatory, so we submitted our white paper to FINMA and we need to get an opinion from them so it’s not illegal to issue the token and sell the token.

It took us about half a year for them to review and they asked us some questions and we answered and then we need to find a bank in Switzerland which we need to explain our project is good and legal in Switzerland and we are not violating any law in other countries.

We had do to that kind of process but at the end it was a good experience and it was good for our project and investors I think.

TELL US MORE ABOUT THE ESPORTSTARS ESPORTS PLATFORM. WILL THE CHAMPIONSHIPS BE HELD ON THIS PLATFORM? HOW DO YOU PLAN TO DEVELOP ESPORTSTARS?

EsportStars is a matching platform. We want to be an esports platform.

We define the creator as an esports professional player, game item creators, YouTubers and VTubers.

They can sell services like playing games, selling goods, selling game related items which can be used and traded on various games.

An investor can purchase the services from them so the platform is a matching platform where people can trade the services and the goods.

NFT comes into play to make sure the valuable items which creators create can be traded safely and they maintain the value itself whenever it is used and traded.

We can create the place where the creators can make sure their digital items can be traded safely and there is no fraud and they can make ensure their copyright so that’s one thing.

DeFi comes into play as well.

Usually creators put the contents on, for example YouTube, or they create items so the middle man takes a lot of money from them.

We want to create a place where we only charge a little bit of fee.

A fan can “cheer” for creators they love, it’s like “tipping” or it’s called “superchatting”.

Usually a platform like YouTube charges 50% or maybe more when a fan superchats or tips the creator but we try to replace that system, where they can earn.

So the fan, supporter or sponsor can get an extra token.

They can earn the token when they do the superchat or tipping.

It works like “staking” when a fan likes a particular creator.

 You do the staking like a superchat so deposit to a particular creator.

The particular creator cannot withdraw the token, it belongs to the supporter or fan.

The creator needs to do some activities to increase their popularity.

We are creating a matrix to calculate how much extra token they can earn.

After the calculation the extra token will be pooled for a certain creator.

The creator can get 50% of the earned token and the supporter also can get 50%.

Both can get the benefit by the creator activity based DeFi. They can earn around 24% of the extra token by staking, which is a great benefit.

We say “creator activity-based DeFi”.

More people post the videos, they sell the services and the fans can also get benefits besides purchasing services and goods. It’s like gaming.

It’s fun and you can study who will be a good creator to invest in and the creator can get the 50% of the earned token and you can also get 50%, which is great.

You are helping the creator to do more activities and you can also get some benefit out of it.

Of course, if you want to switch the creator who you want to cheer for, of course, you can do that all the time.

That’s the strategy we will take.

So that kind of matching platform.

Also anybody can start or organise a tournament without technical knowledge.

They can manage the tournaments, they can find the sponsors, like corporates, and they can find the fans to participate.

A lot of esports professional teams, they work very hard to earn revenue from corporations – it’s very difficult to do.

We are trying to create a place where a professional team can find the fans, attract a lot of fans to participate in their events, usually an esports tournament.

When they organise an esports tournament and they need a sponsor and the fans will participate, a lot of times there are prizes and then the esports team can sell their t-shirt and their team-related goods. That will be ideal.

The esports market is governed and ruled by the esports gaming companies so I think we can create a place where it’s a more user-based platform where people can freely trade the items and services using blockchain technology and token economics. That’s what I’m aiming for.

And the same idea applies to other dApps which will be open to third parties.

DOES THE TIMECOINPROTOCOL TEAM PLAN TO LIST THE TIMECOIN TOKEN ON BINANCE? IF SO, WHEN?

We are definitely planning to be listed on major exchanges and Binance will be ideal.

We are considering and negotiating with several exchanges and also, as you already know, we are already listed on BitForex and BitMart and Biki so we are thinking about being listed on bigger exchanges, more major exchanges to increase the trading volume of TimeCoin.

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF YOUR PROJECT AND WHO ARE THE COMPETITORS FOR TIMECOINPROTOCOL?

I think we have partial competitors there are some projects, they do decentralised sharing economy protocol and there are some esports and animation-related projects I’ve seen but a lot of projects, they just raise money and they create a product but they just won’t be popular after that.

Why?

Because they raise money and they make products but they are not thinking very hard about how to run the business.

Unless they get returns, they cannot continue to run the business.

So I think it’s very important for the project to think very hard about how to create healthy token economics and the business itself and then try to make it as decentralised as possible as technology adapts.

I think it’s great if we can decentralise everything for a business project and all that but if it costs us 5 times to do it and it’s slow or it’s not reliable then maybe it’s not a good idea for us to decentralise every single thing on the protocol.

The most important thing is, if we raise money from investors and we need to make sure our protocol works fine and then a lot of people get the benefit for a long time.

I think we don’t have a strong competitor in the market.

It’s much more important for us to focus and make sure users are happy and they keep using our protocol and the investors are happy as well.

Then the third-party dApp providers can come in and then they can create the ecosystem for us and then it works globally.

And also the dApp we create, it’s kind of a new idea. Esports is a new market there is no esports matching platform existing so there is no huge leader in the market. Even the centralised market is a new market.

We need to create a marketplace where we can utilise blockchain technology and also NFT and DeFi type of functionalities to make sure we have an edge over the existing players.

I think that’s the most important thing.

We have a track record as well.

TimeTicket already has 400,000 users and it’s growing very fast with TimeTicket generating several million dollars revenue and it’s going to grow very very quickly.

We have eSportStars which was released about five months ago and we have more than 10,000 users and if we add more games, we are planning to add over 1000 games, and we want to add more than 30 languages then we build the functionality where people can easily manage tournaments and the people can trade goods and services and I think it’s going to be a huge hit in the global market.

WHY DO YOU LAUNCH TOKEN SALES THIS TIME EVEN THOUGH YOUR PROJECT HELD AN IEO ON BITFOREX LAST YEAR?

We are lucky, I think, because we have GlobalWay, a parent company and we have TimeTicket Inc., which is generating a lot of revenue.

We got equity funding of about 4 million dollars.

We had several rounds of equity funding.

We used part of the equity fund to invest in our blockchain project.

So even though we issued the token and went for IEO, we did not need to sell our token prior to IEO.

The token holders are Globalway, TimeTicket Inc., executives and employees and some advisers.

So we don’t have investors yet.

That is why we decided to go IEO for more of a marketing purpose.

We wanted the people to know our project and what the TimeCoinProtocol is.

So we set up TimeCoin, one TimeCoin as one US dollar and then we went IEO.

The price went up more than 1000 US dollars.

They are now traded at around 200 US dollars.

It was 200 times or 1000 times at the peak of the return.

Anyway, we thought it’s a good timing for us to raise money from token sale but we wanted investors to hold the token for a long time so we didn’t want to sell the token at a high price so we decided to discount the token price more than 90% from the BitForex price so we are hoping people can hold our token for a long time.

That is why we decided to sell our token at this time so it’s kind of an exclusive opportunity because you can purchase TimeCoin at a very low price.

Also what we are trying to do is increase liquidity.

Initially we are listed on BitForex and then we selected to be listed on BitMart and Biki and you will probably see more news coming as we are listed on other major exchanges.

Hopefully, we want our trading volume to increase and a lot of people buy and then hold the token for a long time, that’s what we are aiming for.

PLEASE TELL US ABOUT THE GOALS THAT YOU ARE PLANNING TO ACHIEVE THIS YEAR.

What we need to do is we need to enhance eSportStars functionalities aggressively.

There are a lot of things to do.

We need to enhance the tournament management system which right now just works with a certain SNS but we need to do more web-based like Wechat, Line, WhatsApp and a lot of application integration we need to do so people can choose what SNS can be integrated with their tournaments.

Also we need to track down who wins which tournaments and how much money they earn and then we need to rank them as to how strong they are in each game so it’s kind of fun to see who is strong and who is winning and so on.

That’s the first thing we do. Also we need to build the matching part so we need to enhance the profile part so people can trade services and goods.

Along with these things we need to build DeFi and NFT functionalities.

We need to solve the gas problem because we are ether-based (ethereum) which is OK, we can just use the off- chain solution.

We will probably tie up with other companies to do this but we don’t need to worry about the gas problem and so on.

We also need to enhance the TimeTicket side where we need to release the dApp in the near future because TimeTicket already has 400,000 users so it’s easier for us to leverage the user base as well.

Then we need to engage contracts with a lot of YouTubers and VTubers.

VTubers, we look for VTubers globally, our focus languages are: English, Hindi, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic and, of course, Chinese. These languages are very important.

Of course, because we are a Japan-based company, we do some Japanese VTubers but the international market is very important so we are looking for a lot of VTubers who like to play the games, who like esports, Animation and so on, so we need to do that.

Before the development, we have to do the test marketing on YouTube and Twitch, so our creators do the performance on YouTube and Twitch to gain their popularity and then we need to build the App – like a video App where they can get the benefit so we are trying to build video applications, video streaming applications which these creators, other creators, they don’t need to contract with us, but we have our own creators, but anybody basically can post videos on a streaming platform and then they can get the benefit of TimeCoin as they perform so these things are what we need to do.

We are aiming for one million users.

We need to hit one million users as soon as possible after the token sale.

It might take some time but we need to do it soon so we can leverage the revenue and the business track records to do more things.

TELL US ABOUT THE MAIN USE CASES OF THE TIMECOIN TOKEN.

TimeCoin can be used as a settlement token on our protocol and, as I already explained, has a DeFi function so creator activity-based or creator popularity-based DeFi function so it means that extra token can be earned by cheering or super-chatting or tipping the creators.

So, as you cheer for the creator and the creator grows – you get more return and another thing is NFT so people can trade digital goods using our token as well.