HEROTOKEN – Future Bangking Southeast Asia

What is Hero?

Hero is the banking future that provides secured loans to the non-bank consumer and underbanked in Southeast Asia. With the launch of its crypto-coin unit called the Hero Jeton, Hero plans to expand into uncollateralized credits based on blockchain. Based on venture capital such as Softbank, Alibaba and 500 Startups, the organization began operating in the Philippines in 2015 and helped because thousands of Filipinos get access to affordable loans.

What is Hero Token?

HERO is built as an ERC20-based symbol on the Ethereum blockchain and is identified by the Hero symbol. Selling a token is an event where the crypto-currency project sells part of its tokens to early adopters and enthusiasts in exchange for funds. Hero Token allows the community to participate in the success story of PawnHero, rather than limiting it to a small number, selected from traditional venture capital funds. By issuing Hero's tokens, tokenholders will benefit from the future success of PawnHero's. A token sale is fast, transparent and efficient for that exact purpose.

This is a token for banking in South East Asia. To under the HERO Token, you first need to understand the broader climate in South East Asia. It seems like a lot of older crypto folk from the US and western Europe don’t know or understand the South Asian markets and their dynamics. However, blockchains are global technologies, and increasingly, we’re seeing a lot of new products and innovation coming from other regions as well. HERO is a token that squarely belongs to South East Asia.

Firstly – the people and internet

You’re talking about twice the size of the United States, so there’s a significant market there. There is good, but not great internet penetration. This is tricky to quantify but let me try. If the region is too early, then there won’t be enough traction. If it’s too late, there is not much growth. Around 30-50% is, in my view, the best time to enter these markets because everyone knows about the power of the internet by now, and there’s still ample growth opportunities because not everyone is connected yet.

Secondly, the banking sector

In this region, the banking penetration already lags internet penetration, and the gap is only going to grow. With mobile phones, it is much easier to get access to the internet than to get a bank account.

As you can see, the banking services penetration severely lags internet penetration, especially when you look at the growth rates. In addition, you can see the very poor penetration of credit cards in these markets. In such a market, the use of cryptocurrencies as a store of value and means of payment is pretty evident. Look at the total internet users snapshot this time.

You can see how large the populations are, and how much of a market scope there is. If the internet growth outpaces banking growth as it did over the last few years, how will the markets change? There is a clear need for blockchain technology solutions that are digital for payments and wealth storage.

How it works

It is a leading fintech company native to South East Asia, and helps with providing credit locally. They are taking on the huge lending industry, which is entrenched in its old ways and doesn’t leverage the power of the internet.

The way it works is simple. On the borrowers side, it provides loans, first collateralized and then expanding into uncollateralized ones, so borrowers have instant access to credit. On the lender side, it allows investors from across the world to access a booming and growing economy of South East Asia and make much higher returns on their money than their usually Western markets like US and western Europe.

The team has already demonstrated its capability with a PawnHERO token, which is a different blockchain-based take on the whole pawn shop experience. However, the team has much bigger plans, and is therefore looking for a token sale to help expand and grow their business. As a fintech pioneer in the region, it is working with limited data on reputation and credit scoring algorithms that will help it retain its lead in the market. Here’s a quick infographic on how the process will work.

Before we describe the full project and the problems it is solving, let’s look at some information about the company itself. It is operating out of Asia, and already has two of the best known venture capital players behind it – Softbank and Alibaba. For those who may not know, Softbank is a Japanese juggernaut with assets of over $200 billion, with serious ambitions in the tech world. It has backed some of the largest software companies and beyond in Asia and even in the United States/Silicon Valley. Alibaba is a Chinese ecommerce whale that is constantly looking to expand its footprint into newer markets from India to South East Asia.

ICO

The HERO token will undergo an ICO so that the token is distributed among participants. Unlike many other ICOs on the market today, the HERO ICO will distribute 80% of the tokens to the public and only keep 15% for the team. This is a good move, because the people need to take the risk-return in the market and will help investors who put money into the project at such an early stage.

With an ICO, the team wants to take that technology and market expertise and apply it not just to pawn-based loans but to uncollateralized loans. Now historically this area is fraught with risk and lots of investors have gotten burned in the past. However, HERO has a big advantage – blockchain.

With information about the loans being put up publicly, the team has access to a lot of data and past history of payments. In addition, they are developing systems that predict credit worthiness for the markets where credit scores are not widespread. The team is building out a reputation-based identity system on the blockchain combined with knowledge about credit risk. This is a powerful combination.

The company will be responsible for building more complex machine learning models for credit worthiness with information from a lot of sources like employment history and social media profiles. It is also good to remember that countries like Philippines and Indonesia are seeing rapidly growing use of crypto like Bitcoin and they local people are well versed with these digital currencies.

HERO Token

Unlike many other ICOs that are looking more and more like a money grab, the team has a very specific vision that it wants to execute. The team has local market knowledge with real products on the ground. Almost as a good faith agreement, the team is selling 80% of all HERO tokens that will exist in the ICO, and keeping only 15% for the team. The rest is for advisers and early supporters. This is a good deal for investors as they control a significant majority of the tokens that will ever be created.

The cost of a HERO token in the ICO is 1/200 ETH, i.e. for 1 ETH you get 200 HERO tokens. The team has a cap of 250,000 ETH on the fundraising, which at a price of $300 per ETH comes out to $75,000,000 or $75 million for the 80% tokens, or $93.75 million for the full market capitalization. This may seem high compared to some recent projects. However, given the market size and potential, it might just become another unicorn coming out of Asia, especially with the kind of backing the project has already seen.

Token distribution