Hey guys,

As some of you know, I spent last week in Singapore in order to meet with the COSS team. I made the decision to travel to Singapore after the UI release on 14th of January. I was very disappointed with the product they delivered but I still believed in the fundamentals of the project. However, I decided to stop trusting them blindly and to go there myself to be able to make an educated decision. My reasoning was that, given the amount of money I have invested in the project, any extra information I could get would make the trip worthwhile. On top of that, Singapore is a great destination, that’s what I call a win-win situation! In this post, I’ll attempt to sum-up my week there and also give my sentiment and expectations about COSS. But first a few disclaimers: – Unlike the team interviews I posted last week, this post only reflects my personal opinion and COSS is by no mean associated with this post. -I am not a financial advisor, blabla, you know the drill .

I) Wait, wait a minute, we don’t even know what COSS is?

COSS stands for Crypto One Stop Solution, it is, at the core, a cryptocurrency exchange which aims to facilitate mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. They are based in Singapore, which is one of the friendliest and permissive country for cryptocurrencies, the Singaporean deputy Prime Minister actually stated on the 6th of February there will be no crypto ban in Singapore. What makes COSS stand out?

-COSS tokens! As a COSS holder, you will forever receive your share of 50% of the fees paid to the platform. They call that Fee Split Allocation (FSA) and it is written in a smart contract, so there’s no way they ever change it. That includes trading fees, withdrawal fees and hopefully in the future, merchant credit card fees! They made sure it does not fall into the security category, which would create a bunch of problems. (see my interview with Praveena Prabha)

-Fees! While trading fees start at 0.2%, which is already lower than Bittrex’s 0.25% but higher than Binance’s 0.10%, they gradually down to 0.04% based on how much you traded over the last 30 days. If you trade a lot, COSS is the cheapest available option.

-FIAT! It is coming in March 2018 and that is a game changer! We have all been through the process of depositing FIAT on BitStamp to end up sending ETH to Binance, it takes forever and it is scaring away newcomers. They expect a big afflux of new users once FIAT is implemented, which should boost volume and FSA.

A payment gateway for merchants. They will release Point Of Sale 2.0 in Q3 2018, which will help merchant integrate cryptocurrency payments. This is a big step towards mass adoption and it will help generating fees. (Which we obviously love as COSS holders)

A credit card allowing users to spend their cryptocurrencies in “Real life”. Again, that would generate tons of fees and drastically increase FSA. That is also a big step towards mass adoption.

II) So what the heck did you do for a week in Singapore?

I landed on Sunday evening (28th of January) and as soon as I arrived at my hotel, I received a DM from Rune on Telegram asking me if I could have dinner with him. I was exhausted but could not pass on that opportunity to meet in a casual context. We went to an Italian restaurant, which was nice, even though French food is obviously king ;). He welcomed me very kindly and we talked openly about COSS, what they did wrong during the UI launch and a lot of other stuff. I instantly got a very positive feeling about Rune, his answers seemed genuine and he hinted me how ambitious COSS was, which obviously pleases me! All in all, this first meeting was great, as it allowed me to break the ice and I feel like it helped me to ask everything I wanted during the week.

On Monday, I had my first official meeting with Rune, I feel like it was a great interview. It lasted 90 minutes, we could cover almost every important topic and I could ask most of the community questions. I’ll post the links to all of the interviews at the end of this 

On Tuesday I met with Praveena Prabha, their head of compliance. On top of being extremely nice, she just seems like the right person for the job. Her previous job involved managing a team of 6 compliance officers in a payment company which was slowly getting involved into cryptocurrencies. We talked a lot about regulation and she seemed quite optimistic about the upcoming Singaporean regulation. She confirmed that FIAT will be coming in March through credit card with “fair fees”. With Coinbase at 4% and Bitstamp at 5%, anything in between would be good, anything lower would be great and anything higher would be a disappointment. She stated that it is extremely important for COSS to be as compliant as possible and that it will definitely be one of their main advantage in the future.

On Wednesday, I met with Mong Suan Yee, their new Engineering Director. I was kinda scared about this meeting because I have a background in Economics and Law (well, I dropped out) but I am not technical. That was actually her first question to me: “Are you technical?” Unfortunately not. It was great of her to ask and I think she explained everything in a really simple, yet accurate, way. This meeting was by far the highlight of my week! Of course, I had a great time and I felt reassured by my meetings with Rune and Praveenah, but it is easy to be fooled by charisma and sympathy. Mong believes in Code and in perfection, there is no bullshitting, always straight to the point. She came here for the challenge, she came here to build something great, and she clearly stated it. This point was clearly decisive it finished convincing me HODLing was the right decision. My only regret is that I am not “technical”. I’m sure those who are lucky to be, must have fascinating discussions with her. Ah, and did I mention, at her previous job (BLoyalty), she built a dev team and they ended up building an engine able to handle 5M users?

I took Thursday off, went to Gardens by the Bay in the morning and to the rooftop of Marina Bay Sands in the afternoon. Singapore is one of my favourite destination and it was great to have a bit of time off to enjoy it.

On Friday I had my last meeting with Rune, I asked him some community questions, we talked more about the engine, about their competition and he displayed the massive ambitions he has for COSS. They want to be able to handle way over 100M daily volume with their new engine. He also announced the release of their new merchant gateway (POS 2.0) in Q3 2018 alongside with a new affiliate program. Short after this interview I had to catch my flight back to Europe, exhausted but extremely happy I made real this crazy idea of flying to Singapore to meet with the COSS team.

III) Hum, ok cool. What were your expectations coming in? Were they met?

I had one goal coming-in to Singapore, which was making sure I was happy to keep investing in COSS. For that to be the case, I needed to make sure of a few things: -FIAT coming for sure in March. -New engine able to handle a decent volume coming at the same time as FIAT. -Steady improvements on current engine and UI, which is still far from optimal. -Two in house developers coming in.

These were, in my opinion, the requirements for a potential bright future for COSS and for me to keep investing in the project. Let’s check what I found out!

-FIAT is indeed coming in March, first it will be through credit cards only and as COSS gets licensed in Singapore (which could happen as early as April, check my interview with Praveena Prabha), they will be able to offer wire transfers too. Fees are expected to be “fair”, I will not speculate too much on that, but I hope fair means between 4 and 5%.

-New engine will arrive gradually and they will build on top of the old engine. They are actually aiming to build a super engine able to cope with Binance’s like volumes. Rune stated the engine might not be 100% new by end of March but it will definitely be able to cope with the increased volume.

-Mong confirmed they are continually working on improving the UI. Their first in house UI developer arrived on Monday the 5th of February, which should help! Since the UI launch a lot of small fixes and improvements were implemented which is great. I expect this to get better and better with the new UI dev and as the dev team gets bigger.

-When I left, only 2 in house developers were expected. Mong and Jay indeed came in. What we did not expect is that they are actually building a much bigger team, which should be in house in the next 2 months. The team will be: 3 back-end engineers, 1 dev ops, 1 UI/UX and 2 front-end engineers. Icing on the cake? Mong is a super dev who has already built a super engine and managed the team in charge of building it. (Engine able to cope with 5 million users at BLoyalty). When I left Singapore, there were also 5 compliance officers in their offices.

So on these points I got reassured and my expectations were actually exceeded. However, there were also some nice surprises!

First thing is marketing, it was clear they would not hire a marketing team before they would be fully satisfied with their product. We thought the marketing budget was going to be 500k. However, Rune stated that it is going to be a lot more than that given the 500k initial budget was based on 0.05$ token. Moreover, they already started some small marketing operations: COSS will be visible on advertising panels during 6 Premier League games in February. An award winning advertisement maker will also shoot a commercial for them once they start marketing.

There will be a 1M dollars trading promo starting on the 16th of February. Usually trading promos grant around 100k to the top traders. My guess is that it will have a nice impact on the volume. I also feel like it shows how ambitious COSS is and the fact it is able to offer promos for 1 million dollars this early in the project is very promising. The Point Of Sale 2.0 is coming in Q3 2018, I did not expect it to be released this year. If a lot of online merchants start accepting COSS that can increase FSA nicely but more importantly raise awareness of the exchange.

The regulation process in Singapore seems to be going very well, COSS might soon be the most compliant exchange in the world.

Finally, Mong told me she has experience in mobile apps and that it is something she would really like to do in the future. Right now, the focus is obviously on the engine so there is no timeline for that, but good to know SuperMong will be ready when the time comes.

I always considered COSS as a niche exchange; they would do somewhat well because of FIAT and compliance, but struggle to reach the volume of top exchanges because of lack of ambitions and small dev team. I realize now that I was wrong. I feel like they struggled at the beginning cause their ICO was not a success, they raised 3M when they hoped to raise 50M. That obviously limited their options at the beginning, now that volume has increased a bit and that the tokens are worth much more, they have way enough money to fund their ambitions and I believe this is what we are starting to see.

IV) We get it dude, you’re bullish but how do they fare against their competition?

I will only talk about Binance and Kucoin here as they are the 2 biggest exchanges offering their own tokens.

Kucoin, based in Hong Kong currently offers a 50% FSA to KCS holders, which will gradually go down to 15% over the next 2 years. Their trading fees are 0.1%. They used to offer an affiliate program but they cancelled it recently. Their market cap sits at 555M, while their daily volume is at around 85M at the time I am writing this. All in all Kucoin is a well-established exchange that used a very aggressive marketing to achieve fast growth. Two things make me lean towards investing in COSS rather than in Kucoin: Growth potential is obviously much higher for COSS and I find it rather shady that they just cancelled their affiliate program without notice when they did not need it anymore. Ah, and FSA is “only” gonna be 15% while COSS holders will enjoy a full 50%.

Binance is one of the top Cryptocurrency and they reached that spot very fast.

They launched BNB as a mean to decrease trading fees for BNB users. The idea is that you can pay your fees with BNB tokens at any time and enjoy a 50% discount; however, this discount will once again be gradually reduced and will end up at 0% after 5 years. Their trading fees are 0.10%, but, as we saw, can be reduced through BNB. Their market cap is at 855M and their daily volume is a staggering 2 billion at the time I write these lines. Binance is not really a competitor, as they do not offer any kind of FSA. However, they are a top-notch exchange and should be the target for COSS. Their exchange runs super smoothly and looks much nicer than Kucoin.

Bittrex announced that they would implement FIAT in the future. There is no timeline about that, so I do not see it happening in the near future. In addition, they have 0.25% trading fees.

Decentralized exchanges have no possibility to add FIAT, which is a deal breaker to me.

I believe COSS is in a really nice spot at the moment, the market cap is really low and room for growth is huge. They are on their way to become the most compliant exchange in the world which will probably be very important in the next few years. They also offer the best possible fees for big traders (0.04%) and the 50% FSA is unmatched. They are also planning to offer many different services like the payment gateway and credit cards for users. However, and this is what makes it such an interesting investment, we are far from being there yet. The exchange still does not feel great and we’ve been disappointed in the past. After what I saw last week, I am more confident than ever in the fact COSS will be able to face the upcoming challenges, but the task is huge.

V) Expectations and conclusion:

I expect and hope to see a lot of small improvements to the UI and engine in February, I think the price should be relatively stable until the 1M trading promo starts kicking in. If at this point the engine runs smoothly, I believe it can snowball hard. Soon after the trading promo, March is coming and Rune will likely make a Medium post around this time to announce a date. If it mimics what happened with the UI launch we could see a steady price rise in the weeks preceding the FIAT launch. If everything goes well, and that’s a big IF, the exchange will be on track for greatness: -They will start listing a lot more coins because the engine will be able to handle the increased traffic, so we might see some NEO, XRB and others in the near future. – They will be able to work on their other projects, which will truly make COSS the one stop solution.

As you might have guessed, I’m extremely bullish on COSS atm, but well aware the risks are high. Once again, I’m not a financial advisor at all and I’m just giving my personal opinion after one week with the team.

English is not my mother tongue, I apologize for any discomfort it might have caused 😉

Thanks a lot for reading! If you believed my judgement was not too clouded and enjoyed the read, consider upvoting for visibility 😉