Blockshipping ICO Review: A comprehensive review and analysis on Blockshipping ICO, which aims to disrupt the shipping container industry.
This represents the writer’s personal opinions and does not – in any way- constitute a recommendation of an investment or financial advice. Please assume caution when investing in cryptocurrencies and do so at your own risk, as it is extremely volatile and you can lose your money.
Overview
Blockshipping is looking to create the first real-time registry of shipping containers that connects global stakeholders in the shipping industry. The goal of Blockshipping’s blockchain-based solution is to capture the full global inventory of registered containers and track every single shipping container in real-time. This would potentially result in tremendous cost savings for the industry as well as a significant reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emission.
Blockshipping will solve the following issues plaguing the shipping industry:
Lack of Co-ordination: The absence of a real-time registry of shipping containers has resulted in a huge number of containers being moved around unnecessarily, resulting additional operational costs and a wastage of business resources.
Over Supply of Carriers: The global shipping industry faces continuous pressures to reduce their costs, owing to an oversupply of vessel capacity.
Huge Carbon Footprint: The shipping industry produces approximately 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. There are increasing efforts by the European Union (EU) to cap CO2 emissions, which could increase capital costs across the shipping industry.
Under-Utilised Shipping Containers: A huge inefficiency of the shipping industry is the transportation of empty or half-full containers since there is little transparency in the tracking process, or at all. This leads to a reduction in the potential revenue generating process.
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Applications
The core of Blockshiping’s solution is the Global Shared Container Platform (GSCP), which plans to provide an asset registry for shipping containers that is powered by blockchain technology. The GSCP platform enables carriers, beneficial cargo owners (BCOs) and terminal operators to achieve cost savings based on real-time information exchange enabled by blockchain technology.
GSCP will be built on Microsoft’s ‘The Coco Framework’, which is an open-source system that enables high-scale, confidential blockchain networks. The GSCP platform will have 3 main features:
- Global Container Registry: Establishment of the global container registry – thereby optimising greybox- and street-turn-strategies across the industry
- Ownership Records: Recording of change of ownership of containers and custodianship and thereby reducing losses for companies financing containers
- Exchanges: Internal exchanges of services between users and payments transactions (clearing and settlement) based on an internal GSCP token
Here is the implementation plan of their proposed technology for the GSCP platform (and sensor-tracking):
Unique Differentiator
- Blockchain Solution for Shipping Containers: There is no direct competitors for the niche market that Blockshipping is focusing on. There are a few other players that have some functional overlaps with Blockshipping, but are not offering a complete solution as compared to Blockshipping. Here’s the comparison below:
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Team
The core team leading Blockshipping looks strong, amassing more than 75 years of container shipping experience. CEO and Founder – Peter Ludvigsen – is born and bred in the shipping industry, entering many verticals with established positions in some of the largest shipping companies. He was the former Chief Investment Officer (CIO) for Maersk, UASC and Ports America. The COO – Christian Gyntelberg – has senior management credentials from Maersk and DHL, with extensive hands-on experience in leading both commercial and operational departments. Blockshipping’s CTO – Jesper Vedelsby – has more than 20 years’ experience as a CTO and technical architect within the shipping, airline and energy sectors.
Advisors
Blockshipping is advised by veterans in both the shipping industry and the blockchain space. Jesper is the Chariman of Unifeeder Board and had an illustrious career in Maersk, serving as the senior Vice President in Maersk Singapore and also the Group Vice President of A.P. Moller Maersk. In the technological front, Bo Hembaek is a software engineer that has founded multiple software development businesses and also served as a member of IBM European Software Advisory Board. Bridget Cosgrave is the Founder and President of Every European Digital. She is an entrepreneur and angel investor for companies with Internet of Things (IOT), E-Commerce and Telecommunications platforms and services. Since 2016, she is focused on the Internet of Ships.
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Traction
Blockshipping has raised funds totaling a modest $350,000 from private investors and their personal network. Additionally, they receive start-up funding from, and is supported by the Danish Maritime Foundation.
Roadmap
Here is the roadmap for Blockshipping:
GSCP Development Roadmap
Blockshipping’s GSCP platform began development on the last quarter of 2017 and is expected to operationally-ready for launch on the first quarter of 2019.
Token Economics & Utility
An interesting feature of Blockshipping is that it separates two key functions via the use of 2 tokens; the Container Crypto Coin (CCC) is the dividend-paying token used for the ICO while the Container Platform Token (CPT) is the utility token used for transactions on the GSCP platform. (See also: Beginner’s Guide to ICO Investing: How to Participate in ICOs)
1. Container Crypto Coin (CCC)
CCC is the external token that is ERC20-compliant and will be issued to investors in the ICO. CCC is a revenue-sharing token that confers the rights of monthly dividends to token holders, generated from the gross revenue of Blockshipping’s operations. A unique part about CCC is that Blockshipping will create a mechanism to stabilize its token prices post-ICO, reducing risks for token holders if prices plummet by too much. This mechanism is called ‘Market Maker Fund’.
Market Maker Fund
The Market Maker Fund (MMF) will provide price stability to ensure that the market price of its tokens do not fall below a pre-determined price. 45% of the funds raised during the ICO will be kept in the MMF and it will guarantee a floor price of CCC. Token holders who bought their tokens during the pre- sale or the public ICO can, at any time, exchange their CCC to USD at the floor price. It must be mentioned that the MMF is temporary; after achieving several milestones and demonstrating the market viability of Blockshipping’s solution, the MMF will be phased out and all the funds will be transferred to Blockshipping to support further development of the GSCP platform.
The funds generated through the ICO will be allocated as such:
It must be pointed out that the founding team members are only allocated 5% of the overall CCC supply, which makes Blockshipping the rare few projects that we’ve come across with a relatively low team allocation. The benchmark for team allocation for ICO’s is usually in the ranges of 15% – 20%. This is a positive indicator since ICOs with a high team allocation may seem greedy.
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2. Container Platform Token (CPT)
CPT is a utility token that will be used within the GCSP platform as an internal currency, used for the payment of transaction fees and clearing/settlement between participants when utilizing the platform. Such costs include container exchange fees, terminal and depot handling costs, and fees collected by carriers. CPT will be deployed on the private GSCP blockchain and will be pegged to the US Dollar (USD).
Revenue-Sharing Model
Both the CCC (dividend token) and CPT (utility tokens) will complement each other in an innovative process of revenue-sharing according to Blockshipping’s model. Here is how both tokens will work in synergy:
- A portion of the revenue generated from fees generated on the GSCP platform – denominated in CPT tokens – will go to a Revenue Share Pool.
- Blockshipping will convert the funds denominated in CPT to Ether (ETH) in the Revenue Share Pool
- Blockshipping will then utilize smart contracts to conduct a Reverse Dutch Auction on the global Ethereum Blockchain, i.e. an auction in which Blockshipping will offer the owners of the CCC tokens a price for their tokens. This offered price will increase in fixed intervals during the auction, until the total amount of available Ether is spent. This way token owners who choose to sell CCC tokens will receive Ether as payment for these tokens.
- After the auction, Blockshipping will distribute all the CCC tokens acquired from the auction to all the owners of external tokens on a pro rata basis. This way CCC token owners will be rewarded regardless.
Strengths
- Price Stability Mechanism: The Market Maker Fund employed by Blockshipping guarantees that prices shouldn’t move beyond a fixed percentage below its ICO price. In the event it does, Blockshipping is prepared to ‘refund’ token holders. This is an excellent mechanism to weed out volatility on its price and more importantly, it is testament to the team’s confidence in assuring token holders of their success in the long-term.
- Token Duality: Each of Blockshipping’s 2 tokens serve an important function; CCC as the dividend-paying token that incentivizes token holders while the CPT is the utility token that’s used by the participants using the GSCP platform. This clear segregation has multiple benefits for Blockshipping as a business, since it eliminates the speculative side from its utility tokens (CPT), ensuring that CPT will not be exposed to non-fundamental volatility. This enables the business to function with much lesser risks for stakeholders.
- Diverse Cost-Savings Facets: Blockshipping’s solution could reward stakeholders in the shipping industry with huge operational cost-savings from a myriad of different facets, from empty container repositioning to a reduction in carrier haulage to business automation.
- Environmental Spillovers: In a bid for efficiency, a major positive outcome of Blockshipping’s solution is to reduce the vast carbon (and nitrogen dioxide (NO2)) footprint of the shipping industry, by as much as 4.6 million tons.
Weaknesses
- Little Technical Details: The whitepaper seems to be missing the network architecture of the entire GSCP platform, on how it will work and how it will be implemented. It seems that Blockshipping has yet to finalize its details.
- Tough Stakeholder Adoption: The success of Blockshipping’s solution is directly dependent on the participation of the stakeholders of the shipping industry. This requires a great deal of grassroots collaboration, partnerships and pilot initiatives which could take a bit of time.
Summary
Blockshipping looks like a project that can ‘digitize’ the shipping industry through its blockchain solution, apparent from the many obvious benefits that they propose to deliver ranging from cost efficiency to environmental friendliness. With an interesting token-duality dynamics and an extremely experienced team, Blockshipping’s niche focus could contribute to its fast-growing success.
Verdict: Good Project
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Beneficial Resources To Get You Started
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Trading & Exchange
- Crypto Guide 101: Choosing The Best Cryptocurrency Exchange
- Guide to Bittrex Exchange: How to Trade on Bittrex
- Guide to Binance Exchange: How to Open Binance Account and What You Should Know
- Guide to Etherdelta Exchange: How to Trade on Etherdelta
- Guide To Cryptocurrency Trading Basics: Introduction to Crypto Technical Analysis
- Cryptocurrency Trading: Understanding Cryptocurrency Trading Pairs & How it Works
- Crypto Trading Guide: 4 Common Pitfalls Every Crypto Trader Will Experience
Wallets
- Guide to Cryptocurrency Wallets: Why Do You Need Wallets?
- Guide to Cryptocurrency Wallets: Opening a Bitcoin Wallet
- Guide to Cryptocurrency Wallets: Opening a MyEtherWallet (MEW)
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This represents the writer’s personal opinions and does not – in any way- constitute a recommendation of an investment or financial advice. Please assume caution when investing in cryptocurrencies and do so at your own risk, as it is extremely volatile and you can lose your money.
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I'm Aziz, a seasoned cryptocurrency trader who's really passionate about 2 things; #1) the awesome-revolutionary blockchain technology underlying crypto and #2) helping make bitcoin great ‘again'!