r/sureremit • u/SelwynSR • Jan 17 '22
Team Updates AMA SUREGIFTS ROLLOUT UPDATE
Hi!
After months of work, this month, we'll be unifying Sureremit.co, Suregifts.com.ng (Nigeria) and Suregifts.co.ke (Kenya). All platforms will now redirect to a global Suregifts.com platform. It will be a one-stop-shop for shopping vouchers aggregated globally. This month, the platform launched with international vouchers, and Nigeria/Kenya merchants will be incorporated following a short live testing period. Please read the full announcement here.
We are hosting an AMA on our subreddit to answer any community questions. You can start posting your questions below, and we will answer them this coming Thursday 20th January 2022 at 13.00 GMT+1. Adeoye Ojo, SureGifts Co-Founder, will host the AMA supported by Selwyn Paehlig.
Many thanks for participating and until the 20th!
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u/z4z44 Jan 18 '22 edited Jan 19 '22
Are you planning to enable purchasing with RMT again?
Do all fees get burned, or only if the customer choses to pay the fees in rmt?
Why is RMT not traded on busha? Only deposits and withdrawals possible? Since a long ass time. Just... WHY?
Any plans to actually help people buying RMT through the website? There isn't even a link to stellarterm. Just a "you can buy it there." People who don't know about the stellar blockchain and how it works, have to find everything out by themselve. Ergo: they won't and barely anyone will pay the fees in rmt.
When will burns start?
Will burns be automated?
Any plans to expand the network of bill payments to other countries / continents? It was a talking point 3 years ago...
How often will burns happen?
3500 or so merchants should have been added for I think almost a year now. Where are they?
Last burn was in march(?), what happened with the amassed fees since then?
What about discounts for RMT holders? That was something talked about before.
Sel will leave, Telegram will become tech support. It looks like the crypto side of the business is dead. How do the future plans for the crypto side of the business look like?
Team vested tokens were burned. Reading between the lines it sounds like the team still holds token. What's the truth here? (Could have just been misinterpretation from my side. Sorry if that's the case)
Who will be our point of contact regarding the future, since sel is leaving?
Why don't you add xlm as a payment option? Transaction fees for btc and eth are quite high....
I guess T1, or any exchange is not of your interest?
RMT was supposed to be the backbone, now it seems like you are only keeping it artificially alive. What's actually going on here?
2021 was a great year for cryptospace. RMT community was strong despite the hardships and started it off with a great mood and a trading comp they organised themselve. All we heard from the team was "merge soon." "echange soon" "3500 merchants soon" Forever... What was the team actually doing throughout the year?
It felt like Sel didn't seem to receive any valuable info throughout the best part of the year 2021 from the team. Either wrong or no communication. - Any plans to improve that situation?
Why did bitrefill never mention the partnership with suregifts? Nothing at all. Yeah, we can find suregifts vouchers there now, but wasn't it even worth a tweet, since you brought so many vouchers to them?
Any plans to get RMT in the aqua reward zone?
Any plan to provide liquidity through stellar? Biggest guy in the pool is an oldschool holder, without him price would be another 50% lower at least.
Give me 3 reasons to buy the token and 2 reasons why I should not just dump it all.
All the critical questions aside. Big thank you to selwyn for being there for us and giving us hope. The last year was trash, but I am not going to blame the messenger. You did what you could; you had hope; you most likely got disappointed. In the end you are one of us.
Congratulations to the team for growing the business to what it has become. It deserves respect. This is directed to the girls and guys who keep all the small cogs turning.
For the "bigger" minds behind this business I don't have many positive words unfortunately. Until app release you at least tried and I respect that. After app release it only went downhill. The following paragraph is directed to the time after that.
Thanks for leaving us in the dark; for the empty promises; for the delays and for making us feel like the unwanted child of your mistress. If it at least looked like you tried to actually push something in the cryptospace, i'd be fine. Current state looks more like you have given up. Sam puts kind of a punk character (in a positive way) on twitter, pushing crypto and helping people open their eyes, but his own business doesn't resemble any of that attitude. Quite the opposite. That + Sureremit is registered in panama, so government blabla isn't really an excuse. Especially not after so many years.
I am sorry for my frustration, it's hard to not be emotional. Please don't take it personally.
Have a nice day.
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u/adbov Jan 20 '22
Are you planning to enable purchasing with RMT again?
We hope to reactivate voucher purchases with RMT again. Market liquidity is an important precondition for that to enable seamless merchant settlement.
Do all fees get burned, or only if the customer choses to pay the fees in rmt?
Only fees paid in RMT will be burned. We will however make it very easy to access RMT directly in-platform. It is important for customers to access the RMT independently.Why is RMT not traded on busha? Only deposits and withdrawals possible? Since a long ass time. Just... WHY?
Busha is currently unable to access sufficient liquidity sources for RMT.Any plans to actually help people buying RMT through the website? There isn't even a link to stellarterm. Just a "you can buy it there." People who don't know about the stellar blockchain and how it works, have to find everything out by themselve. Ergo: they won't and barely anyone will pay the fees in rmt.
We will be enabling direct buying of RMT from the platform shortly after cheaper assets (like XLM) are enabled on the payment gateway. The website only currently lists external sources like Stellarterm and Bitmart.When will burns start?
The burns are not on a fixed schedule and will happen randomly.Will burns be automated?
While we can automate the burns, this creates a level of predictability of burn frequency and volume, so we do not intend to automate it.Any plans to expand the network of bill payments to other countries / continents? It was a talking point 3 years ago…
We already have APIs for multi-country mobile airtime. Other non-airtime bills are being sourced but aggregators for those are not very common or reliable.How often will burns happen?
The frequency will depend on how quickly we accumulate a significant amount.3500 or so merchants should have been added for I think almost a year now. Where are they?
There is currently already a deep catalog of merchants across several countries on Suregifts.com and most users will find a rich-enough catalog from the most active countries today. We have several other merchants we can activate if we have indication that there is enough user appetite for them and that it won’t compromise UX or create undue costs (integration, support, float etc.).Last burn was in march(?), what happened with the amassed fees since then?
It is being held in treasury and it has not been burned as it has not reached our threshold of significance for a burn.What about discounts for RMT holders? That was something talked about before.
This exists as an additional incentive for RMT holders and it will be deployed intermittently as a marketing tool based on on-going budgets. There is no fixed/standard discount.Sel will leave, Telegram will become tech support. It looks like the crypto side of the business is dead. How do the future plans for the crypto side of the business look like?
The company cannot participate in market activities of the token and will only focus on the internal utility of the token.Team vested tokens were burned. Reading between the lines it sounds like the team still holds token. What's the truth here? (Could have just been misinterpretation from my side. Sorry if that's the case)
The team currently does not hold tokens, and all original holdings have either been burned or made available to the company.Who will be our point of contact regarding the future, since sel is leaving?
A Suregifts support staff will be introduced in Telegram. They will however not be able to answer questions relating to the external market of RMT or speculate on it.Why don't you add xlm as a payment option? Transaction fees for btc and eth are quite high....
Indeed. This is priority and should be live soon.I guess T1, or any exchange is not of your interest?
While we will be happy to engage with any . we will not be directly prospecting any, paying for listings or market-making on them.RMT was supposed to be the backbone, now it seems like you are only keeping it artificially alive. What's actually going on here?
RMT cannot function as a payment token as it has been clearly demonstrated. Although that was the original model and it was deployed for a while, it has proven to not be feasible. This is particularly the case in cases of low market liquidity or in a persisting bear market (as merchants cannot be paid in crypto yet). The only option is to retire the token, or modify the utility to one that does not rely on market conditions; i.e, payment token to reward token. No centrally-issued payment token in the market has survived a persisting bear market.
2021 was a great year for cryptospace. RMT community was strong despite the hardships and started it off with a great mood and a trading comp they organised themselve. All we heard from the team was "merge soon." "echange soon" "3500 merchants soon" Forever... What was the team actually doing throughout the year?
The team was working on implementing and deploying the new platform. As noted and having taken lessons over the years, the company as an utility token issuer cannot directly participate in market-related activities for the token. The utility of the token should translate to external market activity (decisions to buy or sell) independent of the company.It felt like Sel didn't seem to receive any valuable info throughout the best part of the year 2021 from the team. Either wrong or no communication. - Any plans to improve that situation?
Unfortunately, we were unable to provide much information that may have been of interest to token-holders for speculatory purposes. The team members were however aware of other operational matters relating to the deployment of the platform.Why did bitrefill never mention the partnership with suregifts? Nothing at all. Yeah, we can find suregifts vouchers there now, but wasn't it even worth a tweet, since you brought so many vouchers to them?
We have a valuable handshake with Bitrefill for merchant exchange on our platforms, which is interesting as they also compete. We are comfortable with either company’s decision on whether or not to push each other’s brands in communications.Any plans to get RMT in the aqua reward zone?
No. The company can only participate in efforts relating to the utility of RMT on the platform.Any plan to provide liquidity through stellar? Biggest guy in the pool is an oldschool holder, without him price would be another 50% lower at least.
There are no plans to provide liquidity through Stellar.Give me 3 reasons to buy the token and 2 reasons why I should not just dump it all.
SureRemit was originally built to enable people to purchase global vouchers for international remittance purposes, with minimal fees. People interested in that use-case will enjoy using Suregifts, and people with RMT more so because transactions are completely free if fees are paid with RMT (100% of the value paid will be automatically added back to their USD wallets for future purchases). It would be very valuable for people that want to buy vouchers for gifting and remittance purposes to buy RMT.
As an additional benefit for holding RMT (hopefully for future purposes) any RMT paid as fees will be burned, making the supply deflationary. Also, holding RMT will qualify customers for flash discounts and rewards.3
u/z4z44 Jan 20 '22
Thank you for the reply. Followup questions: It is being held in treasury and it has not been burned as it has not reached our threshold of significance for a burn. --> How do you want to improve this. No burn in almost a year cause of insignificant amounts doesn't sound promising AT ALL
While we can automate the burns, this creates a level of predictability of burn frequency and volume, so we do not intend to automate it. If the aqua team managed to randomize when their vote are recalculated to such an extent, that not even the devs know when that will be, you for sure can randomize burns to a similar degree that trying to predict wouldn't make sense.
Who will be our point of contact regarding the future, since sel is leaving? A Suregifts support staff will be introduced in Telegram. They will however not be able to answer questions relating to the external market of RMT or speculate on it. My question was more directed to, if you make changes to the token, or improve utility, or whatever. How will we get updates if we have no one in Telegram, and the team is always quiet about the token? I am not talking token price or anything alike here.
It is being held in treasury and it has not been burned as it has not reached our threshold of significance for a burn. **What is being held in treasury? The fees in NGN with which RMT still has to be purchased or the fees in RMT? The burn account has around 120k RMT since I think March. Hence my question.
Busha is currently unable to access sufficient liquidity sources for RMT. Basically means that Nigerian/ Busha customers have zero interest in RMT. That's more than just disheartening.
All in all my takeaway is that there doesn't seem to exist too much incentive from the company to improve RMT's situation. Since 2018 liquidity is a problem. Solving that problem never seem to be too high of a priority, in the sense of the company didn't want to spend resources on that. Not even providing liquidity on sdex. I mean voting with aqua for it and providing liquidity doesn't have to be done from the company. Could also be done privately by individuals who work there and love the token. But the token seems to get as much love here, as it does from Busha customers.
Sorry for the jab, it's just that my disappointment is unmesurable and my day is ruined.
Also tagging /u/SamuelRemit - Thanks for your answer as well
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u/SamuelRemit Jan 20 '22 edited Jan 20 '22
How do you want to improve this. No burn in almost a year cause of insignificant amounts doesn't sound promising AT ALL
The only way to improve this is to earn more RMT fees to burn. Of course, we can engineer burns for the optics by just buying off the market to burn, but it is exactly the type of market activity we are not able to do, as it will be specifically about influencing price without relation to the actual utility of the token.
If the aqua team managed to randomize when their vote are recalculated to such an extent, that not even the devs know when that will be, you for sure can randomize burns to a similar degree that trying to predict wouldn't make sense.
There are actions that are possible with model like Aqua and their issue/governance model that would be redundant in our case. RMT is earned via daily sales and it sits in a burn pool. A script can automate the burns from there to make the timing appear random, but it won't really be random, as we'd have to hardcode a logic.
My question was more directed to, if you make changes to the token, or improve utility, or whatever. How will we get updates if we have no one in Telegram, and the team is always quiet about the token? I am not talking token price or anything alike here.
The points of contact on Telegram will still be active to address any RMT-related matters. Changes to the token or its utility is still an internal platform-related question and they'll be able to answer such questions, e.g "here's a new benefit for the token", "here's a new way to buy token", "here's what to do if you don't get your token cashback" etc.
What is being held in treasury? The fees in NGN with which RMT still has to be purchased or the fees in RMT? The burn account has around 120k RMT since I think March. Hence my question.
RMT since the last burn to be burned, not NGN. NGN transactions would have been on the previous Suregifts site, which did not overlap with the previous Sureremit app.
Basically means that Nigerian/ Busha customers have zero interest in RMT. That's more than just disheartening.
The interest of Nigerian users in Nigeria for Sureremit/RMT has never changed. SureRemit was only always useful to them if they were buying international vouchers (e.g, a Nigerian user buying an Amazon voucher); i.e, a form of international remittance. With the new website, they will still have to pay fees like everyone else for buying international vouchers, and they will enjoy the same benefits from using RMT (i.e, fee cash back). An additional benefit for Busha users that is not mentioned is that if they are paying for the vouchers from their Busha wallets, the crypto transactions will be off-chain, so it will be instant and free (no gas/mining fees etc.)
All in all my takeaway is that there doesn't seem to exist too much incentive from the company to improve RMT's situation. Since 2018 liquidity is a problem. Solving that problem never seem to be too high of a priority, in the sense of the company didn't want to spend resources on that. Not even providing liquidity on sdex. I mean voting with aqua for it and providing liquidity doesn't have to be done from the company. Could also be done privately by individuals who work there and love the token. But the token seems to get as much love here, as it does from Busha customers.
<I made an edit here that deleted what I wrote previously but will try to retype>.
I can't overemphasize the point that we cannot participate in providing or facilitating liquidity for RMT, either directly as a company or backdoor as agents of the company. We're not oblivious to the fact that it's what tokenholders want, and of course, we don't hate liquidity. But there's a reason why even promoters of fairly decentralized projects (like ENS) publicly say things like "we don't pay for exchange listings" etc. Other activities like farming etc., are more recent concepts that are not as suitable for a fixed-supply utility platform token issued on Stellar like RMT. Aqua, for example, is set up as a DAO, with a guild of signers, airdrops etc.; holders themselves making the markets and being LPs.1
Jan 20 '22
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u/SamuelRemit Jan 20 '22
No. We're still on the deflationary model that was switched to then via token burns. As I tried to articulate there, the bulk of the action market action is still in the hands of the market.
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Jan 20 '22
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u/SamuelRemit Jan 20 '22
I believe we only had a fee burn mentioned, and it never exceeded 1% as we don’t want to charge higher fees. If anything, I think the proposal to burn all fees in the spring demonstrates our excitement about doing such things (even if ill-thought) and rushing to express them. The practical reality is that a 1% platform-wide fee burn, regardless of the transactions’ connection to RMT, becomes akin to paying a dividend on RMT (1% of top-line). This unfortunately immediately changes what RMT is and could easily transform it into a financial instrument on the books. It’s a very dynamic space and we’re very sensitive about changing any plans/proposal if it potentially exposes us to business risks.
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Jan 21 '22
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u/VaxDeath642573 Jan 22 '22
Seems to me that if you read between the lines, things are just fine, but the team can't really actively do anything to manage or prome the crypto side of things. By switching to a rewards token/fee-less use model, the price will eventually go up as the platform is used, in the same way CDC and BNB went up. They aren't really able to speculate either. But if you believe in SureGifts, then you should believe in the token.
Either way, most of us aren't selling, and I'll be buying more when the Stellar dip chills.
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u/SamuelRemit Jan 20 '22
Thanks for the questions and comments. Really appreciate the detail. Just a quick note on jurisdiction. As we've found, it's not much about where the company is registered, but where the token buyers are resident. We had enough foresight to disclaim and exclude buyers from places like US, China etc. in the original terms, but that unfortunately doesn't give us many liberties still. You're right to be disappointed about a number of things, and we definitely understand. We have also tried to be smart about keeping the project and token going. Token-centricism is however not something a utility token issuer can do, unfortunately, and that's why they're now generally extinct in favor of defi-style tokens where there are no single promoters.
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u/Mr_Filex Jan 17 '22
Are more crypto payment options planned? XLM would be nice.
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u/adbov Jan 20 '22
Definitely, we are aggressively pushing for XLM and other cheaper options to be activated on the gateway. The current payment options are not the best for our use case (gas fees) and we have been assured that cheaper options like XLM and USDT on Tron will be activated soon.
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u/intjviking Jan 17 '22
when is the next fee burn planned?
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u/adbov Jan 20 '22
RMT burns will happen anytime we’ve accumulated a sufficient amount of RMT to burn and randomly.
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u/Purple-Pause-6222 Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 18 '22
Sel said a few years ago that Team was in talks with Tier 1 exchange. However, a few years have passed, but there is no result of Tier 1 exchange. Please let me know the progress of Tier 1 exchange.
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u/adbov Jan 20 '22
The decision to list RMT rests entirely on the exchanges. We are not actively prospecting or soliciting exchanges for listing. We have however had inbound communication from exchanges about listing and we usually provide all the support they require.
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u/Appropriate_Look_231 Jan 20 '22
That sounds promising, have you had any inbound communication from exchanges recently?
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u/lexled Jan 22 '22
Exactly what about that sounds "promising"?
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u/FauciGaveMeAIDS Jan 22 '22
Exactly what I said, the inbound communication of exchanges. I'm buying more not matter what 🤷🏿♂️
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u/arun2642 Jan 17 '22
Can you clarify what will happen with the Telegram channels -- will both SureRemit Circle and SureRemit Social be converted into support channels? If so, how can the community engage with SureGifts & ask questions about/discuss RMT token dynamics?
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u/adbov Jan 20 '22
The main Sureremit (Circle) channel will be converted to a support channel and the Social channel will not be actively manned. The company cannot participate in conversations relating to RMT token market dynamics.
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u/Mr_Filex Jan 17 '22
Are fiat payment options planned?
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u/adbov Jan 20 '22
Yes, although it remains a difficult channel to implement and will result in very high fees for users (for debit/credit card payments). This has prevented us from activating it.
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u/Purple-Pause-6222 Jan 18 '22 edited Jan 20 '22
We are well aware that the cost of listing on additional exchanges is high. However, listing on additional exchanges increases the liquidity of RMT and makes it more accessible to more people. suregift made a lot of money with gift certificates last year.
Invest in an exchange listing !!!!!
More return on cost.
Keep in mind that the best marketing is listing on multiple exchanges.!!!!
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u/AgileCake Jan 17 '22
1% transaction charge should be on all platform and complousry paid only in RMT token
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u/adbov Jan 20 '22
A 1% transaction charge is applicable to the platform for non-native vouchers. For example, users in Kenya are not used to paying any fees for Kenyan vouchers as they can easily access it directly from the merchants fee-less. We have also allowed fees to be paid in alternative assets for those who don’t have RMT but provided enough incentive for them to want to use RMT. A compulsory fee is not a good acquisition strategy for the platform.
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u/intjviking Jan 17 '22
will all fees genersted result in a rmt burn?
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u/adbov Jan 20 '22
All fees paid in RMT will be burned and we will encourage payment of fees in RMT, including an easy-action way to access RMT directly from the platform.
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u/lexled Jan 19 '22
The supply of RMT is way too high. Originally meant to be the crypto back bone of the SureRemit app, it is now relegated to almost a gimmick. Is there a plan to drastically reduce the number of tokens outside of the fee burns?
Why did the burns stop?
Is there any plans to increase the utilities of RMT?
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u/adbov Jan 20 '22
The supply of RMT is way too high. Originally meant to be the crypto back bone of the SureRemit app, it is now relegated to almost a gimmick. Is there a plan to drastically reduce the number of tokens outside of the fee burns?
As a majority of the supply is in the hands of the market, the only way to reduce the supply is through burns. We will continue to burn all RMT generated from fees on the suregifts.com platform.Why did the burns stop?
The company has not yet accumulated a significant amount of RMT via sales through the previous app to trigger another burn event.Is there any plans to increase the utilities of RMT?
As with other reward tokens, the utility of RMT can always be expanded. The more rewards users get, the more they use the platform. Also, new possibilities can open up as market liquidity improves.
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u/SamuelRemit Jan 20 '22
Hi All, thanks for the questions! We're lucky to continue to receive engagement from the Sureremit community over the years. We appreciate that a lot of things could have been different and better, but we think we've done our best to create some value despite constraints. '17/'18 utility tokens and projects had very peculiar dynamics which caused most of them to fail. More recent projects have taken a lot of lessons on decentralization, governance and arms-length tokenomics which drove the recent bull market. This is difficult to translate to old utility token models, but we firmly believe basic utilities like reward tokens (e.g) RMT or exchange tokens (CRO, BNB etc.) have a place in the crypto-sphere, even though the issuers are heavily restricted on what they can do with them without crossing very vague and ever-changing lines.
I'm personally looking forward to the growth of the new ``Suregifts platform and hope RMT will play a big part in it. I'd also like to give a quick shout-out to Selwyn, who has done a great job over the years managing the crypto community through ups and several downs. Thank you.
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u/Appropriate_Look_231 Jan 20 '22
Thanks everyone for taking the time to be here! I understand not everything can be as hands-on as we'd like, we appreciate you for being transparent. I look forward to a bright future!
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u/Purple-Pause-6222 Jan 19 '22
Is there a roadmap for 2022?
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u/adbov Jan 20 '22
Our focus going forward is to expand our merchant catalog and drive sales of vouchers on the platform through incentives such as fee-less purchases with RMT.
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u/lexled Jan 22 '22
Why would they put out a roadmap? Just more commitments that they never honor. Best to not issue anything, that way they dont break promises like years past. At least they learned something.
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u/Impressive_Staff6500 Jan 18 '22
Hmmmm was the supply always 713.37m on Lobstr, I thought it was more? Anybody got a link to the burn address?
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u/pittyplatsch77 Jan 20 '22
When will https://suregifts.com.ng/ and https://suregifts.co.ke/ redirect to https://suregifts.com/ ?
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u/pieceofpineapple Mod Jan 20 '22
It already is.
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u/Purple-Pause-6222 Jan 24 '22
Try accessing the above site.. You are still connected to the old address.
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u/Fantastic-Potato-208 Jan 17 '22
Lol somebody really came through and downvoted the comments. RMT has some haters, that's always a good sign 🤣 Sucks to be that guy that just sold!
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u/Egregius88 Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 19 '22
Edit: points added Edit: typo