ASTANA – LendEx financial-tech (fintech) start-up plans to initiate an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) using the Ethereum platform based on block chain technology. The investments will be used to launch the LendEx P2P (peer to peer) lending platform, which will focus on online lending to clients in Central and Southeast Asia.
“We are talking about a target audience of 500 million people which belong to the so-called unbanked segment or who do not have access to financial products, in particular, to loans. The LendEx online platform, built with the help of block chain technologies, will provide crypto investors with access to the platform and will allow issuing microcredits for borrowers checked in national currencies,” said fintech entrepreneur and start-up author Alexey Sidorov.
During the ICO, crypto investors will be able to buy LendEx tokens depending on the type of loan portfolio and risk/return ratio (from A to F).
“The market is being dominated by speculative types of investors which resell the tokens two, three times more at the peak of popularity. The second type of investors, which is not as common but we think that the future is in them, is the classic investors, who do not seek quick benefits and expect long-term investments but who are close to the buy and hold approach. We are betting on them, because in the long run they will form the market of crypto-investment when it becomes more mature. They make a deeper analysis of the product itself, analyse the technical part and management and look at the team’s experience. Based on this, they make more informed decisions and understand that they need to diversify their assets and they need to invest in companies that have come for a long time,” he added.
The LendEx release will be held in two stages: the actual ICO and pre-ICO, which will begin Dec. 1.
“We plan to attract $20-$30 million for ICO in the next 12 months and about $1 million for pre-ICO. During the pre-ICO, we will check the demand for our product from potential crypto-investors and crypto-enthusiasts. These funds will be allocated for the development and improvement of IT infrastructure, marketing and access to other Asian markets,” said Sidorov.
The LendEx team presented its start-up Oct. 19 at the FinTech Innovation Day start-up conference in the capital. An international jury selected the best ideas, entering one of the gurus of venture business billionaire Tim Draper. His company, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is a world leader in venture capital investment in technology companies and he is enthusiastic about the prospects of the bitcoin industry. The best start-ups selected by the jury will go this month to the Singapore Fintech Festival, the largest financial technology event in Asia.
