A premiere in Europe: find out the new way to travel in 2021
A European premiere, the issue of a stablecoin pegged to business travel is per se a notable event. For those of you who are’t familiar to the cryptocurrency fenomenon, I will explain a bit in the next few paragraphs.
The idea of cryptocurrencies is the total replacement of fiat money. Imagine that fiat money — papers that lose quality and have to be reprinted) is no longer a physical phenomenon. It gets 100% digital and is protected against inflation. However, being ever-volatile, altcoins aren’t always a good solution for investment and storage. That’s why another type of digital currency was created – stablecoins.
What is a stablecoin, anyway?
A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency that is designed to minimize volatility by pegging it to a more stable asset. Fiat currency digital asset is the most popular use case for stablecoins. It typically tracks popular national currencies such as the US Dollar, Euro, and the British Pound. Benefit of this includes being able to take advantage of blockchain technology and peer-to-peer value transfer while not being exposed to high volatility such as bitcoin, ethereum, or other cryptocurrencies. Stablecoins are relatively new kind of technology and each of them comes with different implementations, liquidity, risks, and acceptance.
Consequently, depending of the method of stabilization, there are three groups of stablecoins. Firstly, the fiat-backed is supported by fiat money, for instance Tether or TrueUSD. Secondly, the commodity-backed, whose holders can redeem their stablecoins at the conversion rate to take possession of real assets. The cost of maintaining the stability of the stablecoin is the cost of storing and protecting the commodity backing. Example is Digix Gold Token (DGX). Thirdly, in the case of cryptocurrecny-backed stablecoins, the price is tied to the value of other cryptocurrencies (Dai). There is a fourth category as well — the non-backed stablecoins or Seigniorage-style. Their price is regulated by the issue of coins, but at the same time it is not supported by either traditional money nor other cryptocurrencies (Carbon, Havven).
So, in this complex crypto-market, on 15 of August, a new stablecoin is born: the FlightCoin.
FlightCoin — the new stablecoin by FlyFreeAirways
According to ANSA, the FlightCoin is a stablecoin whose the price is designed to be pegged to the real economy. In particular, the economy of business travel, experiential tourism, freight carriers and private air carriers.
The participating companies are strictly selected based on their financial statements. They have to comply with a high level of rating, real investment and the value of services and goods offered. The investors can use the service to divide their investments between the various markets: Classic Tour Operator, Business Travel Management, Experiential Tourism, Cargo Carriers, Private Jets, Insurance, Crowdfunding and ICO.
The FlyFreeAirways is a company active in the travel and transport sector. The founder and CEO, Francesco D’Alessandro explains: “This new cryptocurrency is ready to be among the first digital currencies in the most important world exchanges. They will support it for its added value in the financial field and in the sustainable and intelligent mobility”.
The FlightCoin can be used to make payments, investments, exchanges, purchases of the services of Fly Free Airways and of the certified affiliates. The added value — he says — is for all the companies in the sector that are not in competition but synergic.
How it works
The release of tokens give value to the project according to the value generated by Fly Free Airways and the associates & commercial partners. A digital certificate is issued for each deposit or investment. Similarly, for the guarantee reserves or certified transfer of goods and services. All these enables the smart-contract to issue tokens.
The token is based on waves blockchain and are to be issued only 100 million tokens unique and non-reissuable. “New tokens will never be issued” is explained. The existing ones will be used for financing new investment projects for the development and innovation of the business model. Also for research and development projects in intelligent mobility, smart city and environmental sustainability in the transport sector in general.
As a stablecoin, the FlightCoin will have no volatility and will always guarantee global payments. How so? Because the quantity of tokens issued is numerically equal to 10 times the capital increase in progress. And this represents an important basis. The offer ends on 31 December 2021.
FlightCoin tokens can be purchased with both current currency and with cryptocurrency. One can use them to make payments, investments and even exchanges. All this in addition to its basic purpose: the purchase of the services of the affiliate members and of FlyFreeAirways itself.
The volume of stablecoins trade
According to CoinGecko, tthe market capitalization reached at the end of the second quarter this year US$119.7 billion at a trading volume of US$75.7 billion. The market is clearly dominated by Tether with a transaction volume in 24h of US$66 billion, followed at a distance by USD Coin and Binance USD.
The cryptocurrency market, in general, is showing signs of maturity, according Coinbase’s second quarter of 2021 Earnings Report. Coinbase is a San Francisco-based digital asset exchange company, one of the industry leaders.
This was stated by GlobalBlock’s Sales Trader, Marcus Sotiriou, cited by Assodigitale. He points out that the volume of retail exchanges is more than tenfolded in the quarter ended June 30. Compared to the same quarter last year, is going from 11 to 145 billion dollars. The volume of exchanges of institutional investors did even better. It grew even twenty times in a year, going from 17 billion in 2020 to 345 billion this year. Therefore, Sotiriou points out, although the crypto market may still appear strongly oriented towards retail investors, in reality the Coinbase report clearly shows how institutions are starting to dominate it.