I've happened to be following this project for awhile. One of my favourite dark horses, frankly: poor at communications, better than average at actual business. I've spotted a few misconceptions that arised in this thread, hope I could clarify the things a bit


That's true, but most of these project are at the idea stage, and it's far from evident that those tokens will have any value (quite unikely for most of the cases, to be honest.) In contrast, you can use opengift tokens even today to buy services on their platform.


I wish the project be a bit more articulative on this, but as far as I inderstood $0,2 ($1M/5M tokens = $0,2 per token) IS a price they are buying (or going to buy) back the tokens. Now when you purchase smth with BTC on the platform the price gets denominated in USD, while developers receive the native tokens. The WP says that developers will be able to sell back the tokens with zero spread, and that means they could set any price in this system (obviousely, it will have a limited liquidity). They simple set price in tokens for which they buy USD/BTC/etc., then they are buying tokens for the same price...


I agree that they could probably do the similar thing without blockchain. I would argue that with blockchain they can do it much better. 

OpenGift team hasn't updated the community for quite a long time — but now we see some interesting news: the platform introduced a new business model. And this one is impressive. 

"now we are enabling any company or individual user to place a requests for the development of new software or the modification of existing software on the OpenGift platform. The requests can be submitted in any form: from idea to the elaborated technical brief.
Then, the request will be processed by independent project managers called ‘curators’, who will clarify the content of the task and the purpose of the proposed solution, translate the contents of the task from the customer’s language into developers’ language, and break the task into small modules and libraries.

Some of these units of code will be either specific for a certain customer or represent a significant product value for his business: such orders, if approved by the customer, will be forwarded to the closed task pool. Access to the closed pool is granted to OpenGift partners, i.e. companies professionally engaged in software development. Companies submit their estimates of the cost of tasks to the platform website, and the customer can choose any of them for further work and pay directly on the website.

The modules and libraries, that can be used by multiple companies and do not represent a significant product value, are placed in an open task pool. For this pool, the OpenGift team collects co-financing from potential users of the product. Thus, for a task worth $ 1000, ten companies can allocate $ 100, saving 90% of their costs."


More - https://medium.com/@opengift/the-platform-new-business-model-12e51e20fcad

There are a few marketplaces and exchanges for trading receivables . Let's take a look at re:factor key differences.

Should a buyer of goods (debtor) fail to make a payment in a specified period of time, most of the platforms require supplier of goods (receivables seller) to repay the debt instead. Such transactions are said to be executed with recourse to receivables sellers.

Unlike on other platforms, sellers on re:factor platform can benefit from using non-recourse model. In such case a seller will get protection against debtors’ bankruptcy or late payment in addition to receivables financing. When sellers choose any of this two models (recourse or non-recourse), re:factor informs investors about the seller’s request, recommends maximum risk exposure limits and provides professional advice on associated risks. Based on that information investors will be able to make a deliberate decisions about proposed investment. A seller will be able to switch from non-recourse to a recourse transaction to facilitate the trade, should investors be unwilling to accept the risks.

Re:factor may also offer investors a bad debt protection service, so investor could obtain a right to claim a delayed payment not only to seller, but sequentially to re:factor as well. Needless to say, such option sufficiently lowers investment risks.

Proprietary Software vs. Open Source Software

When the concept of open source just appeared, it started a continued fight between the proponents of proprietary software and open source software advocates, which still goes no. Large market players such as Oracle and Microsoft considered open source as a threat to their proprietary IP and, in the bigger picture, their business model. Today many companies release proprietary software as well as open source projects, which has definitely regained its popularity in the late 90’s and early 00’s.

After Mozilla project was released by Netscape in 1998, a group of programmers lead by Eric Raymond gathered in Palo Alto to pick an alternative name for free software. After many discussions, Christine Peterson suggested the term ‘open source’. According to the activists, the profound difference between open source software and proprietary software was the availability of the source code to users.

In 1999, Red Hat and Linux showed tremendous growth, which lead to commonness and greater awareness of open source projects. Same year, IBM publicly announced its interest in Linux and invested $1 bln. in their future projects. In 2000, Microsystems developed OpenOffice.org and released the source code of its StarOffice Suite platform.

Massive investments from the industry giants such as IBM and Sun Microsystems have resulted in the rocket-fast adoption of open source in the current tech industry.

Source: https://medium.com/@opengift/software-is-meant-to-be-free-a-brief-history-of-open-source-3bb2364a5f82

The other important differentiator of the re:factor platform is an extensive infrastructure for analysis, assessment and monitoring of credit and operational risks in the receivables origination countries. The P2P platfrm market position is to be supported by a specially created factoring company, which can act both as an investor and supplier of trade receivables, should there be a shortage on any side of the market. The broad market coverage, guaranteed trading volume and thorough risk management combined will enable to issue asset classes with attractive price-risk ratio.

The global success of the crowdfactoring model depends on a combination of high demand for financing from wholesale traders and attractiveness of trade receivables as an asset class for P2P investors. In contrast to many other platforms, re:factor provides an investing opportunity not only to institutional investors and High-Net-Worth-Individuals. The platform will be affordable for millions of individual investors in countries like United Kingdom, United States, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and others. The total population of these countries is about 4.5 billion people. If at least half a percent of the countries’ middle class citizens invests in PC16 trade receivables via the P2P factoring platform, it will bring tens of billions dollars to the market contributing to further development of the World Manufacturers and creating new investment opportunities.

World Manufacturers are both highly underfunded and have huge reserves of a poorly used resource in a form of receivables. These reserves play a role of accounting statistics instead of working for their owners. Indeed, if we return this statistic figures to the market in a form of money, it will significantly accelerate the turnover and boost the economics growth. Protecting suppliers from the risk of buyers’ non-payment will make such growth more stable.

About re:factor key markets:
China is famous for having the most favorable conditions for the launching a manufacturing business, but it’s gradually losing its key competitive advantage — cheap and available labor power. The labor costs have been rising rapidly and it makes outsourcing of production for foreign companies not as beneficial as it used to be. The country’s average salaries jumped by 18% in 2014, followed by 17.1% increase in 2015. In 2016 they were lower than the US average figures only by 30%. Although China will no soon give up its leadership position as a global manufacturer, various economic analysts predict the country’s cheap-labor-driven growth to end up before long. After that, as the former Chief Economist of the World Bank Justin Yifu Lin estimates, about 100 million jobs positions connected with heavy intensive labor will be transferred to lower-income countries. This transition will increase 4x the number of manufacturing jobs in those countries.

What countries will fill China’s shoes as growing international manufacturers? George Friedman, the head of the consulting company Stratfor Global Intelligence, calls these countries Post China 16, or PC16. The PC16 list includes 16 countries with total population of about 1 billion: Mexico, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Peru, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines and Indonesia.

All these countries are characterized by impressive dynamic of economic growth. The annual growth rate almost of all them never dropped below 5% during 2006–2016 period; some of the countries reached double-digit annual growth rates. PC16 countries are transitional economies, so there is still a lot of work to be done to make the countries ready for the mass deployment of large-scale manufacturing. The key step to success in this regard is providing private business with an access to funding. There are multiple ways to do it and factoring, a complex of services designed to provide a supplier with financing in exchange for the right to require a payment from a buyer, is probably the most certain one.

Total p2p (peer-to-peer) lending volume in 2017 exceeded $100 billion. This market has been growing fast in the past few years:

$1.2 bln in 2012,

$3.5 bln in 2013,

$9 bln in 2014.

To avoid a popular misconception: p2p (peer-to-peer) lending is still about loans that have to be repaid within a specified period of time and with a certain interest. Both individuals (peers) and organizations may participate in such transactions on different sides — so p2b, b2p and b2b transactions may happen. The main motivation for investors invest in account receivables is an opportunity to earn significantly higher returns comparing to traditional instruments.

With establishing The Receivable Exchange, a marketplace for selling and buying trade receivables, the market started to transform. There are no consolidated figures on this relatively young market. Re:factor estimates its present day value well exceeding $10 billion a year.

The nature of trade receivables was first described in the Code of Hammurabi back in 1750 B.C. Item 104 of the code of laws says “If a merchant gives to an agent grain, wool, oil or goods of any kind with which to trade, the agent shall write down the value and return (the money) to the merchant. The agent shall take a sealed receipt for the money which he gives to the merchant”. In other words, when a seller delivers goods to a buyer, the former doesn’t get paid right the moment; instead, he obtains a right to get the payment after the subsequent sell of the goods.In modern trade finance terms such a right is called “trade receivable”.

Some economic historians argue that factoring appeared in ancient Rome when local wealthy merchants attracted middlemen (factors) to assist with sale and delivery of goods. We know for sure that American colonists in the 17th century resorted to factors’ services when exporting from America to England. Second half XX century textile manufacturing boom in the United States and growing trade in the United Kingdom have shaped factoring. The world factoring market had reached 2.4 trillion EUR in 2016.

The receivables are like oil shale. Its reserves have always been there but only recently have we acquired the necessary technology that brought it to the global market and radically changed the industry. The same will soon happen to the receivables as well, and the meaning of these groundbreaking changes will be no less significant.

And some statistics. Asian factoring volume, which declined by 8.46% in 2015, suffered another decline of 8.47% in 2016 to EUR 508 billion. This was caused mainly by China, which saw a further decline of 14.5%. However, Chinese economy is expected to grow at a new normal with a growth rate of about 6.5% for 2017. Although China continues to be the world’s second largest factoring country after The United Kingdom, its factoring growth rate is not expected to experience the high growth as seen in the past.

Japan and Taiwan, two other major Asian countries also suffered decline in volume, albeit at a lower rate 8.7% and 10.45% respectively. Nonetheless, the growth in two other major Asian factoring countries, Hong Kong (27.7%) and Singapore (4.1%) as well as interesting growth in the emerging Asian markets of Malaysia (362.7%), Thailand (20%) and Vietnam (96.4 %) helped to cushion the decline somewhat. Yet Asia continues to be the second largest factoring region accounting for 22% of the world factoring volume. Consequently, some South East Asian countries, (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam) and India are expected to fuel the growth of factoring in Asia as there are signs of increase in factoring activity.

There’re about $12 trillion worth of trade receivables worldwide arising from the sale of any goods and services in cases where the buyer pays for them not immediately. It is an asset that is available to almost all companies around the world: trade, manufacturing, research, telecommunications. However, in most cases it is a dead weight that doesn’t allow to extract from it the benefit that potentially exists in this amazing asset.

But what makes it so special is the ability to maintain its value even during crisis and recession. Any other asset can lose in value, but not receivables: the debt of a hundred rubles, one hundred yuan, a hundred dollars or a hundred euros will remain so.

Meanwhile, few people are trying to sell their receivables, exchange them for other assets, or mortgage them. And what really stops them? Mainly, the lack of a wide spread of necessary technologies. For example, the technologies required while working with receivables as collateral should include the ability to properly assess the portfolio of receivables as collateral, to monitor its security and quality, and to collect it if necessary. And such technologies already exist, and very soon they will become widespread.

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way too huge premine for me. The new scam is "make a social network" and paint a multimillion dolla picture. No ICO, proof of work is the best way