Hi Everyone,

Please find the answers provided by our team to ICOindex below.

Thanks,
Kris



1) Can you please send me the link to your Github code repository?

Our Smart Contracts were developed by TokenMarket and audited by CoinFabrik.
https://github.com/TokenMarketNet
https://github.com/CoinFabrik
We do not have Monaco Github code repository at this moment.


2) I have read many paid press releases, but I would like to see some unpaid articles as well. Could you send me links to articles mentioning Monaco card?

https://mona.co/press.html

We are continuously updating the press page as new coverage comes in.


3) Has VISA company approved Monaco card or have you already closed a deal with VISA?
3a) If yes could you please send me the terms of this deal?

We are under NDAs with our partners, so obviously we can't send you the terms of our commercial arrangements.
We have an agreement with a principal member of Visa, who will act as the issuer of Monaco cards; in turn, we are in the process of becoming a Visa program manager


4) In the video about Monaco card, Kris Marszalek claims that you have worked on Monaco card for almost 12 months. Do you have any material that could confirm this? It can be for example a team chat like slack with the history of your team messages.

Our HK company was incorporated on 30th June 2016. The first press coverage of our product was released after we got accepted into Fintech Supercharger, the #1 fintech accelerator in Hong Kong.

https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2016/11/92176-supercharger-fintech-accelerator-announces-8-new-startups-hong-kong-fintech-week-starts/

5) In the video was mentioned Monaco app. I could not find it on Google play so I suppose it is still in development. Could you please send me the working prototype or any beta version that your team has created so far?

We are going to have a closed beta for a selected group of our users in late July/ early August.

The release date of our apps has been set for 31 Aug 2017.

6) In the video was mentioned "Forecasted appreciation of Asset Contract value to ~$500MM by 2022" What does this mean and which analysis supports this forecast?

Please refer to the whitepaper, it's described at length there.

7) Kris Marszalek claims in the video that:
"You only spend exact increment in Ether or Bitcoin. Just enough to cover the VISA transaction. So, as a result, you are able to save 30-40 EUR on every 500 EUR you spend on Monaco card"

What is the saving of 30-40 EUR compared to? Is it comparison to using a fiat debit card, credit card or something else?
How are you going to achieve saving EUR30-40 on every EUR500 equivalent spent?

It is compared to selling your cryptocurrency on an exchange or through a service like coinbase and subsequently spending it in foreign currency on a debit or credit card issued by a high street bank.

We're achieving the savings by offering our customers perfect interbank exchange rates without any markups and free top-up with cryptocurrency.

Another claim from the video:
"They are going to save 5-8 times more on perfect interbank exchange rates that we provide."

How can you achieve the perfect interbank exchange rates and what are these exchanges compared to? Do you have a special deal with VISA? If yes I would like to see the contract.

As described in the whitepaper, we have built proprietary technology, that allows us to offer these rates to our customers as a customer acquisition tool. This has nothing to do with our Visa agreement. In fact, our rates will be more competitive than standard Visa rates.

9) Rafael Melo claims in the video:
"Given the interest that the product has received over the past 6 months, it is likely that demand will exceed supply"

Who expressed interest in the Monaco card when there was no public communication of Monaco card before mid-May 2017?

We were referring to the fact that we were chosen in early November to be one of 8 startups to join a leading fintech accellerator in Hong Kong, we were selected from a group of over 200 companies.

10) In the video was mentioned that the project was self-funded. What was your initial budget and how was the money used? How are you going to spend the money raised in the ICO? Do you have a detailed business plan?

The details of our business plan are listed in the whitepaper.

11) GmbH is a legal status of a company in German-speaking countries. If the company is "in formation" it has no legal status and therefore there is no reason to use GmbH in the name of the company. How is it possible that on your official website is written "Monaco Technology GmbH" when the company is still in formation?

It is common to have a company "in formation", we are following legal advise from our Swiss counsel here. The incorporation of the Swiss entity will be completed before the Token Sale is finished.

12) On the official website Mona.co the description of Kris Marszalek CEO says:
"Serial Entrepreneur in Southeast Asia Internet industry, 2x from $0 to $100m in revenue and 2 exits. CEO at Ensogo, Founder at BEECRAZY (sold for US$21mm to iBuy Group in 2013)."

Which companies did Kris start that had "2x from $0 to $100m in revenue and 2 exits"?

This information is publicly available on Kris' LinkedIn profile.

13) On the LinkedIn profile, I have found that Kris worked for Ensogo. On the Facebook page of Ensogo lot of people are complaining the company is a scam. Could Kris comment on these accusations?

Please refer to the 10min video answer by our CEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCL2gVoBdEw

14) Retrieved from Ensogo Wikipedia website (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensogo):

"On June 21, 2016, Ensogo announced that it will shut down all South East Asia operation (including Hong Kong) and its CEO Kris Marszalek has resigned; it also requests ASX to suspend shares trading. The unprecedented shutdown affected operations in several countries; workers in Singapore found the office was closed, Hong Kong sellers call for police investigation of fraud and certain stores in Thailand rejecting deals purchased by consumers, though the Consumer Protection Board is expected to summon Ensogo executives for remedial issues."

What was the reason for fraud investigation of Ensogo? Has Kris ever been investigated for fraud? If yes what was the result?

Ensogo is controlled by Patrick Grove, one of the top internet entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia and networth exceeding $400m according to Forbes.

It is worth noting that Ensogo appointed E&Y, a highly reputable big4 accounting firm to manage the process of exit from the region. Ensogo is still listed on the Australian Stock Exchange and has no liabilities with approximately $5m cash balance as of the end of last quarter.

As explained in the video above, Kris never agreed with the Ensogo Board's decision regarding the exit from the e-commerce business. This disagreement resulted in his resignation. He was not involved in the execution of the shutdown and does not agree with or support the way in which it was executed. Kris was never investigated for fraud of any kind and he has limited information about what happened with the company after he left.

===> What exactly are Monaco tokens used for?

Monaco tokens will  give you the right to claim a pro-rata portion of ERC20 in our Asset Contract. Monaco will send 1% of all transactions funded with crypto to the Asset Contract.
In essence this creates a very strong link between growth in our platform transaction volume and growth in Monaco token price in secondary market.

===> and will we be able to trade them on mainstream crypto exchanges?

We will be announcing the exchanges before the Token Sale is finished.

====> I see you use the VISA brand a lot in your description. Is VISA onboard and why would VISA choose this token where many others have failed to partner with VISA?

We've singed an agreement with an issuer (Principal Member of VISA), we're now in the process of becoming a program manager.
There is quite a few crypto cards in the market, who have successfully partnered with VISA. Monaco is different in 3 crucial ways:
- we give you perfect interbank rates on fiat currencies, effectively saving you a ton of money
- we have probably the sexiest card in the market
- our platform allows BTC, ETH and soon other ERC20 tokens as funding sources, without compromising stability, security and, last but not least, without asking you to convert to fiat on deposit

[/quote]

Curious as to whether you have a 'main' account? Is this your first account on the forum? I am just wondering, because I am weary of any IPO/ICO where the user is a new member. If this account is just for the project, would you be willing to post on your main account so we can see that you are not a new member?

I am sure you can understand hesitancy when plunging into another pre-sale, without knowing what we are truly getting in to. There have been far too many shady, lying, nefarious and downright malign people here that create what sounds like a truly innovative service, but burn everyone once they get their money.

I am not trying to be rude or hostile, quite the opposite. I would just like to know all the details before I spend coins on something.

I hope this is legit, because I would be happy to buy in.

--MisterCoin
[/quote]

Hi MisterCoin,

I'm genuinely new to the forum.

While I find what I see here quite fascinating, I rarely contribute on any kind of forums. I have found that I learn fastest by reading, meeting & hiring people from the industry, asking them the right questions & then simply applying to what I've learned to the process of building a company.

Making a conscious effort to post here, so that the community gets a chance to know me a little bit more, but its challenging, purely from the perspective of time needed to do it well.
I have found slack to be slightly more efficient, as I can respond very quickly, even on the go. I would encourage you to join the conversation there - slack.mona.co

Kris

Dont get me wrong, I think the concept is great. I was about to get in and dip into the ICO but the people behind the company makes me lose confidence in buying in. They mismanaged the release of their product. Now the whole crypto community is wondering if they are in fact legitimate (or competent). Questions like these makes you dont want to invest. Questions like these never should come up in the first place. Red flags everywhere. 

You also made a very good point about they are largely a copy of numerous crypto with the same concept but their competitors like EXSCUDO or Tokencard did proper protocol with regards to marketing (I dont think EXSCUDO or Tokencard rushed the release either. Monaco was done under a year).
[/quote]

Hi,

You should really check out our slack channel at slack.mona.co

The community has very quickly recognised that we are a professional team with a world-class product and communication is second to none.

We have now over 1,500 contributors and the pace is increasing.

Join our slack channel to get to know us better!

Kris

Hi,

Work in progress - should be ready to go soon!

Kris

Hi,

999 participants in the ICO will get the card.

Cards numbered: 500-999 are for the contributors who were the the fastest (by time stamp).
Cards numbered: 001-499 are for the contributors who had highest ETH contribution during the campaign.

There is a leaderboard showing both here: https://mona.co/leaderboard.html
You can contribute multiple times and it sums it up, as long as it's from the same address.

If you would like to have your contribution refunded, it is possible, but the process is complicated, as funds are in TokenMarket Escrow until the end of Token Sale and the MCO tokens themselves have already been issued to you by the smart contract. Please chat with our support team on the site or e-mail matt@mona.co.

Kris

As far as I can tell they were working on a fairly unrelated payment app through Foris. Then they saw TKN raise circa $15 million in 30 minutes and thought 'hey we can do that' and decided to pivot into a crypto debit card on the front end.  Except for the payment app it seems largely a copy. However that doesn't mean it can't be successful because the CEO does have experience rapidly building high valuation companies and TKN has stalled a little post ICO.
[/quote]

Hey,

I think this would be more accurate if the quote was: 'Hey, we can do it 10x better"

Jokes aside, everything we've built at Foris, including the core tech behind perfect interbank exchange rates has made it's way into the Monaco app. We've done much more work on the product in the last 12 months that other people in the space, so we are actually perfectly positioned to deliver & build Monaco into a massive brand and business.

We're very excited with the reception both the product and our team has received so far. People like our no-nonsense, fully transparent communication and they absolutely love what we're done with the product. In the end, it's about the product and not the ICO. It's the product that will drive the value creation for our supporters, not how well you've done on ICO pre-marketing.

We are product guys.

Kris

[/quote]

This is really sad. As an investor how can I invest in a company who doesnt know the industry?
Learning as you go is good but it also means mistakes are bound to happen. Major ones I think judging from whats happening now, poor judgement in launching the ICO without proper marketing and lack of knowledge in the community.
The damage is done. No one will trust your coin. Some of your employees on the webpage as so many people here on this thread pointed out are questionable due to the lack of representation of the Monaco company on their LinkedIn profile. At this point, your coin/token is very questionable.
[/quote]

Hi Hustleer,

I appreciate your feedback, but it looks like the community really got behind us, there's more than 1,500 contributors to our ICO already and we are likely to pass 20,000ETH in contributions by the weekend. That's 4x the minimum goal we set for ourselves. Time will tell whether our decision to launch fast was correct or not, I think it's definitely too early to make that call.

Our objective right now is to work hard on letting the community know us better. I encourage you to join our slack channel at slack.mona.co to experience just how excited everyone is about our product and the company.

Best,
Kris

Hi Sulaco,

We have been operating under the name Foris for almost a year now and that's what's reflected on our LinkedIn profiles. We'll be phasing Foris name out and transitioning to Monaco as early  as next week. The ICO kept us really busy and the priority was give to other tasks (like launching Chinese version of the website and signing partnerships there).

Kris

ROADMAP

Aug31st is going to be a limited qty launch - we will ship the cards to contributors and open a waiting list to general public, issuing few hundred cards per day max.
The MVP app functionality is: top-up, exchange, p2p send (free real-time sending between Monaco users), withdraw
Following versions will include: cross-border transfers, budgeting, instant loans, travel insurance
It's hard to talk about timelines, but 4 months is an eternity. We run weekly sprints and will have an R&D centre in Shenzhen with 20, maybe 30 engineers. We can do a lot in a month, let alone a quarter.

Roadmap will naturally evolve, especially we are planning to have regular feedback gathering sessions with the community.

POST ICO PERFORMANCE

We will have a dedicate team to keep the community up-to-date after the Token Sale is over. We'll get exchanges onboard to align the dates with the closing of the event.
We have a firm believe that the performance post ICO depends on 3 things:
- delivering the product into the users hands in schedule
- over-communicating with the supporters, including interim milestones that get us to launch
- growing the user based and transaction volume rapidly post-launch, to maximise the 1% contributions to the Asset Contract (which in turn will drive performance of MCO price)

We are committed to deliver on all 3 fronts.

Regarding capital, yes, if we raise substantially less, they can have an early advantage. But the reality is that we have already raised 3x more than we need to launch the product. And once it's live, we have higher token reserves to raise again at better prices and turn the capital advantage to our side. TKN mismanagement of their post ICO performance will be extremely costly to them, which they don't understand yet, because they think US$20m is all the money they will ever need. Shows lack of scaling experience.

Last, but not least, as a serial company builder, my core skill sets are:
- assembling a world class team and lining them up behind a singular vision
- pushing them to achieve things they thought not possible
- acquiring & retaining customers at a fraction of cost

That last piece is what investors should always look for in founders. Anybody can burn through capital to build user base. Can you do it without money? I bootstrapped my e-commerce startup in HK without venture capital to almost 1,000,000 users by the time it was sold for $21m. That's like 20% of online population in HK.. Mass market adoption.

We're taking all these learnings and using it to make Monaco better and deliver a fantastic product for the community.

Support us & have your friends support us, too!

Kris


 

The card is just a way to get users in.. and allow the your funds to be easily accessible anywhere in the world on existing banking/visa rails. 

If you want to understand the true potential of the project, you have to focus on what our APP will be able to do.
One example:

We are integrating with a well funded startup in online lending space - they disrupted a lot of traditional bank business by having proprietary algorithms that judge credit risk based on thousands of data points. They provide instant loan decisions online. So by integrating with them, we will enable a new account top-up option: Instant Credit. You will be assigned a limit, from which you can top-up your account. You will receive a monthly statement for Instant Credit and if you repay on time, there is no interest.

This effectively turns Monaco Debit Card into a Credit Card -> you will not have to pre-fund your purchases!

We have similar things on the roadmap for:
- travel insurance
- wealth management / investment funds

Eventually, by integrating a lot of disruptive products into the app, we will become a platform that banks will have extremely hard time competing with.

Last, but not least - blockchain & crypto are such powerful building blocks for innovation. We could not be more excited about the potential to disrupt finance industry with it.... But coming from traditional business world / finance background, we understand that in order to take marketshare from them, we need to play by the rules. Compliance. Compliance. Compliance.

Kris

Please e-mail me directly at kris@mona.co

Thanks!

Kris

Thanks for the questions, appreciated!

=====> "Myself and our development team are on top of the technology, the market and our potential customer base. But none of us have a bitcointalk account or are familiar with how crypto ICO's are traditionally conducted..."

Well, one of users Kostya put it very nicely on Monaco Slack channel:

Pinned by kostya
kostya [6:03 PM]
Tokencard: Crypto people learning how to do fintech
Monaco: Fintech people learning how to do crypto
My money is on the second.



======> The impression I got from the TKN Q&A is that they would only offer full KYC options. Will Monaco be able to offer unverified debit card options? Thanks.
Edit: Oh and TKN said they would not be able to service the US or Indian market initially. Will the Monaco card have the same initial restrictions? 

We are going to do KYC on 100% of our customers. We are building a real alternative to banks and the focus from business standpoint is on customers who already have a bank account. We are not going to be present in US & India in the beginning, but our vision is to make Monaco a global brand. It will require time, effort and capital, as in many cases it means setting up local operations, getting local e-money licenses and finding additional Visa or MasterCard issuing partners.

Kris



[/quote]

Hi Everyone,

I'm Kris - the founder of Monaco. Just opened an account on Bitcointalk to answer all the questions you may have regarding our company and the token sale.
We'll be posting a thread shortly...

I think we have to start by acknowledge, that:
- in hindsight, we should have had done a few weeks of pre-marketing to make a good first impression on the community
- we are late with even the basic stuff - like posting ANN on bitcointalk
- but at the same time, we are very happy with the results so far with our minimum being hit in under 2 hours and that we hit 10,000ETH milestone during the first 24 hours.
- we think since we had zero pre marketing ahead of ICO launch, the results are amazing and the only reason behind it is simply our product: people love the Monaco Card & App
 
In terms of addressing the single most common question: why only 1 day notice. It's actually pretty simple. The single thing that pushed us to launch ahead of our original July schedule was a competitor running towards an ICO with a 90% same value proposition (FX+crypto). Our CFO was at an event at VISA Innovation Centre in Singapore on 11th of May, where he ran into another founder, who basically told him what they're working on and that their ICO is going to launch in June. We made a judgement call to finish working on our ICO within a week and launch, then spend the next 30 days to gradually build exposure and increase our brand awareness, so everyone has plenty of time to get to know us and do their due diligence.

Naturally, we had no idea people would think this is a scam.
- we've been working on the product for almost 1 year
- we have very experienced team of entrepreneurs (I sold my previous business for US$21m in 2013, our CFO is ex-Mastercard)
- we have serious heavy-hitters on our Advisory Board from companies like AWS, VISA, Adyen, Emarsys

I guess to a certain extent it's a function of us not understanding how does this community think and operate. We're learning fast and we're committed to being open and transparent, so that everyone can have their questions answered. I will be here and on our ANN thread answering all the questions you may have. I also encourage those who find our project intriguing to join our slack channel: https://monaco-card.slack.com/ - it's growing steadily and is probably the most convenient way to get to know us personally.

Kris