I know that if anyone saw ico, technology, blockchain, and banana in one sentence would immediately think that one of the words is odd and quite weird to be put among the others. Especially these popular in the digital world words. As more and more ICO projects emerge, we see how diversified their ideas and coin usages are. In this TokenTops full article review, we will take a look at a project that takes quite an unusual and unique approach to the blockchain and the token and its value.
General Idea
BananaCoin wants to raise money in order to extend its banana plantation significantly. It is another example of a digital coin acting as a crowdfunding means for a real construction project. The coin’s value will be related and depend on the food market.
The blockchain in the food industry
When you look at this from a banana point of view, there is nothing new or revolutionary. This is a multi-million food industry. There are numerous plantations spread across the world, and bananas have been imported for hundreds of years. However, this time blockchain technology will make this ”ordinary” banana plantation quite revolutionary in its own way as it will be the first of its kind that will be publicly founded, as well as accounted on the transparent blockchain. Many people associate this technology with Bitcoin and payment methods, but it doesn’t only act as a fancy coin deployer but also happens to be the greatest data storage now available. It will become a great improvement in the managing process of the whole import and business part of the plantation project.
Banana fields
Right now, the company already owns 100 hectares of land that’s being used for banana plantations. To maximize profits, it’s good to keep your whole plantation in one place, but the purchasable land is often scattered over a large area, and it’s costly to maintain all of them in that way. Therefore the company wants to use the advantages of the region they have chosen for their initial plantation and extend it with raised funds, eventually creating one big plantation.
They are located in the Vientiane province of Lao PDR. Thanks to the floodplains that are nearby, the soil is effectively fertilized, and most of the water supply’s costs are significantly reduced. The climate is ideal for the plantation, with a high average air temperature. There is also relatively cheap energy for agricultural producers. The place has been chosen very well and is a strong advantage of this project.
The banana business
They focus their plantation on the banana called ”Finger Lady”, which is one of the most demanded and highest valued species.
On the 100 hectares, they are able to plant 361,600 bushes. A single bush gives 12.5 kilograms of an organic export crop. After all the calculations, the profit of a single harvest can grant even $4,520,000. And it’s all provided the cost per kilo is at $1, and as we can see in the chart, it can go up even to $4 depending on the season and the demand. They want to focus their export on the Chinese market and generally trade in the Asia region. The exports of bananas to China rose from 42% in 2011-2012 to 88% in 2014-2015. And it seems like this trend is constantly and steadily rising.
The token and its price
Bananacoin (BCO) is an Ethereum-based token. That means you will be able to store it in any regular Ethereum wallet. It will be tradable on various exchanges. The most interesting feature of this token is the fact that it’s market price is indicated by the food market’s price of a kilogram of bananas. It may sound funny for an investor to trust a banana with their money, but when we look at the stats, we can see that over the past 7 years, the price of 1 kg of bananas has been increasing by 4-10% per year, making it not only a stable and secure investment but also a steadily growing one.
Not only will the token act as a tradable asset, but it also makes the owner eligible to get the profit share of the project implementation.
Pre-ICO phase
The pre-ICO started on the 28th of August and will end on the 12th of September. They aim to sell 1 million BCO tokens for the initial price of $0.25 per token.
The banana team
The team consists of various people with all the necessary skills for the execution of such a project. There are people with years of experience in the agro-industrial field, as well as a good marketing team and people focused on the trading relationship with China.
They also act very professionally and want to provide as much transparency to their company as possible. A project investor can even personally visit their plantation to see how his money has been spent. Very good approach and cares for the peace of mind of investors. It’s always good to see that the developers care about their supporters.
They have provided strong and reliable whitepapers and business plans backed by data, statistics, and calculations. All the information about the company is easily researchable.
Potential risks
Taking all things into consideration, we can assume that’s quite a safe and stable project to invest in. There are not many considerable drawbacks because they have already built the plantation, there is a lot of money to be made out of it, and they want to expand their service on an even larger scale. They are opening to the Chinese market, which shows huge demand, and import a lot of bananas. The token’s price will remain quite stable as it depends on the real price of a kilogram of food, and that doesn’t change of sudden just like that, so there is no crash crisis that may happen other than a global food disaster, of course, but it’s not something that we may expect. Of course, there are also potential losses that may occur if something bad happens to the plantation or the yield happens to be small, but these are either unpredictable situations or controllable ones.