Any ordinary car enthusiast, smaller investors, etc can now own a fraction of a rare car’s total worth. This was previously only accessible to wealthy elites. We bring you an overview of CurioInvest who is making this possible thanks to its security tokens.
About CurioInvest
CurioInvest is a platform to invest in premium collectible cars. The purchase price of the cars is crowdfunded by selling “CAR” tokens to investors on the platform. These CAR tokens give an investor the right to receive a share in any profit when the vehicle is resold. An investor can also build a virtual garage, backed by tangible, real-world assets.
The segment
CurioInvest’s sister company, Mercuria Helvetica AG, has developed lasting relationships with many top-tier automotive companies including Pagani, Ferrari, and Mercedes-Benz. CurioInvest has access to a pipeline of over 500 rare, collectible vehicles. This ensures exclusive investment opportunities from day one.
The vehicles are stored at a highly secure and climate-controlled storage facility near Stuttgart, Germany. It is managed by a partner, Mechatronik GmbH.
Business model
- Step 1: Identify – CurioInvest identifies a rare classic or modern collectible car that is priced competitively and likely to increase in value over time.
- Step 2: Crowdfunding – CurioInvest launches a crowdfunding campaign to finance a car. Investors can invest in the vehicle through the platform. If the crowdfunding campaign does not complete within three months, investors will be refunded everything except third-party payment processing fees.
- Step 3: Security Token: Investors receive security tokens (Car Tokens) proportional to the size of their investment.
- Step 4: Dashboard: CurioInvest Dashboard enables management of the Tokens. Peer to peer trading is possible.
- Step 5: Resale: All token holders receive a share of the sales proceeds proportional to their token holdings minus costs (storage, maintenance, and insurance, for example) and the CurioInvest performance fee of 20%.
Brands in Pipeline
Benefits of security token
A digital asset that is directly backed by a physical asset (such as a car) can be sold as a security token. The main benefits of asset tokenization are as follows:
- Divisibility: Fractional ownership of a high priced asset.
- Lower cost: Involves fewer middlemen. It avoids costs like “illiquidity discount” (up to 20-30%).
- Less bureaucracy: Online monitoring and control of everything.
- Faster settlements: Transactions are much quicker.
- Decentralization: Peer-to-peer token.
CurioInvest is the world’s first to make exclusive cars tradeable.
- Compliance: For each vehicle listed on the platform, CurioInvest will register the associated asset-backed security token offering (STO) directly with Lichtenstein’s financial regulator, the Financial Market Authority (FMA). Each security asset will be issued an ISIN compliant across the EU.
- Proprietary due diligence process (5-tier system):
- Asset sourced following profitability model
- Negotiation with vendor
- Evaluation
- Financing
- Obtaining
- GroundWork: CurioInvest does all the background hard work.
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- Finding fine automobiles
- Negotiating the deal
- Paperwork
- Maintenance and repairs
- Revaluations
- Selling
- Scalable, robust investment model: Proprietary access to a continuous deal flow of top vetted collectible assets.
- Security: The CurioInvest platform ensures the highest possible level of security by using a decentralized and encrypted blockchain network. As there is no central server, a large-scale data breach is virtually impossible.
- Transparent monitoring tools: Transparent monitoring tools keep investors informed throughout the investment life cycle, providing a central hub to store or download all relevant documentation.
- Multi-Currency: CurioInvest enables investors to invest and withdraw in any of the top 25 international currencies and 35 alternative currencies such as Bitcoin and Ether.
CurioDAO
The CurioDAO is the collectibles curator DAO built with @AragonProject. It brings a system to curate the most valuable collectibles. The system incentivizes cross-collaboration and improves scouting for collectibles assets through distributed decision making.
Token
CurioInvest Tokens run on Ethereum blockchain and has three unique tokens for governance, utility, and security.
- CURV: CURV is the CurioDAO governance token. Holding CURV makes you a member of the CurioDAO. Holders are capable of participating in the DAO’s governance votes and proposing votes of their own. Governors of the DAO have incentives to do a good job. In the future, if the members of CurioDAO do a good job, the tokenized cars get successfully crowdfunded and rewards in the form of car tokens will be collected into a pot. This will be redeemable by participants in governance. Notably, only CURV and CUR tokens are interchangeable and the process follows a novel distribution algorithm called Bonding Curve.
- CUR: CUR is the utility token of the Curio ecosystem. It helps to access features reserved for CUR token holders. This includes gaming features, the CurioDAO, and more planned utilities.
CUR is available in ProBit and has a very low total supply of only 2 million tokens.
- CAR tokens: Car tokens are independent security tokens that represent each car. In the CurioInvest platform, there will be 1 ticker with 1 million tokens for each car. Example CT1 (1 million tokens) representing Ferrari F12tdf, CT2 representing Porsche, and so on.
First Sale – Ferrari
CurioInvest will start with the sale of a Ferrari f12tdf. It is a limited edition version of the F12berlinetta, with a focus on on-track performance. The car has an extremely limited production run of just 799 vehicles.
Team
Rey Fernando Verboonen: CEO, Co-Founder
Fernando served as the CEO at Mercuria Helvetica, a fintech investment firm specializing in exotic cars. He has also worked at Sunrise and an ETH spin-off, Kooaba.
Valerie Florence Halter: COO, Co-Founder
International Business Developer with 8+ years of experience in the financial industry supporting Vontobel and Mercuria Helvetica, with a focus on highly exclusive cars.
Before joining CurioInvest, Vladimir led tech development for numerous DLT projects. He is an expert in Solidity. He currently focusses on the DAICO concept for the CurioInvest environment.
Conversion to CURV Token
Strong technical users can now exchange CUR tokens for CURV tokens. This happens through a novel Aragon tool powered by Bonding Curve. This takes place in 2 stages: presale and a trading period unlimited in time. Tokens are exchanged for existing utility CUR tokens. The initial ratio is 1 CURV = 1 CUR, which is valid during the presale stage.
Further, the price of the CURV will be floating, and will depend on supply and demand and will be controlled by the bonding curve formula in the smart-contract of Aragon Fundraising application.
Conclusion
CurioInvest is bringing an entirely new asset class to an investor. As a result, it has a first-mover advantage. The company also has a pipeline of very good car models. For car enthusiasts and also for a common investor, CurioInvest brings an excellent opportunity to partially own the car of your dreams and make a profit from it. Decisions are made in the blockchain. Moreover, the company is regulatory compliant. Check the rates and deduction from profits to calculate the actual return of investment (ROI) from a car sale.
However, the use case of CUR token is relatively weaker than the CURV or the CAR tokens. Although all of CurioInvest cars are meticulously stored and maintained by reputable expert partner(s), they may still be subject to material risks such as potential vehicle damage.
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Disclaimer
The information discussed by Altcoin Buzz is not financial advice. This is for educational and informational purposes only. Any information or strategies are thoughts and opinions relevant to accepted levels of risk tolerance of the writer/reviewers and their risk tolerance may be different than yours. We are not responsible for any losses that you may incur as a result of any investments directly or indirectly related to the information provided.
Do your due diligence and rating before making any investments and consult your financial advisor. The researched information presented we believe to be correct and accurate however there is no guarantee or warranty as to the accuracy, timeliness, completeness. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are high-risk investments so please do your due diligence. Copyright Altcoin Buzz Pte Ltd. All rights reserved.
