ThirtySix
Active member
PRODUCT36
(Dash payment project by Alt Thirty Six)
(Dash payment project by Alt Thirty Six)
*Note: This is a cross post from our Pre-Proposal: 36 + Dash ATM link. and from Dash Central: https://www.dashcentral.org/p/Proposal-36-DashATM
Manual voting (DashCore - Tools - Debugconsole):
gobject vote-many 01b685c91bc4a3e79b3054516b9d79b32591b5f2f34a6322ac53bebdffca7877 funding yes
PRE Proposal documents:
Chinese Version PRE Proposal document.
English Version PRE Proposal document.
Chinese Dash Forum Post.
Alt Thirty Six builds beautifully designed, simple-to-use payment technology for companies accepting digital currency. We believe that digital payments are the future of global commerce, and we see the potential for Dash to revolutionize the financial industry - making payments faster, more secure, and less expensive on a global scale. Our fully-integrated, Dash payments solution solves all the problems associated with Bitcoin, traditional payments, and centralized banking solutions. Using seamless Dash payment technology, we remove the confusion and complex processes associated with digital currency.
Our main verticals are cash-based, cannabis retailers having difficulty accessing banking and payment services. In 2016, cash-based cannabis sales were approximately $6.7 billion and estimated to hit $11 billion by 2020. Federal regulation has resulted in cash-only transactions between retail merchants, suppliers, and their customers with limited or no access to banking institutions. The negative effects of cash handling include: increased time investment, issues paying suppliers/vendors/employees, and excessive fees which reduce the bottom-line.
The Problem
Currently, purchasing Dash is near impossible for the everyday person. Even for those who are familiar with digital currencies, one must often first purchase bitcoins and then exchange them for Dash. If the end goal is mass adoption of the currency, this is a major problem.
Regarding the accessibility of purchasing Dash, this problem can be broken into two issues that must be solved. First, a user-friendly system must be in place for anybody and everybody, including the non-technical, to be able to obtain Dash both safely and with ease. Second, with the user-friendly system in place, we must then work towards incentivizing people to purchase Dash directly without first buying bitcoins.
The Solution
Our solution is to host the largest network of Dash ATMs specifically for making the purchase of Dash as simple as possible. Every decision made regarding the ATMs will be metric driven and we will have ATM managers that monitor/evaluate performance of each ATM, conduct market research for possible future ATM locations, and manage the throughput of each ATM to ensure the necessary liquidity is always available.
Unlike the current digital currency ATM owners, our business model is not to charge ridiculously high fees that end up making the purchase of digital currencies from an ATM very costly and unattractive. Working towards our purpose of mass adoption of Dash, we will be charging very low fees to use our ATMs. Additionally, revenue generated from the ATMs will be directly reinvested into our ATM network solution. This includes, but is not limited to, purchasing more ATMs, hiring more ATM managers/business intelligence analysts to track metrics and evaluate performance, and increasing the cash/Dash reserves to add more liquidity to the network of ATMs.
Our fee structure will dynamically change based on analyzing real-time data. The fee structure will reflect the objective of the specific ATM. For example, if we want to empty the cash vault through selling Dash, we will lower the withdrawal fees. With that said, since our main objective is for Dash to gain mass adoption, the fee to purchase Dash will be 1% or less.
Implementation
Our implementation process for the network of ATMs will be based on market research when choosing a location, and then evaluated monthly based on performance metrics. If a certain ATM location fails to meet a certain transactional volume criterion, over a 3-month average period (period duration subject to change), we will relocate the ATM to a location that, through extensive market research, is shown to produce more volume.
Initially, through the extensive network of high cash-handling locations developed by the Product36 platform, all ATMs will be implemented in cannabis dispensaries that enable Dash payments through the platform. Currently, we see these as the most natural and synergistic locations that will generate the most volume through the ATMs and Product36. Listed below are the reasons that support this initial implementation decision and the benefits for the Dash ecosystem:
1. The cannabis industry has a huge cash-handling problem and wants to realize the benefits of transacting in Dash. Specifically the dispensaries that enable Dash through Product36 will be incentivized to have customers only pay in Dash, allowing them to realize the cost benefits. This in turn incentivizes dispensaries to promote the ATM by encouraging customers to purchase Dash, and then using Dash to purchase product. This increases the throughput of the ATMs as well as increases the amount of Dash injected into the cannabis ecosystem.
2. The consumers purchasing cannabis come from all levels of society and therefore the type of exposure that the Dash ATMs gain, is not restricted to one specific type of demographic. Furthermore, those in the cannabis space are early-adopters and generally very open-minded to new and exciting things. We believe this is the best population to introduce the Dash ATMs and that this audience will be more than welcoming to this new way to transact digitally.
3. With the current digital currency ATM business models, it is hard to get constant feedback and reassess the effectiveness of a certain location/implementation strategy. If we implement the Dash ATMs in dispensaries, we will be able to get constant feedback from the dispensary owners on the sentiment of the customers. With that information, we can work on changing the location strategy, the user experience, the fee structure, etc.
4. We are working closely with the ATM manufacturer and the current POS (point-of-sales) systems to allow the ATMs to essentially become Dash self-checkout machines. We believe this will make the transition from fiat to Dash currency seamless and allow customers to instantly realize the benefits of Dash.
Timeline
We plan to implement the ATMs into dispensaries at the same time that Product36 begins beta testing. Currently, this is set for early December 2017. For every new dispensary that enables Dash payments, we want to provide them an ATM machine. We are proposing this to the network in September to give us the funding and time to do the necessary development work to enable the features we need on the machines. We are partnered with an ATM machine company and will be using a brand new, unreleased model that we cannot give any more details about. This partnership allows us to customize the software associated with the ATMs to fit our needs. Such additional features include being able to exchange bitcoins to Dash and creating the self-checkout interface for dispensaries.
Alt Thirty Six will need to test the existing functionality and customizations prior to our December launch. We work very closely with the talent at Arizona State University and will be placing an ATM in the development labs in order to test the software and interoperability with Product36. Furthermore, we believe ATM security is a very high priority so we will be conducting extensive security and hacking tests on the machines.
We are requesting funding for the first 30 ATMs, associated costs with operating the ATMs, and additional development costs needed to perfect the user interface/experience for each specific location. Thirty ATMs is the amount needed to expedite the manufacturing of the brand new ATM models and will allow us to scale quickly. Our detailed proposed costs and funding request from the Dash network is listed below.
Requested Funding from Dash Network
1) ATM $13,000 x 30
$390,000
2) Technical Support/Testing $160 x 30
$4,800
3) ATM Legal/Compliance Fees $22,500
4) Cash Collection/Garda $3,000
5) Alt Thirty Six ATM Manager & Policy Management $6,400 x 2
$12,800
6) Alt Thirty Six Initial Development Costs $109,000
7) Alt Thirty Six Developer Security/Maintenance/Upgrades $10,000
8) Proposal Fee 5 Dash
Total Dash Contribution for Proposal in USD $552,100 + 5 Dash
Total Dash Contribution for Proposal in Dash 1,833.69 Dash*
*Based on CoinMarketCap.com Dash/USD Conversion Rate as of 8:52 AM MST on 9/17/2017
Team
Ken Ramirez, CoFounder + CEO
Lauren Murphy, CoFounder + President
Jeremy Liu, Portfolio Manager
Marcus Jones, Business Development
Shelly Du, Market Research Analyst
Board Advisors
Nitin Gaur, Director, IBM Blockchain Labs
Jeff White, Head of U.S. Acquiring, MasterCard Worldwide
Dragan Boscovic Ph.D., Director of CASCADE, Arizona State University
Mary Anne Keegan, President + CMO, Alert GPS
Joseph Ciccolo, Founder + President, BitAML
Rich Hybner, Former CFO, Wall St. Journal
Andrejs Bunkse, President, Endurance Strategy Group
Cory Skaaren, Principal + Creative Director, Skaaren Design
Daniel Berg, Regulatory Policy Analyst and Strategic Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Rick Oglesby, President, AZ Payment Group
Adella Toulon-Foerster, Director of Financial Legal Tech, Cogent Law Group
Brandon Willey, CEO, Fetch Rev
Nitin Gaur, Director, IBM Blockchain Labs
Jeff White, Head of U.S. Acquiring, MasterCard Worldwide
Dragan Boscovic Ph.D., Director of CASCADE, Arizona State University
Mary Anne Keegan, President + CMO, Alert GPS
Joseph Ciccolo, Founder + President, BitAML
Rich Hybner, Former CFO, Wall St. Journal
Andrejs Bunkse, President, Endurance Strategy Group
Cory Skaaren, Principal + Creative Director, Skaaren Design
Daniel Berg, Regulatory Policy Analyst and Strategic Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Rick Oglesby, President, AZ Payment Group
Adella Toulon-Foerster, Director of Financial Legal Tech, Cogent Law Group
Brandon Willey, CEO, Fetch Rev