Here’s Our Verdict On The TravelChain Initial Coin Offering

It’s December 15, 2017, and it’s a big day for a company that’s trying to revolutionize the way people travel.

That company is TravelChain.

After what amounted to incredibly successful presale, TravelChain’s initial coin offering (ICO) will kickoff during the US afternoon today and, on the back of the offering, investors are able to pick up an exposure to what the company is trying to do in this space right now.

So what’s happening and why would an investor want to take part in the offering?

It’s all about data monetization.

Hundreds of millions of people travel to various locations across the globe on a daily basis, each doing so with different intentions and for different reasons. This vast amount of activity creates an equally vast amount of individualized data. The companies that collect said data monetize it by selling it on to other companies, which then use it, among other things, to underpin a sales and marketing strategy for their various goods and services.

To the companies collecting and selling it, this data is incredibly valuable and, as things stand, only a handful of entities account for a very large majority of the collection of the data that we, as travelers, produce.

Of course, in a perfectly fair situation, these companies would be paying the travelers for said data since it’s these travelers that are working to create it. In many industries, this is the case. In travel, not so much.

That is, until now.

Using blockchain technology, TravelChain has created a platform through which an individual traveler can store, manipulate and – importantly – monetize the data they create through their individual activity.

The concept is actually relatively simple. The user creates a profile within the TravelChain platform and, as they travel around, the profile logs their various activity within what’s called a Traveler Passport.

This passport contains a huge variety of different data points, ranging from preferred locations, travel time to destinations, food and eating habits, shopping habits, all that sort of thing, and comes together to form a highly accurate representation of the individual behind the profile – at least, that is, the travel habits of said individual. Of course, the application only records data that the traveler permits it to and, with the data stored on a blockchain, it’s incredibly secure and resistant to any sort of malicious third-party acquisition.

So how does this translate to monetization?

Well, with the application and the system based on the blockchain, there’s the potential to create a cryptocurrency to support the network and TravelChain has done exactly that. The currency in question is called Travel Tokens (or TT) and it’s these tokens that serve as a reward for a user both storing and subsequently sharing the data they generate.

If a user stores some data regarding a hotel room size preference, for example, they receive TT. If they then share this data with a hotel operator, they are again rewarded with TT.

TT will be available to trade on the major exchanges in the space, meaning either the user can hold onto the TT they receive in anticipation of long-term upside revaluation (which is the justification for participating in the ICO that’s set to start today, with users receiving TT for doing so) or they can exchange it for another cryptocurrency or fiat to realize their data value.

So what comes next?

As noted, the ICO kicks off today and the company hopes to have the platform and network launched by the end of February 2018. There’s an incredibly strong team behind this one, with names from the upper echelons of a variety of major industries comprising the executive and advisory team, meaning, from an execution perspective, there is very little question about TravelChain’s ability to execute on its milestone roadmap.

For anybody considering taking part in the ICO, it’s well worth having a look at the white paper here and at the same time checking out some of the names associated with this project here.

Our verdict: Very much one to watch.

We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest on TravelChain, sign up below!

Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.

Image courtesy of TravelChain