- Real-work use case
- Working product with clear benefits for its users
- Token burn reduces the supply over time.
- Team of experts in Business and Fintech
- Multiple cryptocurrency acceptance in one solution
Market Data
Price BTC
0.000006
Price USD
0.116575
ATH BTC
0.000098
ATH USD
1.41806
Down % ATH BTC
-94.12
Down % ATH USD
-91.78
Market Cap BTC
2,824
Market Cap USD
57,121,898
Volume 24h BTC
209.84
Volume 24h USD
4,243,902
Circulating Supply
490,000,000
Total Supply
500,000,000
Launch Date
2017-11-01
Website
Social Analytics Powered by 
Altrank™
646
/ 3,954
24 hour change
Lower ranks are better
Avg. Social Sentiment 24h
61% Bullish
6.4%
66% prev. 24h
Social Dominance 24h
0.034%
21.1%
0.043% prev. 24h
Social Engagement 24h
2,958,801
40.1%
4,943,378 prev. 24h
Social Volume 24h
783
21.1%
993 prev. 24h
Social Contributors 24h
27
3.6%
28 prev. 24h
News Volume 24h
0 Articles
NaN%
0 prev. 24h
Project Highlights
- Has been in the market for over three years and has delivered on its ICO promise
- Working tech with easy merchant integration and onboarding process.
- A network of merchants already using the API
- Strong team with some founders stepping down on their initial roles to bring more competent individuals.
- High token allocation to the public in the ICO stage
S.W.O.T Analysis
Strength
Weaknesses
- The project looks too centralized and depends on its business growth.
- As the UTK token value is tied to the platform usage, the diminishing activity could result in critical importance.
- Too niche product and doesn’t accommodate fiat to fiat transactions, the only crypto to fiat.
Opportunities
- The biggest opportunity UTRUST has is the traditional sellers who are accustomed to receiving fiat wanting to add additional payment options like cryptocurrency to their store.
Threats
-
There is a lot of competition and if a competitor can provide reversible crypto transactions, escrow and price stability in a better way, Utrust could lose its current lead.
Technical Analysis
Technical Analysis by Kong Trading - 27/11/2020
What is Utrust
The Problem
Cryptocurrencies have been developed to substitute money and enable easier, faster, cheaper, and censorship-resistant commerce. One of Bitcoin's main cornerstone questions whose positive answer would signal success was: Can you pay coffee with it?
Despite the tremendous success that Bitcoin has achieved in mainstream awareness, it has been adopted as it intended to be used - digital cash to be primarily used for transacting over the internet for goods and services. Why is that?
Mainly because as it is today, when crypto leaves your wallet, it stops being your money, and with it, a set of problems occur that enable efficient commerce. First being that there isn't any incentive for the one at the receiving end to deliver the agreed value in exchange, e.i. There isn't a consumer protection mechanism.
A buyer can send cryptocurrency to an address, but who guarantees that this address to which he sends crypto is the real seller's address or that he will, in return, deliver on his service, and how can a buyer be safe and claim a refund in case this happens?
On the other side, sellers that want to receive value would like to receive a fixed and predetermined amount (cost of goods or services), and with the high volatility of crypto, that isn't possible. Every purchase is made for an equal amount, or the sellers don't have any certainty in doing business.
There is also a matter of preference. With so many cryptocurrencies out there, it might be difficult for the buyer and the seller to agree on a particular coin they want to transact. Also, there are high fees associated with exchanging them into fiat and bringing back that value into the real-world.
UTRUST's approach
UTRUST is a payment gateway solution that allows buyers to purchase goods and services with their preferable crypto and sellers to receive FIAT, ensuring price stability and facilitating commerce. All this while maintaining an industry-standard in buyers' protection like chargeback and refunds, holding the seller's funds in escrow until services are delivered. This is why the platform positions itself as a layer of trust between the value exchange.
Acting as a mediator, UTRUST utilizes cryptocurrency transaction advantages - cheap, fast censorship-resistant payments while offering the seller a hedge against its number one disadvantage - price fluctuation. With the consumer protection and dispute resolution system, it can be annotated as the crypto-contender to PayPal. With its UTK native token, it can also act as an incentive mechanism and bring on-chain loyalty programs to the marketplaces and stores.
Technology
UTRUST is a payment processor, also known as a payment gateway, that merchants can integrate as a payment option via an API. As such, it allows a user on the sending side to pay in their cryptocurrency of choice, thus reducing the need to implement each cryptocurrency acceptance separately. A user can get fiat currency on the receiving end, which ensures price stability and certainty for the seller.
It acts as a trust layer between two transacting parties and guarantees that the goods and services will be delivered on one end and that the funds will be received in the specified amount on the other end. This is accomplished by implementing the escrow-like feature, which withholds the funds in the middle until the agreed criteria have been met. It has a dynamic holding period that depends on the seller’s performance, thus incentivizing merchants to provide a good service.
When the buyer decides to make a purchase, the first thing he does is select his preferred payment method. When selecting the UTRUST payment method, the user then chooses the payment coin or a token, and the process starts.
First, he selects any of his wallets from which the payment is to be made for any major crypto or the native UTK token. An invoice is presented with the predetermined USD equivalent amount at the current market price, which is updated every 2 minutes and the 1% fee for conversion.
The buyer sends funds to UTRUST, but the merchant doesn’t receive the funds right away. They instead go into a UTRUST protective hold (escrow) where they are converted into USD or another fiat currency at the given exchange rate and are locked up for a certain period.
The sellers can receive the funds after it was validated that the goods and services have been delivered, and there wasn’t any dispute. If the merchants don’t have any transaction history, this process can take days, while overtime, when a reputation is made, it can be reduced to hours.
In the case of a dispute, a resolution center is activated in two ways - as a self-resolution, meaning the merchant has acknowledged the problem (with shipping or faulty merchandise) and is willing to refund the customer or make corrects the mistakes made; or with a mediator, if the agreement can’t be made after 7 days.
In the second case, UTRUST operator joins the chat resolution. He serves as a mediator and has the final say on the dispute outcome. He collects information and evidence from both parties and issues a refund to the buyer if he is right. The merchant loses and is downgraded, which translates to a higher holding period in the escrow for further transactions. A fee of 2% incurs over the amount in the escrow deducted in the case that the buyer is right.
Target Audience
UTRUST platform aims to create value for its 3 major stakeholders: the buyer, the merchant, and the initial token contributors and later a token holder.
Buyers have a clear advantage of having an option to pay with their crypto for goods and services and not needing to leave the decentralized economy, which reduces fees and waiting time. In their preferred one, all of this has all of the advantages of transacting in the real world, like being protected against fraud, scams, and other bad actors.
Sellers benefit from the platform in one keyway. That is receiving fiat currency on their end, which ensures price stability and, in that way, hedging against high uncertainty and volatility of the buyer's cryptocurrency. This opens up a new niche market for the merchant as accepting cryptocurrency payments is tapping into a whole new user base.
Early contributors and token holders can see the token appreciate in value through the diminishing token supply. As the UTK token is tied with the platform in a way that follows the network activity. If a transaction has been made, an equivalent value of UTK tokens would be burned. UTK is also an accepted token alongside other cryptos but offers some advantages in fee wavering, thus incentivizing users to primarily use it as a token of exchange.
Product
Payment Gateway
UTRUST's main product is its payment gateway through which the payments are made. This gateway can be integrated into the website or other merchant's application and serves to collect information from the buyers in a trustless way. As such, it has several key and distinct features.
Lower Buyer Purchase Risk - with the escrow service UTRUST diminishes purchase risk for buyers as it ensures that goods or services have to be delivered first.
Payment Approval Speed - The payments are approved in the near-instant, as they leverage the blockchain's power and the protective hold solution.
Low exchange fees - Unlike some of its competitors, especially in the traditional EMI space (electronic money institution), where their business model revolves around charging unfavorable conversion fees. UTRUST offers both buyers and sellers low exchange fees by cross-referencing multiple crypto-currency exchange providers.
Low seller fees - While some payment gateways charge up to 7% or at least 2.5%, UTRUST offers a flat rate of only 1%.
Multiple Cryptocurrencies accepted - Makes the necessity of implementing different solutions for accepting different crypto obsolete as it offers multiple crypto support.
Safety of funds - Being built on the blockchain, UTRUST ensures the safety of funds. There is no way to be exposed to something like a credit card fraud where an impersonator takes information and uses a credit card on someone else's behalf.
No Chargebacks - Sellers will be protected from rampant credit card fraud and fake chargebacks, which is a common occurrence in traditional payment services that still rely on credit cards
Customer Payment Protection - Making the cryptocurrency transaction reversible in case of the dispute or an attempt at foul play that covers physical and digital goods and services.
Efficient resolution of disputes - Offers a fast resolution execution either as a self-resolution or with its mediator that is straightforward and easy to conduct.
Performance-based rating of the seller - Unlike other systems, UTRUST makes the merchant accountable for doing bad business by implementing downgrading of its rating, thus increasing the funds' lockup period and vice versa. This system ensures that the merchants are incentivized to do good business.
Multi-Currency Wallet
Besides the payment gateway, Utrust also offers a multi-currency wallet. Through the wallet, they bring their customers closer together with the option for fee-free transactions with any other Utrust wallet globally with no border restrictions. They are also offering an option for accepting and paying seamlessly with multiple digital assets online.
Utrust wallet users will also have access to offers from Utrust’s growing portfolio of partner merchants, including SL Benfica, Alternative Airlines, Phone House Portugal and Payrexx.
Invoicing
The third product is Utrust's invoicing feature. This feature is basically the counterpart of PayPal's 'PayPal.me' but with one significant difference. The invoicing feature completely eliminates the fees and conversion rates on cross border payments. That means, that you simply can request a payment from your friend, family member, or customer and get paid instantly. This feature is currently in beta (while writing this) and should be launch in 2020.
Use case
Utrust platform can be used in two ways - business and personal or, in other words, by buyers and sellers.
For personal use, Utrust is a wallet where you can store your UTK token and other major cryptocurrencies and reap the benefits of consumer protection. Simply a user gets a dashboard from which he can use the QR code scanner to make purchases or send and receive funds in a traditional way with the address. 
For business use, it's a platform for accepting crypto payments and receiving fiat currency instead. It is best integrated on websites, and its main advantage is e-commerce, especially in physical goods.
It is already used by various merchants and can be easily integrated into the most popular e-commerce platforms and plugins like Magento and Woocommerce.
Competition
As a payment gateway provider, Utrust's immediate competition are other payment gateway provider that are focusing on payment solutions.
BitPay
BitPay is a bitcoin payment service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
CoinPayments
CoinPayments is a payment service provider with online merchant services & payment gateway integration for retailers to accept cryptocurrency as payment.
Coti
COTI describes itself as a 'fully encompassing finance on the blockchain” ecosystem that is designed to meet the challenges of traditional finance (fees, latency, global inclusion and risk).Team Members
The team behind UTRUST platform consist of people from the business development background and supply-chain management. The leading people are mostly business strategists with an interest in Fintech.
Nuno Correia
Co-Founder & Chairman of the Board
Nuno was the first CEO at the ICO stage. He is an early cryptocurrency investor, deeply involved in crypto markets and community since early 2011 and successfully co-founded several B2C ventures. With a background in Law and Marketing, he is passionate about the transformative future of digital payments
Sanja Kon
CEO
a senior digital executive with extensive experience in developing and executing global digital strategy, delivering sustainable revenue growth in multinationals and startups within the E-Commerce, Fintech and Telecommunication industries. As the CEO at UTRUST, Sanja's main focus is to partner with key international players to improve the accessibility of digital assets and increase cryptocurrency merchant adoption.
Roberto Machado
Co-Founder & Board Member
Roberto was the original CPO at the ICO stage. He has a background in Software Engineering, but also plenty of experience in management and entrepreneurship.
Filipe Castro
Co-Founder, Board Member & CCO
Filipe has an MBA with an MSENG. Early career in development of software solutions, including electronic payment systems.
Artur Goulão
Co-Founder & Board Member
Artur is a former CTO in a leading digital payment platform company and current head of Development of a Swiss-based Cybersecurity company. Excels and is deeply involved in the development and R&D of software-related payment systems, in either classical or Blockchain Smartcontract-based approach. Has a background in Computer Science from IST and MIT.
Rodrigo Russell
Chief Operating Officer
Rodrigo has a degree in Blockchain Technologies, Business Innaovation & Application from the MIT.
Gil Monteiro
Chief Financial Officer
Before joining the Utrust team as the CFO, Gill was the former CFO of Einhell Portugal. He has a degree in business administration and could collect a lot of experience in his previous positions.
Filipa Gonçalves
Chief of Staff
Filipa has a master's degree in IT law at Universidade do Minho and was already able to prove herself at Lionbridge Technologies.
João Gomes
Head of Marketing & Growth
João is the founder and CEO of Happyfact. He has a degree in Management & Industrial Engineering.
Martinho Aragão
Head of Product
Martinho has a master degree in software engineering and started as a product manager at Utrust. After two years he step up as the Head of Product at Utrust.
Roadmap & Events
Q1 2020 - Automation
The focus of the first quarter of 2020 is on platform scale-up and growth. Their goal is to automate all the onboarding processes for all of their merchants. This includes everything you can imagine, the settlements, the refunds, the withdrawals etc.
Q2 - A stable coin and new merchants
The focus of the second quarter are on two major highlights. The fully operational automatic onboarding process, and the start of accepting a lot more merchants. Another noteworthy highlight is the intergration of a stable coin on their payment platform.
Q3 - Staking, Cashback and Merchants Referral Program
In the third quarter, Utrust will be introducing some stunning new features for their Utrust Wallet on top of that they are going to start with cashback and staking. A merchant referral program to build on the work of the previous quarter and keep expanding their ecosystem is also planned.
Q4 - Building 2021
The fourth quarter is used to review the past quarters and analyze the achievements and mistakes that may have been made to avoid them in the future and deliver even better quality. But the past has shown that the team of Utrust still has some surprises in store!
The detailed roadmap can be found here.
Past Events
Upcoming Events
Token Sales & Economics
UTK is an ERC20 token running on the Ethereum blockchain. It serves as a utility token that is native to the platform and is coupled to the value exchange made, meaning for every transaction, a percentage of the transactional fee will be used to buyback UTK and to remove them from the market via a burning process. This is called an intrinsic deflationary mechanism and attempts to ensure sustainable platform growth with the tokens value directly linked with the platform usage.
Tokes are also used to gain certain benefits on the platform like zero exchange fees, can be used for purchasing goods and services, or paid in for the dispute resolution center.
ICO and Token allocation
Initially, the total supply was projected for 1 billion tokens but was later reduced by double in size, and a total of 500.000.000 tokens were minted. First, a pre-ICO was conducted on the 28th of August 2017 with the token price set at $0.03 while the main sale took place on November 2nd same year when the token price was set at $0.065.
The hard cap has been set at $21.375.000, while it was later reduced to $21.000.000, which was successfully reached. With its pre-ICO and private investors in total, 80% of the token supply was distributed to the public, while 20% has been kept for project development, marketing, etc. Out of that, 10% of the total supply is directly retained by the UTRUST team and is locked up and emitted at 2% per year for five years (November 2022).
The allocation of funds post-ICO is determined per token value and distributed across project development and implementation sectors for the project development and implementation as shown below.
A total of 40% of the funds collected during the ICO was allocated to the development of the MVP, research, and development of the API for merchant integration and client wallet and resolution dispute mechanism. Another quarter of the funds were allocated for marketing purposes and integration with 3rd party websites.
The remaining 35% of funds collected during the ICO were dedicated to the operational and administrative expenses, partner engagement, and legal matters.
Market potential
Ecommerce is a market that conducted $3.5 trillion in sales last year and is expected to rise to $4.9 trillion by 2021. People are buying more goods and services online. This trend is expected to grow, and so does the adoption of cryptocurrencies, which is a 344,25 billion dollar market.
Considering the advantages UTRUST offers compared to its other competitors, especially the most direct one being the lowest fee of only 1%, its market potential looks great. On the other hand, using cryptocurrency to make purchases in shops and stores is just starting. Other solutions tackle the problem of purchases and hedge against market volatility like crypto credit cards (one the buyer's end) and stablecoins (on the seller's end).
Source: https://www.statista.com/
If UTRUST had enabled payments in fiat and tokenize the intra-bank communication, which a payment gateway serves for using UTK token only to carry data between banks, its potential would be far greater as to include the whole e-commerce space.
Instead, it is operating in a certain niche. It depends on buyers' willingness to purchase with crypto and onboarding merchants who want to accept crypto but receive fiat currency.
Partnerships
S.L.Benfica
Sport Lisboa e Benfica ComC MHIH OM, commonly known as Benfica, is a professional football club based in Lisbon, Portugal, that competes in the Primeira Liga, the top flight of Portuguese football.
Phonehouse
Phone House, is one of Europe’s largest electronics retailers and telecommunications providers.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It is designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress.
PRW Jewelry
PRW Jewelry is as the name already suggests an online-shop where you can buy jewelry.
Alternative Airlines
Alternative Airlines is an online travel agency that you can use to book flights.
Kompakt
Kompakt is a Cologne-based electronic music independent record label and vinyl/CD distributor.Utrust has been able to board an astonishing number of partners in a short time. Here is a brief selection of the partners. The full list can be found on the Utrust website.
Github activity
Overview
Main Repos
Commit Activity past 12 months
+5
Last Commit
1 week ago
Stars
Languages
Community Data and other Key Information
Like many crypto projects, UTRUST has the highest reach on Twitter and its the most engaging audience. This is due to the announcements compatibility with the Twitter format and they are their number one content type. Second largest social following the project has on Facebook but its third platform by the number of users, Telegram has far better engagement as while on Facebook people passively like posts, there they are community. They are also represented on Reddit and LinkedIn.
References and important to read articles
Disclaimer
NO INVESTMENT ADVICE
The content is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained on our Site constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Upblock or any third party service provider to buy or sell any cryptocurrencies (also called digital or virtual currencies, crypto assets, altcoins and so on).
DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH
Our content is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. It is essential to do your own analysis before making any investment based on your circumstances. You should take independent financial advice from a professional in connection with or independently research and verify any information that you find on our website and wish to rely upon, whether to make an investment decision or otherwise.
