BOLT AMA with Wolf Crypto
We held an AMA with BOLT in our public Telegram channel on March 25th.
BOLT’s vision is to be the largest mobile wallet in the world, powered by content. Built on Zilliqa, the fastest public blockchain and smart contract platform, its mission is to democratise the chain between content producers and users.
BOLT has focused their efforts in building token utility partnerships, including hardware manufacturers like Hisense in South Africa (over 6M active devices), partnering with International Cricket Council to broadcast the Cricket World Cup in June 2019, exchanging tokens for mobile data plans with Digi (part of Telenor, with over 11.8M subscribers) in Malaysia, and having an ecosystem of telco network operators around Asia and Africa with a user base of almost 80M users.
BOLT has integrated with blockchain ecosystem partners such as Zilliqa, Bitmax and Switcheo for purposes of permissionless blockchain, token trading and token to telco mobile data marketplace infrastructure respectively.
The BOLT token will be listed on Bitmax.io and Switcheo.exchange on the 26th of March.
Here’s what BOLT Founder and CEO Jamal Hassim and Christel Quek Co-Founder and CCO had to say in the AMA.*
*This AMA has been edited for clarity.
WC (Wolf Crypto Telegram Member)
Welcome to another edition of Wolf Crypto AMA, this time with BOLT!
Joining us from the Bolt team are Jamal Hassim, Founder and CEO and Christel Quek, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer.
TEAM & TEAM GOALS
WC
Welcome to you both, Christel you please tell us a bit about yourself and what led you to being involved with BOLT?
CQ
Hi there everyone! I’m Christel the Co founder of BOLT. I was previously the CMO at Zilliqa and the Head of Content at Twitter. BOLT was founded with a mission to bring blockchain to the masses.
WC
Can you give us an overview of what you’re trying to achieve with BOLT long term and how using a token factors into this?
CQ
Definitely. Our mission is simple, we want to decentralise the chain between users and producers. Producers can be more than just content but also distributors of mobile data, etc. Our vision is to be the largest mobile wallet that is powered by content. The token we see is a kinetic energy through the ecosystem as traditional fiat gateways are very cumbersome and expensive to integrate. So we want to be able to offer distributors and business owners, producers at large an opportunity to tap into a wide audience base in markets across Asia and Africa.
We have built a ready audience of almost 80m users through our telco partnerships in Asia and Africa. For example Digi in Malaysia has over 11m subscribers. We are now in the process of allowing their subscribers to use BOLT tokens to redeem for mobile data plans.
WC
How many total team members does BOLT have and how many developers are working on the project?
CQ
About 5–6 devs within 30 team members.
JH
We have 30 team members and we have contracted parties delivering projects to us as well. You can see our full team on https://bolt.global/about.
WC
So with the core team taken care of and tech build well advanced, its more about the business development side of things moving forward?
CQ
Yes and also ensuring we will always be agile enough to do best in class consumer product implementation and marketing.
JH
Market expansion, innovation, content and user acquisition are key areas of focus for us.
THE BOLT NETWORK
WC
How can I currently access the BOLT app?
CQ
On Google Play via this link on on the web via this link.
WC
How does your average or generic user use BOLT?
CQ
Right now the first use case is accessing video highlights of Premier League Football matches and the upcoming Cricket World Cup. We are looking to foster more partnerships where users can use our apps without eating into their mobile data balance. We have already done so with one telco in Malaysia (Maxis) who have 8m users.
WC
The BOLT Google Play application has over 100K downloads. How many of these users are currently active on the app?
JH
Actually the number has now grown well beyond 100k. For one thing we have almost 4m users using our web app already and we currently have offices in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, London and Nairobi. So that number is 4m and growing.
2019 and 2020 are the years where we‘re going to accelerate our user numbers scaling. In the markets that we are in there’s a potential of almost 1b users, so lots more room to grow.
WC
What’s your currently monthly user growth rate?
JH
Our monthly growth is 10% approx.
WC
What are the pros and cons for using BOLT as opposed to any other traditional media platform, like YouTube or Netflix?
JH
For one thing those other services address a different demographic. BOLT focuses on users in emerging markets who are primarily accessing content on their mobile phones, have limited data access and have a need for trending premium content. We are a service that our users will use a few times daily to get access to important trending content, unlike those other services that mostly only have a once a week interaction with their users.
WC
So when it comes to content, how much of this content is exclusive to BOLT?
JH
I would say about 50% of our content is original now. Our intention is to take that level up to about 80%, but we need to ramp up our production.
WC
Pretty decent, that beats the likes of Netflix, hopefully your content is cheaper to produce than theirs!
JH
Well the difference is that Netflix raised $16b in debt to fund their original content production. This isn’t a sustainable business model. 22 years in media has made clear what will and what wont work and hence the idea of BOLT, to do all the things in the way that nobody else is doing.
WC
So with the value of the platform being based around delivering high quality video over mobile data based connections, let’s talk about the tech behind this. What makes your tech different to any other streaming service?
JH
As our users snack on our live channels for a few mins at a go, we don’t carry the full live matches as our users wouldn’t have the data allowance to watch whole matches. So what we do is produce live highlights after every hour of play ensuring that our users can catch up with all the action in 5–7mins at the rope of every hour of match play. It’s our way of addressing the viewing needs and limitations of our viewers.
We encode our content at much lower bitrates blending the audio and video files to produce optimal streaming file sizes.
WC
So how is content actually stored on BOLT, is this via a bunch of nodes or is the content still streamed from centralised servers?
JH
We have centralised servers around the world and we have edge servers where we have larger numbers of users.
WC
One of the major objectives of any application, be it traditional or blockchain based, is it’s “stickiness”, i.e making sure users are retained on the platform. How does BOLT incentivize users to keep coming back to the BOLT app past access to content?
JH
So we keep the service sticky by keeping the trending content fresh and updated daily so that our users always have something new to look out for. A lot of the content we carry will have interactivity moving forward and incentives for users to participate and engage daily.
CQ
Performance marketing is important and so is strategic data planning. That’s why we have an advisor like Varun Agarwal on board (currently Strategy and Insights Manager at Coca Cola Asia)…he also used to lead data planning for P&G.
WC
How are individual users be incentivised for producing content for BOLT?
JH
Users will be incentivised by being paid for their content performance and the numbers of users that they can bring to BOLT.
CQ
To add on, we are trialing a way for users to tip their favourite content with BOLTs. Limited amount of BOLTs will be given out daily. If the content you chose trends, you get your BOLTs back.
WC
So what pool of tokens are these users paid out of, just to be clear?
JH
From the strategic partners pool.
WC
Can you go into a little more detail as to how tokens and mobile credit works in underdeveloped nations and what this means for BOLT?
JH
Well the users in the developing markets, which make up almost 5–6b people, mostly don’t have bank accounts or payment cards so they rely on their mobile wallets to pay for things. These mobile wallets are topped up with fiat currency.
So we intend for our users to either buy the tokens or earn the tokens by performing tasks which increase data points and engagement. These data points and engagement will be useful to sponsors from whom we will derive sponsorship revenue.
WC
How are users interacting with the app considering they can’t use BOLT tokens just yet?
JH
They pay fiat currently. We are removing fiat payments out of our model except for the markets where we have telco partnerships and users pay through their phone plans. We’re getting our users to migrate to using our tokens. Actually using tokens opens up a whole new market of users that using fiat payment wasn’t able to.
We are also opening up a new revenue stream of sponsorship’s and advertising over and beyond subscriptions.
WC
I was wondering about the cost of the service. Is there a basic plan, advanced plan etc?
JH
We don’t use traditional tiered plans as these are too complex for users in emerging markets, simple all access plans based around duration.
WC
The BOLT application contains both a wallet and content. Can you go into more detail on the wallet itself? Does it only accept BOLT tokens or other cryptocurrencies?
CQ
From the get go we will be supporting BOLT and ZIL.
WC
I’ve heard rumors you’ll also be accepting BNB, is this true?
CQ
Yes, that’s correct.
WC
The current platform is mobile and Android only? Will you be expanding this to include iOS and desktops?
JH
We will extend to iOS in the middle of this year.
WC
There has been mention of the “exchange of virtual goods” on the BOLT network. What virtual goods are these and how will the exchange of such virtual good occur in practice?
JH
Well we are developing virtual gifting for instance where users can send virtual gifts or virtual flowers for instance to other users or content creators.
TOKEN UTILITY
WC
How does the token utility and model create value for investors?
CQ
One is creating opportunities for partners to immediately use our token for real world goods , starting with mobile data plans. So supply is increased by sheer partner volume but directed at a mass use case. There’s also the token burn we are looking to implement per quarter to reward long term holders of the token.
WC
BOLT was originally intended to be a NEP-5 based token right? What made you switch from NEP-5 to ERC-20?
CQ
It was, but to support liquidity and ensure stability we decided to port to Ethereum first.
WC
The whitepaper states BOLT has a “Repurchasing Plan and Token Burn”. Can you explain this in more detail and the intention behind it?
JH
As we are already a profitable business we want to link our token supply to the business performance of the company and hence the value of about 20% of our annual profit in tokens will be taken out of circulation to reduce supply. We are generating profits through our subscription revenues and also by keeping operations very lean.
CQ
We wanted to ensure that the utility of the token will correspond with the value of the token ecosystem. So all tokens are pre-minted and sealed, burns to happen thereafter to ensure supply is reduced.
PARTNERSHIPS
WC
BOLT is “powered by Zilliqa”. Can you explain the relationship between Bolt and Zilliqa? Hypothetically, say Zilliqa fails, do you have a backup plan? Any other chains you’d build on? Could you move to Ethereum?
CQ
We are working very closely with Zilliqa , but of course a business always needs a backup plan. The worst case scenario is to build on Ethereum since we are already an ERC-20 token.
WC
Can you give any details as to what kind of support Zilliqa is giving BOLT?
CQ
Sure, I am still an advisor to Zilliqa so we had the benefit of support directly from leadership and their dev team. They have been very busy getting their bootstrap phase out of the way so we have been very fortunate.
WC
I see you have Al Jazeera listed as a partner. Can you go into detail regarding that partnership?
CQ
They are our content partner, we stream them live on our platform, their channel that is.
WC
So that will be like the ICC where it will be short news highlights?
JH
No we carry the full live channel for Al Jazeera. Over and above our short content we carry a number of live international channels. Our users like to dip in and out of the live channels to try and catch interesting programs. They stay on for about 5–7 mins per session.
WC
For our non Korean community, can you explain who VIKI are, what they do and how this partnership relates to BOLT?
JH
VIKI has a distribution deal with us where we distribute some of their content, particularly Korean dramas through our service. VIKI is a SF based company that was acquired by the Rakutan Group and their product is based on around streaming drama series’ and getting their community to engage by subtitling the content.
WC
Are there any other additional partnership we have forgotten to mention?
JH
We have telco partners in a number of countries that include the Telenor group, Maxis, DiGi, Smartfren, Bkash (e-wallet), Mpesa to name a few…
WC
BOLT has an ambassador program in place. Can you explain what this program is and what type of ambassadors you are looking to attract to the project?
JH
Yes we are selecting content ambassadors from our community of content producers globally.
CQ
We have ambassadors now across Asia and Africa. If you are interested in becoming an ambassador, please drop us a note at enquiry@bolt.global and our content and ambassador team will follow up.
WC
So anyone can apply as an ambassador for BOLT?
CQ
We welcome good content first and foremost, we want to help you get your content discovered.
WC
What other niches of additional content will be added to the BOLT platform in the future? Bollywood?
CQ
Haha are you asking this because I’m in India now? Actually Jamal and I are looking at a potential partner on the ground.. discussions are pretty advanced.
JH
We are working with content companies in Mumbai. And yes, we are adding Bollywood short and trending content.
WC
You have Diddy Carter listed as a partner on your website. What was his involvement and what has he done on the project?
CQ
Diddy Carter is a strategic contributor and had also advised us previously.
JH
Diddy has been an early supporter of BOLT from over a year ago.
WC
Is he still actively involved in the project?
JH
Yes we consult with him on an ongoing basis.
COMPETITORS
WC
How realistic is it for a blockchain company such as Bolt to compete with tech behemoths such as Facebook, Netflix and YouTube in your opinions?
CQ
Every industry has its disruptors, we just want to build a good business and let the market (and users) decide. But we will never stop at our mission. These companies are no doubt well funded and very established. But corporates will have their issues with being agile. When companies are too large innovation is difficult to implement. And we all know change is the only constant.
JH
These other parties that you wrote aren’t our competitors and we actually work with them to increase our reach. But as Christel says, our agility sets us apart. We will be masters in our own space.
WC
So in an ideal world you would be partnering with them and have a content sharing agreement of sorts?
JH
We work with them on distribution of BOLT to their communities
WC
So speaking of competitors, do you have any that you’d pick out in the blockchain space?
JH
No natural competitors as yet, but we can’t say that it wont happen. Our aim is to establish such a solid foothold on the market that it makes it difficult for anybody else to enter the space.
CQ
We were also asked this in Bitmax AMA yesterday. I’d say it’s a tough one as we have combined a few use cases into one. Most blockchain dApps have been focusing on one vertical or one use case, but this is an open ecosystem so we see more players as a good sign of growth and we are more than happy to share knowledge and build this together.
I think the age of monopolies is over. Decentralisation is open to give users more freedom, access and choices. Jamal and myself are very open to collaboration and building effective businesses together to benefit everyone as a whole.
WC
So does this mean you’ll be open to integrating other tokens into your wallet, and potentially other blockchain content providers into the content part of the app?
CQ
Definitely. When our partners grow, we grow too. Of course we have to choose the right partners who are aligned with our mission, vision and core values.
JH
I think the level of major partnerships that we already have reflects that philosophy.
ICO & TOKEN SUPPLY
WC
When did BOLT initially raise funds and how much was raised in total?
JH
We initially did a private raise last year and had our public round earlier this year.
CQ
Yes, this started about March/April last year. Momentum was gained towards May. We raised $12m USD total.
WC
What percentage of tokens were sold to the public?
CQ
40%, or a total 400m were sold for the entire TGE. You can see the full breakdown here —
WC
What was the bonus for seed/private and are they locked?
CQ
10–15% and yes they are locked, for 3–6 months after listing tomorrow.
WC
Did you run any sort of bounty or airdrop during your ICO? If so, how many tokens were allocated to this?
CQ
No we didn’t, otherwise we would have rather inflated numbers now!
WC
20% of Bolt tokens will be used for Strategic & Content Partners. How does this work in practice? What guarantee’s can you give to the community these tokens won’t be dumped on a secondary marketplace?
CQ
Mostly telco networks now and some allocated for Hisense. I can’t comment further than that as we are bundling tokens with mobile data plans.
JH
Well for starters all our transactions are on a smart contract and there is full transparency. Secondly my Team and I don’t trade in our tokens as we have a full on business to occupy. We don’t reply on token transactions for revenue. We run a sustainable, profitable and scaling business.
We have reserved some of the token reserves to onboard strategic telco partners and very good content creators as an incentive. This is on the back of strategic work to be undertaken by these parties for us. In the case of telcos marketing and distributing BOLT to their subscribers
The telco partners will use the tokens to be bundled with data plans for their subscribers to sign up to the BOLT service once they buy data plans from that telco.
WC
So does this mean these tokens will be moved to a separate wallet, published by the team, that anyone can check in on?
CQ
Yes, I believe we have published wallet addresses before, but more than happy to re share.
Official BOLT Token Contract: 0x9f235d23354857efe6c541db92a9ef1877689bcb
Team Wallet:
0x5236f836d76259b125182dfa44e459ec1b3fee4d
BOLT Research Wallet:
0xbfc37802fb91604b0f698771d6c73fe0c5a953fc
WC
Do you have an estimation of the circulating come token unlock tomorrow?
CQ
Yes we have estimated approx 250–300M tokens as the initial circulating supply.
WC
Can you give us an idea as to the lock on seed/private sales?
CQ
Approx 100–110M are locked anywhere between 3–6 months.
EXCHANGES
WC
BOLT has ranged from 30x to 100x on Bitsonic, a small exchange in Korea. How does this kind of volatility affect your token model and usage? And were these real tokens?
CQ
Yes these were actual tokens. This was due to closed trading of BOLT and the Bitsonic token. But deposits of new tokens and withdrawals are not allowed. So the ROI multiples were rather high. To be honest it gave us a pretty nice surprise to see such overwhelming response in Korea. We had been quietly building a small community there for some time and it paid off.
WC
Bolt is listing on both Switcheo and Bitmax on March 26th (tomorrow). Can you explain why you’ve gone with a dual listing strategy and why you chose these exchanges?
CQ
We have been very impressed with the Bitmax team and their professionalism. George has also become a very dear friend and an excellent partner. Switcheo has been a key strategic partner for us and also hiring our blockchain devs and building our tech in house.
So for us we always wanted a good CEX and a good DEX.
WC
Are you using the Bitmax market making service?
CQ
We can’t comment 😉
WC
There was some rumors about BOLT releasing news of a top 5 exchange listing . When is that announcement coming?
CQ
We can’t confirm that but we do have things lined up. You know the rules.
ROADMAP & FUTURE GROWTH
WC
When will you be moving over to Zilliqa?
CQ
We are already integrating ZIL into our wallet. Will start our first pilot for cricket World Cup. Full migration and token swap is planned for much later. We are still working out the details as Zilliqa is rushing to complete bootstrap now.
WC
How comfortable are you with Zilliqa’s progress with their mainnet and will this impact your timeframe to BOLT mainnet release?
JH
We work very closely with the Zilliqa team and are very close to their key management, so we have a very clear idea of their progress and are very comfortable with it.
WC
What is the advantage to using ZIL mainnet over the ETH network?
JH
Zil has the ability to process high volume of transactions.
WC
So what do you see as the main sticking points moving forward as you go to market? And on that note, what’s your strategy for picking up the millions of telco users you have as your disposal via your various partnerships?
JH
Our main focus for us in terms of expansion will be licensing and producing relevant and compelling content for the markets that we would like to enter. To pick up millions of users we are using our high velocity content events that will pull in millions of eyeballs. This year we are covering the ICC Cricket World Cup, Africa Cup of Nations football tournament, Rugby World Cup to name a few.
WC
Are these events available to the whole BOLT user base? Or is there some Geo blocking in play?
CQ
This depends on the rights, we have to adhere to those, so its a case by case basis.
JH
That’s the point of the original content so that we can eliminate the need for Geo-blocking (currently in play) to tap into the entire global market.
WC
Can I just ask about the next couple of stages in your roadmap, Phase 2.0 Bolt Data, Phase 3.0 Bolt Education and Phase 4.0 Telcos?
JH
Well next stage in the near horizon is the launch of our new and improved BOLT app, with content to be presented in a way that video hasn't been before.
We are ramping up our original production levels in a number of countries around the globe which will enable BOLT to scale globally and seamlessly.
CQ
We have a very exciting implementation for our new apps. Should be ready in time for late May/early June. For the launch we will be planning to kick off aggressive media, consumer marketing around that time.
Good things will be amplified when quality is there!
JH
Even I find the integration of the wallet into the video service amazing…it’s never been done in broadcast media.
DUE DILIGENCE CHECKS
WC
ICO’s seem to be terrible at treasury management. How has BOLT managed their treasury since raising funds, what is your monthly burn rate and how long is your current runway?
JH
We are a profitable company so burn rate doesn’t really apply as capital is deployed into growth and expansion.
CQ
The difference here is that both Jamal and myself have been in business previously. Jamal is well versed in broadcast and M&A, I ran a data company in Asia after Twitter.
We liquidated most of our ETH raised last year.
WC
Do you have any figures on how much revenue you have generated?
JH
We forecast $12m USD in sales this year.
WC
Which country was BOLT founded in?
JH
We were founded in Singapore.
WC
In the USA the SEC has been cracking down on some company that did ICO’s in early 2018. Will any of these issues that plagued those companies plague BOLT?
CQ
The SEC has jurisdiction in the USA, not worldwide, so we have prohibited USA and Chinese residents/citizens to contribute to our token contribution including sanctioned countries. We have an in house legal counsel and our legal opinion is supplied by Osborne Clarke, a top notch legal firm.
WC
Does BOLT have a publicly available Github?
CQ
We don’t yet. Will see what we can do since we technically aren’t doing open source code, we mostly do stuff in a private repo now.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
WC
Thank you the BOLT team for answering our questions today. It’s been another epic AMA! If there are no other questions we’ll let the BOLT guys sign off and leave it here for today.
CQ
To finish, my (personal) philosophy on this bearish market is that everyone needs to use the blockchain without realising the complexities of it. The Internet would be dead boring without social media or games or even crypto haha!
Look at the internet protocol wars, in the end the most valuable companies are the apps on the internet. So Jamal and I both have an aggressive goal to get there, The most valuable dApp is the result of achieving our vision — the largest mobile wallet powered by content. There’s no point for many types of different infrastructure when there isn’t enough consumer friendly use cases to build on it.
JH
I would like to say thank you very much to the Wolf Crypto team for hosting us today, an amazing AMA. Well coordinated and good tempo. I hope that this was useful. Don’t be a stranger, stay in touch and keep the faith in BOLT!
BOLT Resources
Website: https://bolt.global/
Telegram: https://t.me/BoltGlobal
Medium: https://medium.com/bolt-global
Whitepaper: https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/secret/BFGrVsSUUcQa2Y
Wolf Crypto Resources
Public Group: https://t.me/WolfCryptoPub
News Channel: https://t.me/WolfCryptoAnnounce
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WolfCryptoGroup
