Monaco, the bitcoin and ethereum prepaid card startup, has recently announced that it has green light to launch in Singapore a VISA prepaid card. But the company also decided not to upgrade its token (MCO) to support an asset contract. The community did not like that which resulted in a mass sell-off. The company was forced to rethink its decision.
Monaco’s token was launched in 2017 on the Ethereum chain. The Token Sale event was one of the most successful to date and the company raised over US$26.7 million (70,000 ETH) during the crowdsale.
Two days ago, Monaco announced its decisions in light of recent ICO related developments. The company decided:
- to proceed with the development of the core functionalities originally envisaged for the MCO token,
- not to add functionalities that create unnecessary legal and regulatory risk in certain jurisdictions. In particular, we will not be implementing an upgrade to the Smart Contract System to give MCO tokens an asset contract functionality.
The latter point removed the smart asset contract scheme from Monaco token.
The community, especially holders of the Monaco token, did not welcome the announcement and MCO value plunged over 37% in just 24 hours.
The token value has declined from $10.50 to under $6 at the time of writing. In late August, MCO was above $24.
Monaco CEO, Kris Marszalek, came out to defend the company’s decision. In a video, he explained that the decision was necessary, if not late, due to “legal” and “commercial” concerns. He also said that the move is for the protection of token holders:
“This decision is great for the long-term protection of value for all token holders,”
And he added: “We only wish we could have done this faster.”
See the video:
And the reactions:
After the backslash, Marszalek was quoted saying that they are working with their legal counsle on a new smart contract design:
