We — Western reviewers — are facing a challenge while trying to estimate the potential of oversees projects specially on its Team, Validity and Equity sides.

Say, in the case of Bytom, I, for sure, could find in no time the team members’ list on their web site, but it contains names and positions only, without even bothering to link me to peoples social accounts. So, now, I have to roam through multiple searches by myself trying to much names with faces :)

Of course, Google translate heps, but a little, and I’d better to learn Chinese fast. However, before that will happen I have already spent a lot of time trying to independently confirm credentials of Bytom CEO Lang Yu and Zhu Yiqi — its CTO.

Certainly, the founder — Chang Jia — was much easier to research thanks to the popularity of its first project — Bitcoin news site 8btc, which, since 2011 till today, provides us — foreigners — with very helpful insights about the Chinese crypto-market.

Alas, no sources could help me to find info on the state of Bytom assets /liabilities as well as about the legal side of this project. So, I’m reduced once more to pure speculations about those crucial pieces of data, which have resulted in ‘c’ sub-rating for Bytom ‘Validity’ (legal).

It might look absolutely unfair for this project but it will stay this way until I obtain some reliable information about Bytom incorporation, its registration records, a list of its beneficiaries etc.

Sure, I understand that world’s toxic, anti-crypto regulatory environment doesn’t allow most companies in our space to be forthcoming with that types of information. However, if it exists somewhere hidden in the official records I could see no reason why we — public — might not have the same level of free access to it as governments do. After all, the full self-regulation of blockchain and crypto industries that what I firmly stand for :)

As to the Bytom’s ‘Equity’ (their accounting books value) it’s ‘c+’ and no ‘c’ only because project’s token (BTM) total market cap is still exceeding $100 mio. With more than 300 mio tokens (~20% of total supply) still withstanding from circulation this project, allegedly, has enough means to say afloat even if the other ways (besides token appreciation) of making money is absolutely unclear to most superficial observers (me including). Result for ‘Solution’ (business model) is ‘c’.

Now to the Team once more. Despite an information vacuum surrounding everyone in Bytom except its founder I have liked very much the fact that the number of Bytom technical updates and publications far exceeds the number of its ‘marketing’ releases.

It tells me that this project is, primarily, run by developers — in our space it is a very positive sign. Hence, ‘Team’ is ‘b+’. However, I have to see something more than a good technical expertise from the project with more than a hundred million market cap on its low point before I can think to upgrade it to the ‘a’ level.

Result for ‘Execution’ (Solution — Validity — Equity — Team): c/c/c+/b+

For the original version of this article, please, refer to: http://svetrating.com/rating_text/33/ent/

Link (Bytom WhitePaper): https://bytom.io/wp-content/themes/freddo/book/BytomWhitePaperV1.0_En.pdf

Image: World Map, 17th century Japanese folding screen map.