Aug 5, 2021
Overhauled & Turbo Charged — Voyage(r) to the Cosmos
“Ladies and gentlemen… Great news! Your captain and crew have just completed major overhauls to almost every aspect of your ride. Sit back, settle in, and brace yourself for the next phase of Warp Speed.”
The last 4–5 months have tested the patience of even the most loyal Voyager investors. From delayed VGX swap and loyalty program, to platform outages, transfer issues, a crypto market pull back, twitter FUD, you name it. Even with ALL of that, VYGVF is still up 1,700%+ and VGX is still up 1,350%+ over the last 12 months. Investing can be counter intuitive at times, and the next several months will remind everyone why they are invested in Voyager.
So what’s changed from the dark depths of early July to now? Well, honestly- what hasn’t! Five months of work on the platform to scale for more users, VGX Swap launch, Voyager Loyalty Program (VLP) date announced, launch of a joint venture with Market Rebellions, increased users, revenue, margins, staff, tokens available, and tokens getting interest.
Even with the ups and downs in the market, Voyager keeps forging ahead at lightning speed (The Relativity of VGX and Crypto). Oh, did I mention Voyager just entered the payments space with the Coinify acquisition and announced a partnership with Usio to enable merchants to accept crypto as payment?
Turbo Charged
Voyager might have started out as a crypto broker, but it is quickly developing into an ecosystem. The Coinify and Usio announcements are really big deals. Steve and team have essentially strapped another couple LARGE rockets on the Voyager ship. They just need to connect all the wires to make sure everything stays on course.
In the Crypto community, there is a lot of talk about layer 2 integrations on top of the blockchain. Without getting super technical, these are solutions that allow the blockchain to scale to more users and transactions like the Bitcoin lightning network. I think what Voyager is doing is adding layer 2 and 3 on top of their layer 1 platform (Layer 1 being trading, interest, transfers, etc.)
Layer 2 includes additive customer services like crypto payments processing, and crypto to stocks, other banking services, etc. It’s essentially enabling customers’ crypto use in their everyday lives. The customer value goes up as crypto is more accessible and tangible to more people.
Layer 3 is enabling other companies to use the Voyager infrastructure and offer services to its customer base. The Usio and the lottery.com partnerships are 2 that come to mind. Services to other FinTechs or businesses to help them easily enter the crypto space is a big deal. It expands the marketplace for customers and merchants in an easy and scalable way.
There is so much that can be added in all 3 layers. Margin, loans, direct deposit to USDC for 9% interest in Layer 1, Voyage(r)Pay, IRAs, smart contracts, NFTs in Layer 2, Other FinTechs and companies partnership to integrate into the Voyager ecosytem. And let’s not forget all of this is eventually going to Canada, Europe, Asia, Latin America over time. There is a reason why they installed seat belts and oxygen tanks on the Voyage(r).
VGX Swap
The ever so anticipated VGX Swap finally made its red carpet debut. The official swap and staking portal opened over the weekend and so far things seem to be going ok. A few issues reported by users, but for the large part it appears to be effective. The two real questions are how many tokens will not be swapped (burned) and what kind of volatility to expect when VGX 2.0 starts trading.
In November of last year, I took some time to estimate the potential VGX tokens lost and estimated it to be in the 20M range. Looking at the address data now, my estimate is now closer to 10–12M. Partly because some addresses I thought might be lost did become active this year. The LGO tokens potentially burned are harder to project, but my estimate is in the 3M-5M range (converted to VGX). Now let’s talk about volatility.
As tokens are swapped, the tokens are being staked for interest at a pretty high rate (70%). It’s not completely surprising as trading for VGX 2.0 hasn’t started yet, so there isn’t much you can do with the new tokens yet. I am expecting volatility both up and down when VGX 2.0 does start trading as liquidity in the will constrained (not a lot of tokens available for market makers). Keeping a close eye on the amount of tokens un-staked will give the community a perspective of possible legacy LGO holders deciding to cash out. I expect this volatility to be short term.
VGX 2.0 & VLP
Now that VGX 2.0 is live, the community can start to re-focus around what the VLP means to investors and customers. Remember, with the right Tokenomics, customers receive utility value creating customer loyalty which drives mutual value for shareholders and token holders. This is the importance of the VLP to all Voyage(r)s.
Each VGX token holder is essentially owning digital real estate in Voyager’s customer loyalty program and the future growth of customers wanting their place in the program to receive benefits. More funded accounts with solid utility means more demand for VGX. Additionally, the utility for customers can be increased over time in the aforementioned layers 2 and 3. This creates additional demand on a scarce asset like VGX creating price appreciation.
Many forget that Loyalty programs are large companies’ biggest assets. But how big are they really? The window shade was opened during the pandemic last year when airlines used their loyalty program assets for emergency funding. In “How Loyalty Programs Are Saving Airlines” in Harvard Business Review, United and Delta raised $6.8B and $9B respectively at $22B-$24B valuations. BILLION!
This is the kind of size and scale the VGX with a solid and implemented VLP has for comparable potential. Not to mention, the financial services industry is a much larger industry than airline travel. I will have a follow up article in the next few weeks to go in-depth with the VLP utility and what to expect in the coming months.
Conclusion
The market prices will move up and down, but Voyage(r) continues to move fast. Major systems and processes have been overhauled and are improving continually. Steve and team are also building a robust ecosystem across many layers. These layers will help turbo charge the company’s already exponential growth. This is all part of the vision and the plan in the next phase of Voyage(r) to the Cosmos.
Hope you enjoyed the article! If you like what you read, take the time to clap for the article below or like it on Twitter. If you have thoughts, feel free to add a comment below to the article or on Twitter.
If you are not a current Voyager customer and would like to start investing in crypto with Voyager, download the app and trade $100 to get $25 of free Bitcoin. Use code AFK8SG to claim your BTC.
Disclosure: I am a current VGX token holder. This is not financial advice. This article is for informational purposes only. Do your own research or seek out the professional advice of a financial advisor.
