A review of hi Dollar and its utility

Update:

-hi Dollars was successfully listed on Uniswap over the National Day weekend and has tripled from its pre-listed price (15 August 2021)

-Do remember to do your KYC in order to withdraw your rewards at the end of the lock-up period. You may refer to their website or telegram channel for more details on how to do so (15 August 2021)

I recently came across this new project on a friend’s IG story which I thought was rather interesting, so I decided to read up more on it through their website and its corresponding whitepaper. To start off, hi aims to develop the world’s first universal cross-ecosystem mobile payment and financial services platform that is not-for-profit and community-powered. Alright, so isn’t that what most up-and-coming crypto projects are already doing? Let’s take a closer look.

What is hi?

hi is incorporated in Singapore and the project started gaining traction earlier this year. It is co-founded by Stefan Rust, the former CEO of Bitcoin.com, and Sean Rach, who was the former Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Crypto.com. As mentioned above, their aim is to enable more people to access financial ecosystems at low/no costs to create immense economic opportunity for one and all.

To access hi, all you need is your regular messaging app such as Telegram or Whatsapp. You don’t even have to download an app! (Although one will be available at a later date). This move is greatly aligned with their goal of high accessibility. Other social media and communication platforms will be added soon.

Based on the roadmap, we are currently in phase 1 where users can earn or buy hi dollars. Down the road, there are many upcoming features that look to be very exciting. This includes the launch of their own protocol as well. However, we will take a look at 3 of the more practical services that they aim to offer.

Upcoming features

1. CONVERT:

hi intends to provide members with fiat and digital currency conversions at mid-market rates. This means converting freely between fiat and fiat, crypto and crypto, as well as fiat and crypto. The mid-market rates is the midpoint between the buy and sell prices of any two currencies at any time and is thus the fairest rate you can get. Apart from this, they are working to allow other hi members free transfers through some of the world’s most popular social media apps.

2. SEND:

As the name suggests, you will be able to send both fiat and crypto currencies seamlessly to friends or merchants, through the hi app or on the messaging app of your choice without fees/minimal fees. Just imagine the convenience!

3. SAVE:

This feature promises that you will be able to hold over 100 currencies, both traditional and crypto ones in your hi wallet and earn up to 20% APY in interest, paid out daily. There won’t be any fees or minimum balances to utilise this service. However, there will be minimum balances to earn at a certain interest rate.

Unfortunately, the above 3 services are still a work in progress and require you to go through their KYC process before you can use those features. So, what can we do for now?

Current feature

• EARN:

We start by accumulating hi dollars of course! You can earn hi dollars simply by signing up (click here to sign up) on Telegram/Whatsapp using your mobile number only. Once you have signed up, you will get to claim rewards daily by answering a question from their bot. Now, you may think that this is giving away data that hi can monetize by selling to corporations but aren’t we all doing that on a daily basis as we surf the net already? I think we might as well get paid to do so!

At this point, you might wonder why they would reward users so easily and if it's sustainable. However, they have mentioned that instead of spending this money on costly advertising fees, they are using it to get as many people to sign up as possible through referrals. This budget is allocated in the form of the Launch Incentives & Distribution pool. The chart below will give you a better idea of how the rewards are dispensed. At the time of writing, there are almost 800k sign-ups.

At the current rate of 2.5 hi Dollars/day and a price of $0.3095 USD. You will be able to earn almost $5.5 USD/week just by answering 1 question a day!

Referral code: https://hi.com/Benedictlauuuu

Conclusion

To be honest, what they are doing is not entirely new in the crypto sphere. But out of all the projects I’ve seen, this is definitely one of the more accessible and easier to participate in projects and that makes all the difference.

As with all crypto projects, the promises are always enticing at the beginning but only time will tell. However, the team seems to be hard at work and their token will be listed on Uniswap, a decentralised crypto exchange, in a few days. They also have a very active telegram channel where mods will answer any queries that you might have promptly. With regards to risks, I feel that there’s really nothing to lose if you are just collecting the rewards (Unless if you choose to buy hi Dollars). All in, I think this might be a project worth paying attention to.

Disclaimer: This opinion piece is merely for educational purposes and does not constitute financial advice. Please do your own due diligence (DYODD) before investing in any type of financial securities.