Pioneering Indian tech firm WandX (https://www.wandx.co/), led by CEO Abhinav Ramesh, will launch a token sale on Friday 27 October to fund the building of its groundbreaking platform, which will allow investors to create and trade in derivative products based on crypto-assets.

Expectation around the token sale is high and a pre-sale raised 530 Ether (approximately $150,000) in only 36 hours.

Abhinav Ramesh, 26, who has a background in supply-chain and analytics at Ernst & Young, “Until now, cryptocurrency investors have used decentralised exchanges to buy and sell different cryptocurrencies, in the hope of growing their assets.  The difficulty that investors encounter is that, with no centralised bodies regulating the supply of cryptocurrencies, their values can be volatile.

“Investors can only exchange an amount of one currency with an equivalent value of another, which is problematic because it makes it more difficult for them to diversify their portfolio and avoid unnecessary risk.

“That’s where WandX comes in. WandX goes a step further than the decentralised exchanges that enable trade between different tokens, and enables users to create – and trade in – portfolios and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) of tokens in the rapidly-growing ERC20 class.  

“These instruments can facilitate the hedging of risk and enable users to own multiple tokens with a single transaction.  The plan is that this will not only make investing in cryptocurrencies easier for those who are already involved, but will attract new investors to the market.”

As it is built on the Ethereum blockchain, WandX can use smart contracts to ‘bundle’ together assets.

Unusually for a product holding a token sale, Abhinav’s team – based in Bangalore, India – have already created a prototype platform.

The platform will also contain measuring and analytical functions, so that users can compare the performance of products and strategise accordingly.  It will offer a range of derivatives such as futures, options, securitisation of income streams and debt instruments.

The token sale will see the introduction of the WAND token, 55,000 of which will be issued.  The WandX team will end the sale when they raise their maximum of 12,500 Ether – approximately $3,720,000 or the 40-day time limit expires.

The WandX team is supported by a broad range of influential advisers and partners, such as financial services expert Raghuttama Rao, blockchain pioneer Bryan Feinberg, management advisor Ramesh Srinivas, data scientist and ICO adviser Nagu Thogiti and fintech entrepreneur Yogesh Gaikwad.