Elitium is an innovative blockchain-powered platform to help you enjoy the ultimate luxury lifestyle. The CEO Raoul Milhado, will be sharing more details with us in this interview.
What is Elitium? Could you describe the company in your own words?
Yes, sure.
Elitium is FinTech-meets-luxury.
Our focus is on building products to power a shifting economy, connecting the old world to the new. Digital solutions that solve everyday problems related to currency, to finance, and to how people enjoy their lives.
We refer to what we’re building as ‘an ecosystem’ — a suite of applications that span digital investments and digital luxuries in such a way that we will alter people’s expectations around what currency can do.
Currency has moved from gold to paper; paper to a supposedly ‘cashless’ society. We see currencies like our own digital currency EUM as the next logical evolution — as the way to make society genuinely cashless — and in doing so, we will unlock a wealth of opportunity for all.
Yes, Elitium uses innovative technologies, but as a company, we stand for so much more than cryptocurrency or the blockchain.
Elitium is the new era of digital.
What services does Elitium provide?
When we started Elitium in 2017, there was a lot of fanfare around blockchain technology, but very few genuinely useful products. We wanted to be part of the movement to change that.
Our main objective is to create a decentralized ecosystem of products and services that actually focuses on the individual user, and puts “the luxury lifestyle” at everyone’s fingertips.
Products like a staking program that offers cryptocurrency rewards; a Crypto Card that lets people spend cryptocurrency anway and get incentives like cashback and unique events, and a marketplace for luxury goods and services that you won’t find anywhere else.
At the heart of our services, though, is an ambition to address an underlying inequality, one that stems from the root of the current financial system: an unfair distribution of wealth, made worse by clearly outdated processes that don’t fit into the global, digitized landscape the world has become — at the end of the day, there are more than enough resources on this planet to create abundance for everyone.
People prize aspects like freedom and independence more than ever. These are the essence of true digital luxury. And this is exactly what our services provide.
Could you describe the technology behind Elitium?
The Elitium technology is far-reaching, but the short version is we’re building on Ethereum.
Ethereum is a blockchain protocol, which operates as a smart contract platform and decentralized operating system. The Ethereum software is intended for the deployment of large-scale decentralized applications through an autonomous corporation model.
More specifically, Ethereum introduces a new blockchain architecture designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications, which is precisely what Elitium requires to succeed.
You have just announced a staking program and a rewards program that have some interesting incentives. Could you tell us more about them?
Absolutely. We’re really proud of our upgraded staking program, which feels like a genuine innovation. I’ve personally never seen any staking platform that’s as user-friendly or easy-to-use (feel free to point me to another that is!).
You can purchase EUM directly in the dashboard with your credit card or crypto. You can start staking with just one click and earn up to 6.5% rewards. And you can withdraw your funds whenever you want, also in one click.
The setup follows our guiding principle: in everything we do, we aim to set new quality standards.
The same goes for our next product: the Elitium Growth Program.
Currently, the world’s experiencing a crisis like no other. It’s going to have huge implications on a global scale. We’re seeing people lose jobs. Wages and salaries disappearing overnight. Likely hundreds — thousands, even — of companies will go bust.
So, we’ve decided to use our native currency, EUM, to create a new means of getting rewards that will empower people, no matter the situation they find themselves in, to protect themselves against the potential hardships to come.
The Elitium Growth Program is an initiative that will let people use periods of enforced inactivity in a productive way.
We’re setting aside a pool of 1,000,000 EUM that we will use to reward our community for small actions that promote Elitium. For example, you could write a short post about what we do and earn a small amount of EUM in return.
In many ways, it’s a ‘learn and earn’ type model that encourages people to use any time at home proactively: to learn about crypto and to get rewards for doing so. By offering this, we hope everyone can come out of the crisis stronger and more informed than they were at the start.
The Growth Program dovetails with the staking program, but I’ve said enough for now… let’s move onto your next question 🙂
Your coin EUM has been performing very well on CoinMarketCap even during these difficult times. What is your secret?
One thing: our community.
I think every big company in the world understands that you have to love your customers and, as an entrepreneur, you have to wake up every morning and ask, “How can I serve my customers the most today?”
In our case, our customers are our community. They support us every day. They believe in the long-term value of Elitium, and they are supporting our mission to bring prosperity to all.
We keep everyone updated by posting every day across more than six channels and keep a conversation in constant motion with our Telegram community.
In my opinion, putting your customers first is the key to success.
Elitium is “building the future of luxury.” How do you envision the future in the context of the current global pandemic. Will your company strategy need to be adjusted?
No, I don’t think so.
First of all, everyone should define luxury for themselves. For me, luxury is ultimately about time. Everything you can imagine is here on this planet: and as I said earlier, we have near-limitless resources at our fingertips.
True luxury is things you can’t buy with money.
Time. A good relationship with your loved ones. And unique experiences you will remember for the rest of your life. Now in particular, these things are more important than ever.
But, of course, I agree that you also have to adapt to your environment. That’s why we came up with the Elitium Growth Program. And we have several similar projects lined up.
Trust me, we’ve barely even started 😉
Besides the recently announced initiatives, what else are you working on?
Let me give you a quick overview.
We’ve started a teaser campaign for the Elitium Card. This will be a premium-quality, metal card that enables anyone to spend their crypto anywhere: it could be on dinner in your favourite restaurant around the corner or on a coffee somewhere exotic, say, in the Himalayas.
Beyond that, we are in the final stages of developing the Elitium App. This will be a game-changer. It’s the first major milestone for creating real-world use cases and significant real-world value.
Through the app, you will be able to book all sorts of “money can’t buy experiences,” buy exclusive collectibles or request assistance from your 24/7 AI-enabled concierge Vera, when booking your next holiday.
Also, we are in very advanced discussions with a major exchange and we are just a few steps away from our global roll out.
I can’t say much more just yet, all I can share is that we’re moving into several emerging markets that our competitors have never even thought about, let alone tried to break into.
One last thing I want to keep a secret for now — rest assured, the world will hear about it soon, when it goes live…
Could you tell us about yourself? What brought you into the world of blockchain and crypto?
Well, I’ve worked in digital marketing and technology for the last nine years. My experience spans various countries and countless industries. I’ve tackled all sorts of interesting projects: web development, online marketing, SEO, mobile apps.
I was involved in an Ad-Tech business. I’ve also developed and helped scale P2P platforms. Then, in 2016, I moved into yacht charters when I became Managing Partner at Boatsters.
What struck me about this industry was — despite the money involved — everything felt so outdated. Processes were incredibly inefficient. But through experience, I knew Boatsters could digitize the sector to help both yacht owners and renters enjoy a much-improved experience.
So, we worked to build this end-to-end yacht chartering solution: a global platform with online booking, payments, messaging, the lot. And it made a huge difference, almost overnight. My colleagues and I started thinking of other things to add — one idea was, ‘hey, what about crypto?’
We built a wallet solution that could accept around 55 different cryptocurrencies as payment to charter a yacht. We were the first to connect the luxury space to cryptocurrency and people went wild for it!
Given the wallet’s success, luxury partners started reaching out to inquire about the solution. I knew there was more we could do, so I set about exploring how we could further integrate the blockchain into our luxury experience.
This led to a meeting with Jean-Pierre Morand: an experienced technologist with years of experience in the blockchain. JP taught me lots about the tech, and about smart contracts in particular. That was the moment the concept for Elitium came into my mind: smart contracts seemed the perfect way to overhaul the yacht charter industry.
JP continued to collaborate and it became clear there was this huge opportunity to combine technologies and develop a complete solution that would set a new standard in luxury — a sector that lags others, technically speaking.
We approached Collin Nicolaas whose background in finance, compliance and international business would make him the perfect addition to what would ultimately become the Elitium Management Team.
Foundations laid, now it was time to build!
If there were one message you could send to our readers, what would it be?
This is an intense time for us all.
Leaving business to one side, I’d like to share a message of hope and positivity more than anything. Everybody is the creator of their own destiny and we can all use the time in quarantine to reflect and become more self-aware.
Start by asking yourself three questions:
- What are you grateful for?
- What would you like to change?
- What one thing can you do, today?
If we each take responsibility and become clear on what we want, we can go out and get it. As I said before, ultimately, achieving your dreams is about finding time — time is limited for all of us, but we have more time today than we’ve ever had before.
Now is the time to stop waiting for change and to go make change happen!
If there’s any way Elitium can support you with your journey, feel free to send me a message on LinkedIn or Instagram.
Collectively, we are stronger than all of this.
It’s time to unite!
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To find out more about the project, please visit www.elitium.io, or join the staking program. EUMs can be purchased with BTC or ETH on Bitmart, or on Stex (EUM/BTC).
