Update Regarding Bistroo & BIST
It’s been a bit quiet around the project and the utility for BIST but we want to provide some BTS insights into what’s been happening with the project and the token.
A few weeks back numerous news outlets reported on the fact that over 53% of crypto projects launched since 2021 have gone inactive and the year 2025, probably due to market sentiment, contributed 86% to that number.
We want to emphasize, we are not one of those projects and are still here.
However, Bistroo also launched the BIST token in 2021, but much has changed since then.
Market dynamics have changed. Altcoins, and especially utility coins, do not seem to grasp adoption, attention or traction, and meme-tokens had a moment of flourishing throughout 2024 but that trend has also diminished a lot since.
Ultimately, these observations and events underscore that projects focussing exclusively on crypto and utility token applications seem to not be sustainable in the current day and age. A time in which any significant adoption of utility tokens has yet to be achieved. We experienced that first hand when implementing crypto’s, BIST among them, as a payment method in 2021, not a single transaction was paid for with crypto and the integration for this feature became economically unsustainable at that time.
A hybrid model where traditional fiat business and crypto utility meet is likely still the most feasible and sustainable in the long-term.
In the end, every start-up, within crypto or other industries, needs to achieve product-market-fit and work towards a sustainable and profitable model. Even the biggest players known today, like OpenAI, seem to struggle with this. Bistroo has not been different on that aspect and with ups and downs, changes to the organisation, the product positioning, and our go-to-market we seem to have achieved a sustainable base to further invest in the future, and ultimately set aside a structural recurring budget for R&D.
The BIST utility token still does classify as R&D since the technology of utility tokens has not been broadly adopted and especially since regulatory frameworks are non-existed or very recent. Essential business service-providers are still trying to find their way within aspects like KYC and anti-money laundering, and the application of crypto as a whole within business.
The EU specifically has a complex but also comprehensive framework through MiCA, and numerous big service providers have been getting the appropriate licensing to operate within the financial crypto space and serve businesses like Bistroo in the EU. For example, Kraken.com.
However, there’s also still a lot of service providers acting within the EU, without the proper licensing and those are at risk of being blocked and prohibited from serving the EU market, similar to what happened to Binance in the EU.
Sadly, MEXC is currently on this list and we want to address that this could result in not being able to maintain the BIST listing there in the future.
Furthermore, we see a lot of external manipulation events going on through MEXC which makes providing liquidity very unpredictable and imposes risks generated by these external market manipulators. Safety measures taken against this are sadly flagged by the exchange, and will in turn result in a ST-warning and a potential delisting.
Traditional banking services, which are still absolutely essential to run a healthy business, are prohibiting businesses from participating in any business related crypto transactions. Even when these activities go through the aforementioned licensed channel-partners. They refer to other regulatory frameworks, like protecting the economy from tax evasion, money laundering or other criminal activities, in order to completely block any business to acquire crypto from their fiat earnings. This imposes a gigantic roadblock for our envisioned tokenomics, since buybacks are a key element in replenishing our token reward pools.
The ultimate goal for BIST is still, should everything align from an adoption standpoint, as well as a regulatory and service-provider standpoint, to facilitate a circular value-economy within the Bistroo ecosystem. In which participation and contribution is rewarded with BIST, BIST may be used to redeem perks or services within the ecosystem and BIST reward pools are replenished through buybacks.
Periodic burning of the fixed supply has already commenced last year through our structured and predictable GTV burning mechanism, but once users are able to spend BIST within the ecosystem we do envision a transaction-triggered burning mechanism to be implemented as well.
However, this update is to also iterate once more that the external factors described above are still utmost unpredictable and still impose great uncertainty on whether the utility of tokens may come to fruition.
We are still here, and we keep on building. The challenges and roadblocks described in this update will hopefully be resolved once crypto has found a more wider-spread footing within the mainstream masses and standard practice of conducting business, especially in the EU.
We do still feel crypto and utility tokens have a future but it has taken, and possibly will take, a long time before it is fully wide-spread adopted and peripheral limitations are dissolved.
