First things first, happy new year to you and your loved ones! Like many of you, last year was nothing less than a rollercoaster ride for us. We’ve managed to stay focused and ship the beta version of StationX to 25,000+ waitlisted users in December 2023.

Introducing Spotlight ✨

Today, we’re more than excited to kick off our Spotlight series where we highlight the stories of incredible communities that are pooling & deploying capital using StationX. We deeply appreciate the valuable feedback our customers give to move needles for us. This initiative is our commitment to supporting them by helping our readers discover their missions and help amplify their work.

So raise your glasses, it’s story time..

We’ll dive deeper into why CellarDAO is investing in wine & rare spirits, and other category bullish signals you should note in 2024.

Whiskey has gone up 400% in the last 10 years and there’s at least 10-20% growth in wines year-on-year.

The current market situation and volatility make alternative physical asset classes a safer option with proven and sustained growth over the last decades, making assets like fine wine & rare spirits largely immune to the booms and busts we see in traditional classes. More specifically, with 2023 being one of the hottest years on record and the climate change situation, the production of fine wine will become even harder and more exclusive, prompting prices to continue rising.

We’re already seeing countries like China, the Middle East despite religious beliefs, and India growing as new fine wine and whisky markets. One may or may not drink personally, but historical data suggest that it is more common for people to invest in fine wine and rare spirits. It ultimately comes down to understanding the value and knowing when it’s time to sell.

But there’s one problem: High entry barrier for people to invest in wine and spirits. Traditionally, investing in wine and spirits has been a complex and expensive process. Brokers charge fund management fees, upside fees, and early exit fees and require sizeable upfront investments. All of this is done without enabling their investors to truly have a say in how their money is invested.

CellarDAO solves this.

CellarDAO is a blockchain-powered wine & spirits investment community.

CellarDAO is a crypto-native organisational structure that allows anyone to easily invest in real-world, investment-grade wine and spirits by buying CASK tokens on polygon blockchain, and enjoy regular profit airdrops as healthy returns from profits.

How does the structure work?

1. As an investor, you join CellarDAO’s station by buying ERC20 standard tokens called CASK using your web3 wallet here.

2. The core team sources investment-grade wines & spirits as close as possible to the producers and checks authenticity & provenance.

3. These investment proposals are shared with you on StationX and all other CASK token holders who can then vote to decide which investments the community wants to make.

4. After the investment is done, the core team turns the (future or existing) wine & spirits bottles into NFTs. This means that digital ownership certificates are created for the future bottles which enables future owners/consumers to already buy the bottles digitally.

5. These physical bottles will be available when the wine or spirit has finished maturing. At this point, the owner can either leave the bottles in safe storage (organized by CellarDAO) or receive the bottles in their storage.

6. These ownership NFTs are sold on their marketplace for a markup.

7. Investment returns are distributed pro-rata to all the members who are shareholders of the $CASK token via StationX.

Following workflows are currently managed on StationX:

1. Receiving capital: Issuing CASK tokens by accepting investor deposits

2. Deal management: Private voting is done for each investment deal

3. Profit distribution: Investment returns are distributed pro-rate to all members.

Meet the team

Glenn (CEO, Co-founder)

1. 20+ yrs experience across strategy, business development, and ops.

2. Former COO of Cake DeFi, led cash flow for crypto holders assets

3. 8-year tenure as Director of Global Revenue at Linkedin

4. MBA from INSEAD Business School

Marc (COO, Co-founder)

1. A family winemaker, Marc has imbibed the essence of the family business from a tender age amidst the picturesque vineyards of Spain.

2. Strategic prowess at Google & Shopee for business & strategy

3. Successful exit after creating a thriving F&B group that stretched across Indonesia.

Alessandro (CBDO)

1. Extensive experience in IT, F&B & Digital Advertising

2. Ex-marketing for global F&B giants like Barilla, Nestle, Tesco, and wine brands like Zonin Wine Estates, CIV, Cantine Riunite and Italian Wine Brands among others.

3. Been a GTM, business planning and tokenomics mentor for web3 startups at International Blockchain Association, and Algorand Foundation along with AXL Ventures since 2017.

4. Currently at CellarDAO enabling fine wines and spirits to reside in digital wallets.

Ibay Amor (CTO)

1. Computer science engineer with expertise across AI & tokenising RWAs.

2. Proficient in Smart Contract Development, and leading technology teams.

3. Former Business Intelligence Consultant at MicroStrategy

4. Prev. co-founded DF Social Gaming in 2020

Join CellarDAO’s station

The team says that CellarDAO is currently fundraising in the pre-sale stage and $CASK Tokens are currently being sold as cheap as they will ever be. The next phase in their development plan will be to launch the NFT Marketplace to sell tokenized wines that CellarDAO invested in and by that point, once profits from the sale of the first wines come in, it is foreseeable that the $CASK Token price may begin to increase.

If you’re an investor, check out their pitch deck to learn more. It is worthwhile to note that there are some obvious risk indicators which they’ve elaborated and disclosed on their whitepaper.

Know more about StationX

1. Updated website: stationx.network

2. Enter dApp: app.stationx.network

3. Follow announcements on X

4. Follow announcements on Lens

5. Don’t have your BETA invite? Get on the waitlist here.