I would assume that buying OPENPOS is an investment in ECHO since the current Bitshares mobile wallet is clearly the precursor to ECHO (see below) and OPENPOS has funded development of the current wallet.
No, the ECHO project is costing us considerably more than the 19K OPENPOS project did. The OPENPOS project got the mobile wallet v1.0 for Android/iOS (apple is approving the iOS version as we speak) and Odoo POS built (and Tech Support(ed)). Odoo POS will be ready for their app store around April 1st, so just a few more days and we have more than completed that project (plus as you guys have seen we also used OPENPOS to fund the "standalone" Smartcoins POS system and also android v1.1 (thanx to the recent BTS price pump).
Hopefully we'll have another price pump and I can get the bitshareshelp, fiatramp and jobstar projects finished up too.
What inspired me to start building out the ECHO app is all the requests for a Bitshares trollbox, a chat service, a Dapp for voice/video, easy integration with third parties such as Uber, Lazooz, Alexandria, etc, loyalty/coupon programs and of course an actual decentralized, encrypted, censor-free version of Wechat/Whatsapp. Wechat (for example) has over 650 million users and is very popular in China, but it's censored up the wazoo. I am going to give those people and many more a better app. A material-design, native app (to iOS and Android of course) that implements all of the payment and communication features that we want (chat/voice/video) and none of the censorship, a pure open source "way out" for humanity, a way for us all (including the media) to communicate without fear of what we all fear right now.
Stay tuned to the OPENPOS thread for more videos and updates on the mobile wallets and POS systems.
Chris is meeting with more investors all this week and maybe we can even do another UIA seed round so the community here can share in the rewards on this one as well, but no promises, we need to evaluate the demands of the VC's first and foremost. Your word of mouth about BitShares Munich is what will help Chris and I the most right now, let the Dapp Devs out there know what we're bringing, get them savvy on the BitShares platform and all the cool stuff we can build on it!
Please and thanx, ken