I just realised that in R3 the requirement for lifetime Alpha was only £5,000 but has now jumped up by £20k to £25,000! Why is this? Why the sudden big jump?
Not that I still understand what Alpha actually gets you aside from a badge (and free instant trades?).
Where does it say the limit?
It’s a shame I was hoping to get Lifetime Alpha in R4, but it was out of reach 
The limit is mentioned in the FAQ but I’m getting myself confused again (have just edited that bit of my post).
The maximum limit you can invest for R4 is £25k which is how much you need to invest to get lifetime Alpha, whereas last time it was £50k and you only needed to invest £5k to get the lifetime perk.
Hey Lewis 
As @Racxie kindly suggested, you can find more information about the crowdfunding here. The limit per individual is £25,000, down from £50,000 in R4.
R4 has already concluded, the next one in June is going to be R5 
Whilst it is indeed £25,000 you need to qualify for Alpha for life, it was the same in R4, whereas only £5,000 in R3 and £1,000 in R1/2. I doubt that Freetrade expects its investors to attach a monetary value to the perks - they are just minor augmented benefits to the core offering - a stake in the company. Whilst it may seem excessive to grow in multiples of five in between the rounds, it is, after all, meaningless in case of Freetrade’s failure and relatively insignificant in case of its long-term success 
Alpha does not, in fact, exist yet, so we can only speculate what it could offer - free transactions, instant top ups, unlimited Apple Pay, multicurrency accounts, you name it. Hopefully, there will be more clarity on it next quarter.
I clearly should go to bed as I’m making small mistakes with my numbers & rounds 
As for monetary value tied to perks, that’s exactly what it is. You need to invest x amount to get x perk. It’s the same principle with crowd funding; they’re incentives for people to invest more e.g. The free pair of socks was an incentive for me last time to (attempt to) invest at least £500
As for Alpha it’d be nice if they actually knew what they wanted to do with it before promoting it, especially as they’re already giving it away 
I partly agree with your stance, although I still think that the main thing you are buying is the shares in the business, not the Alpha subscription. That said, you will be able to know what the latter entails before committing to spending your money on it as a service once Freetrade finally releases it together with all the details 
Have Freetrade said it will significantly change from what was originally described (apart from a few minor tweaks)? I thought it had been removed from the pricing to prevent confusion, not a radical overhaul
Who knows, maybe the investment platform will allow introducing some banging new features and squeeze them into the Alpha
Hi. Is there some option for non UK residents to sign-up for early access? Since Freetrade App is not available for download outside UK on Google Play Store.
Will R4 and R5 investments be combined to qualify for perks? I’m sure I read this somewhere after R4 was closed
No, they’re separate rounds so the rewards will be given out based on the separate investments too.
Didn’t you say otherwise before? I was also under the impression rewards would stack… kind of moving the goalposts unless I’m mistaken as to what was communicated prior.
Yes we did say that they’d be combined before, shortly after the previous round closed & then we changed our plans.
You’ve been given plenty of notice that, that’s the case now, well before you need to decide whether to invest or not. And the rewards being based on the combined investments has not been suggested by us at all since we announced our new round in this thread.
You’re right in that it hasn’t been mentioned since launching R5. I am guessing that many of us assumed that since you said that you would be combining investments for perk levels in R4 and R5… that this would be the case and that there wouldn’t be a need to assume otherwise.
What about, for example, if someone intended to make two investments in round 4, which together would merit a perk, but only one went through? They would then make the second one in round 5 and be left short changed, perk-wise. Doesn’t apply to me, but seems unfair.
Wouldn’t they just have cancelled their round 4 in the cooling off period so they could invest the full amount in round 5? It was said before the end of the cooling off that they’d be 2 separate rounds
When will the new valuation be announced?
In Birmingham, on the road trip next week.
A few questions on getting rewards based on aggregated investment amounts across rounds.
We’ve received these questions every round and want to be consistent by allocating the rewards based on invested amount in the specific round. I think that’s fair.
But the share price will be higher in round 5