“The reason we’re all here is that the current financial system is outdated”. – Charlie Shrem
Today, many start-ups are constructing their entire businesses on blockchain technology. Instead of turning to public stock markets, or venture capital funding, businesses are turning to cryptocurrencies. In the recent years, ICOs have been on the rise. An ICO is an innovative method to raise funding for a new business. an ICO usually creates a plan through a whitepaper which tells you what the project is about, what the project needs for completion and how much money is needed to execute the venture. The whitepaper will also include information about how long the ICO campaign will run for.
Let us take you through the top 5 ICO sales of all time:
EOS
Block.one introduced its ICO sale for EOS in June 2017, and concluded the sale in June 2018. During its ICO stage, EOS managed to raise $4.1 million USD to fund the development of its next level scalable smart contracts platform. On July 1, 2017 the ERC20 EOS token started its sale on different exchanges. After raising its value to $5.09 USD per token, EOS has been trading in the $1.50 to $2.00 USD range for most of its existence. Today, EOS token is trading around $8.00 USD. The token has been migrated onto EOS’ own blockchain network. When a leading blockchain backs the ICO, it usually leads to a successful funding.
Huobi
Huobi, a China based company is one of the most successful exchanges today. Huobi raised $300 million USD through its token sale in early 2018. The exchange sold its HT token to its present users who can gain profit from the discount on the trading fees available only to token holders on the exchange.
Huobi managed to raise funds using the concept of exchanged issued tokens and. Exchange issued tokens are appealing to cryptocurrency investors.
Telegram
The company behind the success of a recent app, telegram managed to raise $1.7 billion USD during a private sale. The money raised in the sale was said to go towards the Telegram Open Network. Telegram aims to build an entirely new blockchain that has the ability to process millions of transactions per second by using “infinite sharding”. For venture capital firms who are new to the world of digital markets, telegram was an easy investment as the token was issued by a reputable organisation. Conversely, because the telegram open network makes a lot of commitments that are technologically complex, many investors did not participate in the sale.
Filecoin
Before announcing its token sale, Filecoin managed to raise $52 million USD from leading firms like Union Square Ventures. Filecoin announced its own token sale in September 2017, and the ICO managed to gain over $250 million USD. Filecoin’s mission includes building its own decentralized cloud for storage using InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). The aim is to store data securely on a peer to peer basis.
This ICO is different from other ICO sales because it allows only accredited investors to partake in its token sale. Filecoin was the first regulatory compliant initial coin offering in the United States. Various leading blockchains have supported the project ahead of its ICO, which gives the project an approval to raise the amount it was able to secure during its token sale.
Sirin Labs
Sirin Labs announced its token sale in December 2017 and raised $157.8 million USD to fund its vision of becoming the leader in secure open source consumer electronics. FINNEY, the first open source blockchain smartphone and all- in-one PC will also be supported by the amount raised.
The demand for secure PC and smartphone solutions is increasing as cyber-thefts are a growing concern. PC and smartphone users would not mind a blockchain secure device.
Conclusion
ICOs may have their issues, but potentially promise a secure future. We are not certain about what this future is, but if ICOS survive it could pose a challenge to traditional funding methods such as Initial public Offerings, venture capital funding or corporate debt.
