Initial coin offering (ICO) is a crowdfunding source of capital for startup companies. In an ICO a percentage of the newly issued cryptocurrency is sold to investors in exchange for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The term may be analogous with 'token sale' or crowdsale, which refers to a method of selling participation in an economy, giving investors access to the features of a particular project starting at a later date. ICOs may sell a right of ownership or royalties to a project.
According to Amy Wan, a partner at Trowbridge Sidoti LLP practicing crowdfunding and syndication law, "The coin in an ICO is a symbol of ownership interest in an enterprise—a digital stock certificate, if you will."In contrast to initial public offerings (IPOs), where investors gain shares in the ownership of the company, for ICOs the investors buy coins of the company, which can appreciate in value if the business is successful.
At least 400 ICOs have been conducted as of August 2017. Ethereum is (as of August 2017) the leading blockchain platform for ICOs with more than 50% market share.
The first token sale (also known as an ICO) was held by Mastercoin in July 2013.
Ethereum raised money with a token sale in 2014, raising 3,700 BTC in its first 12 hours, equal to approximately $2.3 million dollars. An ICO was held by Karmacoin in April 2014 for its Karmashares project.
One of the first "mainstream" ICOs was executed by the messaging app developer Kik in September 2017. Kik had previously issued $50 million in tokens called "Kin" to institutional investors, and sought to raise an additional $125 million from the public.
ICOs and token sales are now extremely popular. As of May 2017 there were currently around 20 offerings a month, and a new web browser Brave's ICO generated about $35 million in under 30 seconds. There are at least 18 websites that track ICOs. At the start of October 2017, ICO coin sales worth $2.3 billion had been conducted during the year, more than ten times as much as in all of 2016.
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