Ethereum prediction market firm Gnosis has completed an initial coin offering with the firm's creators owning 95% or approximately $280 million and investors buying 5% of the project's tokens for a total of $12 million; skeptics say the high market cap for the project is an example of recent irrationality in token sales; however, as more initial coin offerings are successful, investors appear to be growing more comfortable with the investments. Source
George Popescu is the founder of LendingTimes, a publication dedicated to the online lending industry; he also serves as CEO of Lampix, an augmented reality company that offers a product creating 'smart surfaces'; the company announced it had crossed $4.5 million in funding through an ICO in minutes. Source
With more than 80% of ICOs doing presales there are concerns over investors who have preferential treatment selling after the ICO; article discusses some of the largest investors in the space including Blockchain Capital, Pantera Capital and Polychain Capital; the possibility of pump and dump schemes has also drawn the attention of regulators. Source
The new method called DAICO incorporates characteristics of DAOs or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations; the goal is to reduce complexity and risk with ICOs; article shares the benefits of this new approach. Source
Danny Masters ran JPMorgan’s commodities trading business in the 1990s; he is a strong believer in ICOs as a better mousetrap compared to IPOs stating, “I’ve raised for companies — angel, friends and family, series A, series B stuff — and it's a real pain in the arse. It's slow, it's time-consuming, it's duplicative. It's a really heavy duty process. I know some great companies who've raised £5 million, £10 million and they've spent thousands of man hours doing it.”; he also notes that there is a lack of quality ICOs and they have funded only a dozen; Masters setup a fund called Global Advisors which pivoted to crypto in 2014. Source
Blockchain has quickly become the buzzword in fintech for 2017; Consensus 2017 took place this week in New York City...
The UK’s financial watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority, issued a warning to investors regarding initial coin offerings (ICOs); in particular they warned of the “high risk, speculative” nature of the new capital raising method; financial regulators worldwide have begun cracking down on ICOs in recent months, China has banned them and the SEC in the US issued a similar warning as the UK. Source
Over $3 billion has been raised this year by initial coin offerings; Tech Crunch shares the current warnings that the market has received from regulators; some market participants report that they have spoken with with the SEC and it is expected that we will hear much more from regulators as we enter 2018. Source
Mr. Clayton is chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Mr. Giancarlo is chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; in a Wall Street Journal article they share their perspective on regulation as it relates to cryptocurrencies; they discuss trading, listed bitcoin futures products, ICOs and more. Source
Beginning in June ads promoting cryptocurrencies and ICOs will be banned on Google; this follows a recent ban from Facebook; both companies have a large share of internet ads and combined collected 60% of online ad spend in 2017; many cryptocurrencies fell on the news. Source