A Tale of Three ICOs
Cryptocurrencies have a global market cap of $257,093,582,603. Dominated by Bitcoin, fifty-five percent is divided between ICOs with various purposes backed by innovative ideas.
Due to a lower barrier of entry, building businesses through initial coin offerings has replaced traditional initial public offering, also known as IPOs.
IPO registration has declined 65%. 363 companies registered in 2014. In 2016, the number dropped to 128.
Amongst the sea of ICOs, there are three breaking records with concepts set to revolutionize scalability, the Internet of Things, and more by expanding the usage of blockchain technology.
Telegram Group Inc.
Encrypted messaging app Telegram has become 2018’s largest initial coin offering. Trusted by French President Emmanuel Macron, the secure platform raised $1.7 billion in March. Self-exiled Russian, Pavel Durov, launched Telegram in 2013 to offer a safe messaging experience.
Telegram is planning to use their funds to create an open network blockchain to support a new cryptocurrency. According to recent documents, Telegram is constructing a digital currency faster than Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The goal is to create a coin that rivals financial corporations like Mastercard.
Telegram has garnered the respect of its users by protecting their privacy by any means necessary.
“Telegram doesn’t… do deals with marketers, data miners or government agencies.” — Pavel Durov
This “privacy first” mentality has gotten the encrypted service banned and restricted. Russia threatened to block Telegram services for not sharing encryption keys with government officials. Telegram has also faced restrictions in Iran for not cooperating with authorities.
With 700,000 new customers signing up daily, the secure messenger has replaced Facebook’s WhatsApp. Telegram’s dedication to confidentiality has created a cult following which has raised $1.7 billion, in capital, in two weeks.
EOS
Highlighted in John Oliver’s crypto spoof, EOS promises to solve blockchain scalability limitations. EOS is lead by Block.one’s CTO, Daniel Larimer, who has co-founded several powerful blockchain products.
Steemit and Bitshares are two of the top 40 cryptocurrency projects by market capitalization.
Larimer’s focus is to create a future where blockchain technology is scalable for commercial use.
The development of EOS backs Vitalik Buterin’s claim that digital currency will reach Visa’s scalability over the next several years.
Could Larimer’s EOS be the ICO to accomplish this?
“At capacity, the platform completes six transactions per second, compared to Bitcoin’s average of three. Looking for a national comparison, Visa processes 24,000 transactions per second.” — Vitalik Buterin
EOS’ goal for scalability has been set to about one million transactions per second.
With a market cap of $4.53 billion, the development of EOS.IO Dawn 2.0 has been released along with a public test network. This serviceable EOS Alpha puts EOS’ ICO past the conceptual stage and into implementation.
FileCoin
Decentralized storage solution, FileCoin, is working towards reinventing storage. Similar services include Amazon S3, Amazon’s user-friendly storage service for the Internet.
Filecoin began in October 2017 and quickly became one of the most significant initial coin offerings in history, raising over $200 million last year on CoinList.
Filecoin, founded by computer scientist Juan Benet, closed 2017 raising over $205 million distributed in U.S. dollars, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Zcash.
Filecoin has been described as the “Airbnb of data storage” because it offers a peer-to-peer based data exchange. The exchange accepts asks and bids to store decentralized data on the blockchain.
Filecoin, like Bitcoin, uses proof of work to incentivize people to mine storage transactions. Users are incentivized to mine by earning FileCoin tokens in exchange for storing data.
Perspective
The interest in initial coin offerings is growing exponentially. The ICO craze grows as entrepreneurs continue to raise capital on their terms.
ICOs are empowering entrepreneurs and investors by giving both the opportunity to become venture capitalists.
Instead of being required to have $200,000 in assets, investors may contribute as little as $100 to ICOs they believe in. This low barrier to entry allows more people to work smart by owning their investment research and decisions.
