How to Invest and Cash Out of Initial Coin Offerings (ICO’s) (For ERC20 Tokens)

First, please take a look at some key ways to research initial coin offerings here.

A few things before we start:

1. We are using an ERC 20 token. Not all ICOs use this standard.
2. Bread Token is the example ICO token in this article
3. Entering wrong addresses at any point during this process can make you lose money
4. All ICO’s are different. This is based on how many of them work.

Using MyEtherWallet (MEW) for ERC20 Tokens like Bread (BRD)

Many initial coin offerings come in ERC20 form. This basically means that you can use an Etherium address to partake in the ICO by paying an address, and when they’re ready the Etherium gets converted to whatever ICO token you’re partaking in and sent to your MyEtherWallet as a “special token”. Here, I will explain how to cash this token out, or at least convert it back to Etherium or Bitcoin using an exchange.

After you partook and if you used MyEtherWallet in the initial coin offering, visit: https://www.myetherwallet.com and login.

1. Go to the Website and Sign up for the ICO/Public Sale

Every website does it differently. Usually there will by a Know your customer (KYC) process to go through (uploading a passport for instance), then you’ll be given an address to send Etherium to. Send it to the address they tell you, and don’t get it wrong, or you’ll lose money.

• MEW will prompt you to ‘Select Wallet File…’ (2). Please select the file that was generated when you created your address.

• Since the file is encrypted, you will be required to enter the password to unlock the private keys. Once you’ve finished entering your password, click ‘Unlock’ (3).

2. After the Fund Raising You’ll Get Your ICO Coin

Depending on the ICO process of the company you invested in, you’ll get a coin sent to you Ether wallet. The amount you get back is based on what that coin is priced at. For instance, Bread Token was approximately 70 cents for one token based on the price of Etherium and the percentage of Etherium that coin was valued at by the crowdsale.

Under ‘Token Balances’, select the option to ‘Add Custom Token’. A drop down will appear and you will be required to enter the Bread Token Contract Address, Token Symbol, and number of Decimals.

This info is usually available on the telegram group or website of the ICO.

If MyEtherWallet lists your token as one of their native ERC 20 tokens, so the the above step will not be needed. MyEtherWallet will populate the below automatically for you.

For Bread Token, it could be found here:

https://etherscan.io/token/0x558ec3152e2eb2174905cd19aea4e34a23de9ad6

This address is: ‘0x558ec3152e2eb2174905cd19aea4e34a23de9ad6’.

The ‘Token Symbol’ is: BRD.

Decimals: ‘18’.

Upon entering these details, the number of Bread Tokens (BRD) should appear in your MyEtherWallet.

3. Send Your New Token

• Next, in order to send the transaction, you will need to enter in: your destination address in the ‘To Address’ field and the ‘Amount to Send’ (4). It is IMPORTANT that this is correct and there are no typos. Failure to enter the correct address and send amount will result in lost funds. Transactions are irreversible.
• The ‘Gas Limit’ (4) will auto-populate, but you will need to have at least 55,000 gas to have the transaction go through. Please keep in mind you will need to have some ETH in your wallet to be able to send your other token (in this case, BRD) as there is a small gas fee.

• Notice how your special token is now sendable
• In this case, I will send to my Binance address to store BRD there to trade and cash out (click here to get binance on a bonus code)
• A warning message will appear and this will be the final confirmation before your transaction is sent. Make sure you confirm the ‘Amount to Send’ and the ‘To Address’ prior to making the transaction.

• After this, your transaction has been sent. Wait for the blockchain to propagate your transaction (a few minutes), and you should be able to trade on Binance!

So in a nutshell, we sent Etherium to an address, after the ICO finished, we got some tokens in our MEW wallet, then we sent the tokens to Binance to be traded.

• To get access to which investment opportunities I’m looking at, join my email list:

Author: Natu Myers

(Website: Natumyers.com) (Book: Natubook.com)

Natu is a cryptocurrency investor and software engineer who is experienced in building large scale applications. He built Innovator.Supply, an HR recruiting software for VR, AR, and chatbot enthusiasts. This was followed his other service, Hypetroop Market. He has a fitness page on Instagram. Stemming from his time at Queen’s, he was a defensive lineman on the Queen’s Gaels football team. Being a multipotentialite, he finished a business incubator program after graduating, launched his own album on iTunes, and he stays up to date industry-penetrating software startups and crytocurrency investment methods while gaining IT experience.

Interested in Writing for Free Startup Kits? Click here to become a writer!

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice; you are responsible for your own money. All my resources are to be seen as research and conjecture. I do not claim having done any of it with my personal assets in the past or present.