Whats an Initial Coin Offering? History of ICOs explained!

An Initial Coin Offering is a fundraising mechanism in which new projects sell their underlying cryptocurrency tokens in exchange for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins, Ethereum, etc. The first cryptocurrency distributed by ICO was Ripple. In the year 2013, Ripple Labs started to develop a cryptocurrency named Ripple and created around 100 billion XRP tokens. 

Later in the year 2013, Mastercoin created a layer on the top of Bitcoin to execute smart contracts and tokenize Bitcoin transactions. The developers at Mastercoin sold some million Mastercoin against Bitcoin and raised profits. 

Lisk is yet another project for Initial Coin Offerings which managed to raise around $5million in early 2016. Next comes the most popular success story of ICOs which is nothing but Ethereum. In the mid-2014, Ethereum Foundation sold ETH against 0.0005 Bitcoin each. 

By doing so, they raise a profit of around $20mio and became one of the largest and popular crowdfunding platforms ever. With these lengthy successful stories, ICOs started evolving slowly.  

SUCCESSFUL ICOs ON ETHEREUM PLATFORM

• Augur
• Melonport
• Golem
• ICONOMI
• Singular DTV
• First Blood
• Digix DAO

There is a huge set of Initial Coin Offerings launched every month with Blockchain Development Company which is launched with the motto of raising the funds for their projects as well as the investors. The potential trend of ICOs has enhanced. ICO enables every investor and a startup to easily release freely tradable tokens to raise funds.  

Though the legal status of Initial Coin Offerings is unclear, there are some successful ICOs which are still advancing. ICOs are the right blend of donation and investment. Some Initial Coin Offerings make use of single public Bitcoin address to raise funds, which is bad for privacy but is always good for a community audit of the health of the ICO and the funds raised. 

To launch Initial Coin Offerings, the first step is to introduce the news on various Bitcoin Communities like Bitcointalk, Reddit, etc. It should include complete details such as Whitepaper, business model, project scope, timelines for the project, the team involved, features of the project and other such details. Once it reaches the specific set of the target audience, one can start collecting the funds through cryptocurrencies or fiat currencies. 

These ICO fundraising campaigns are conducted for a certain period of time in the exchanges or ICO websites. Once the desired capital is raised, ICO gets over. In this way, Initial Coin Offerings are beneficial for both the startups and investors!

If you are one such person, you can check with ICO Development Company which are the best solution providers in the industry!

I hope now you are clear about Whats an Initial Coin Offering is and the history behind it!