IEOs Raise Half a Billion, Keep Fundraising Alive for Blockchain Startups
By CCN: There’s a new fundraising sheriff in town in the maturing cryptocurrency space. While initial coin offerings (ICOs) were all the rage during the last bitcoin bull run, initial exchange offerings, or IEOs, have muscled them out of the way. If it weren’t IEOs, the market would have likely found another mechanism, but these appear to be the deal of choice for now.
Funds that previously flowed to ICOs in 2017 are now being redirected into wiser IEOs, as evidenced by the rising trends. IEOs have attracted $518 million across more than five-dozen projects year-to-date, according to TradeBlock data cited in the Wall Street Journal. The rebound in crypto prices has seemingly made the market too intriguing for investors big and small to ignore.
And while it’s not a repeat of the frothy ICO-mania that spread at the height of the token boom, it keeps fundraising alive. This time around, the crypto wheat is increasingly being separated from the chaff, which is helping to remove the stigma that was previously attached to the ecosystem.
Fundraising via IEO is the new ICO. | Source: TradeBlock/Wall Street Journal
Are IEOs the New King?
In order for IEOs to be crowned king of fundraising in the crypto space, however, the early excitement surrounding token prices and utility needs to last. Otherwise, these emerging cryptocurrencies will be no different from the ICO tokens whose values have been battered to their launch price or lower.
CCN previously reported about the bullish performance of tokens that launched on Binance Launchpad, the results of which prove that Binance’ selection process has thus far been spot on. Initial exchange offerings do not remove the risk entirely. Investors will be reminded of the bitcoin hack that Binance suffered this year, though the exchange saw to it that investors didn’t lose any funds.
Binance Launchpad has a solid track record so far. | Source: Twitter
