Mashable
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Mashable
“, c, “>”].join(“”) } var c = “body”, e = h[c]; if (!e) return setTimeout(q, 100); a.P(1); var d = “appendChild”, g = “createElement”,
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Mashable
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ICO, or Initial Coin Offering, is currently the most popular way to get your blockchain startup off the ground, period.
According to a quarterly report by CoinDesk, blockchain-based startups were funded with a total of $797 million in the second quarter of 2017 alone. That's more than triple the amount that similar startups raised from venture capital.
SEE ALSO: China bans ICOs for being full of fraud and pyramid schemes
The ICO is somewhat similar to an IPO, only instead of stock, the company sells cryptocurrency tokens, often based on the Ethereum platform. These tokens aren't the same as company shares, but they do typically carry benefits to owners, and they can easily be traded for other cryptocurrencies.
CoinDesk lists Bancor, Status, TenX, and MobileGo as the largest ICOs, worth $153 million, $95 million, $83.1 million, and $53.1 million, respectively. On the VC side, the biggest deals listed in the report are R3 ($107 million), Canaan ($43.6 million), Blockchain..
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The ICO — Initial Coin Offering — has recently become a very popular way to fund a startup, as it adheres to few rules requiring little to no regulative oversight. Companies such as Tezos and Bancor raised hundreds of millions of dollars within days by letting investors purchase their newly created cryptocurrencies (also known as tokens) with Ethereum or Bitcoin.
But now, this wild, wild west of fundraising appears to be at an end, at least in China. The People's Bank of China has issued a notice (link in Chinese) on Monday that forbids “all types of currency issuance financing activities” of this sort.
SEE ALSO: Floyd 'Crypto' Mayweather is totally into cryptocurrencies
The document claims that ICOs are teeming with “illegal fund-raising, financial fraud, pyramid schemes and other criminal activities” and claims that the government will from now on closely monitor ICOs for signs of illegal activity.
The document bans not only ICOs but also the trading of any toke..
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Just to let you know, if you buy something featured here, Mashable might earn an affiliate commission.
In essence, cryptocurrencies are decentralized digital currencies that can be sent to anyone through the internet. They aren’t affiliated with any particular country so there’s no central bank that verifies these transactions. Instead, cryptocurrency miners use special software that creates a public record of each transaction and gives the miner a payment in return.
SEE ALSO: The wild world of cryptocurrency—and how it could make you rich
If you know what you’re doing, you can make a lot of money mining this digital currency. But how does it work and what’s the best way to do it? You can learn all of this from the Beginner’s Guide to Cryptocurrency Mining.
This course gives you access to 13 lectures so you can hit the ground running and make real money fast. You’ll learn a mining system that has low startup costs and requires no affiliate marketing or graphics card. You’ll also le..
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2017 has been a big year for Bitcoin: its highest price ever, a major disappointment from the SEC for No. 1 Bitcoin fans the Winkelvoss twins, and, for a moment, a value higher than gold.
But another cryptocurrency has been quietly growing in volume while everyone was focused on Bitcoin. Ethereum, which is kind of like Bitcoin but slightly nerdier and more complicated, edged up against Bitcoin in its daily volume earlier this month. In plain english, Bitcoin is much bigger in terms of monetary value, but Ethereum is being used so much that it's facilitating nearly as much business.
Even people who don't care about digital currencies at all have heard of Bitcoin. But according to a brief unscientific survey of the Mashable offices, it appears that approximately no one outside the cryptocurrency loop knows what Ethereum is.
So what is Ethereum?
Ethereum is a decentralized application that supports a cryptocurrency, or digital currency, just like Bitcoin. You can pay for t..
A little over two months ago, Bitcoin achieved a symbolic milestone: After an intensive period of growth, the price of one Bitcoin surpassed the price of an ounce of gold.
That seems like ancient history. The price of Bitcoin has nearly doubled since then and the cryptocurrency is currently trading at about $2,200. Bitcoin's cousin Ethereum is trading at about $180, its price increasing by a cool 1400% in the last three months.
SEE ALSO: Ethereum: The not-Bitcoin cryptocurrency that could help replace Uber
But is the rally over, or has it only just begun? And what has propelled the explosive growth in the first place? In the world of cryptocurrencies, answering these questions is anything but easy.
A new breed of cryptocurrencies
To start, it's important to understand that Bitcoin, while still the biggest cryptocurrency around, is not the only — arguably not even the biggest — driver of growth anymore. According to Coinmarketcap, the total vale of all major cryptocurre..
A startup named Bancor has raised about $153 million in less than three hours from anonymous investors in what is now the biggest example of a new form of blockchain-based funding—the initial coin offering.
And it all happened on Ethereum, the blockchain platform that has exploded in popularity over the past few months. Ethereum, often described as another Bitcoin competitor, is more than a currency; it allows decentralized, blockchain-based projects to be built on top of it.
SEE ALSO: Bye, Bitcoin. Hello, Ethereum.
While most startups raise money from investors or through selling stock on public markets, Bancor found investors through an ICO—an Initial Coin Offering.
An ICO is a new way to raise funding that has gained momentum in recent months; the new company issues tokens—a sort of mini-cryptocurrency that, besides being tradable, might also give you other benefits (though this differs from project to project). In an Ethereum-based ICO, tokens can be purchased in a limited win..
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The cryptocurrency market for Ethereum plummeted late Wednesday. This wasn't a quick dip, but a flash crash that sent the price from $317 to a low of $0.10 in a matter of seconds.
Some people saw thousands of dollars in value disappear.
Things are back to normal, sort of. The price of ether, the cryptocurrency of the suddenly hot Ethereum platform, has since rebounded and is trading back at about $318.
The crash, however, remains as a big reminder that this is a volatile, new market. Plenty of people have made small fortunes investing in these markets, but the get-rich-quick stories belie the risks that the average person faces if they want to get in on these new digital currencies.
SEE ALSO: Bye, Bitcoin. Hello, Ethereum.
The vice president of GDAX, the Ethereum exchange which experienced the crash, blogged about the event, explaining that a “multimillion dollar market sell” was placed midday Wednesday. This triggered prices to fall from about $317 to $224 and 800 automat..
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