tZero which is a subsidiary of overstock.com is planning to launch the biggest ICO on offer. It is planning to raise up to $ 500 million.
An ICO stands for initial coin offering which is similar to IPO. It often helps companies raise funds for their projects which are based on the blockchain technology. The beauty of the ICO’s is that as long as you’re having an Internet connection and Bitcoin or Ethereum you would be able to participate quite easily in these offerings. However, governments all over the world are becoming more and more cautious when it comes to ICOs. That is why US investors are often not allowed to participate in these ICOs.
These offerings by various companies all over the world have raised at least $ 3.04 billion till now.
According to the CEO of overstock.com, the token sale would be on November 15 of this year. The sale would last until December 21, 2017.
The largest ICO till date has been Filecoin’s ICO which raised around $ 262 million
According to a statement released by the company to CNBC, the minimum size of the ICO would be at least $ 500 million. The largest ICO till date has been Filecoin’s ICO which raised around $ 262 million this very year in September.
According to Patrick Byrne, CEO of overstock.com, tZERO is working on a lot of scalable projects which are based on the blockchain technology. They are in the process of creating a different grouped assets which might interest cryptocurrency investors as well as institutional investors from all over the world.
Simultaneously, the debate around the legality of ICO’s keeps on raging. According to US Securities and Exchange Commission, investing in ICOs can be pretty risky. Even countries like China have banned ICOs in order to protect the citizens.
Medici ventures
Overstock.com has been at the forefront of adopting blockchain technology and it launched a company by the name of Medici ventures back in 2014, in order to integrate the blockchain technology to the e-commerce platform of the site. Medici Owns tZero which reported its earnings for the 2nd quarter of the present financial year to be around -$3.3 million.
Investors are not that confident
Investors, however, are not that confident of overstock.com’s ability to launch the digital cryptocurrency trading platform as well as integrate blockchain technology with its e-commerce website as the stock of overstock.com has been swinging wildly in the last few months. Whether overstock.com is able to achieve complete integration of blockchain technology or not remains to be seen. However, in the coming couple of months it is only the ICO which will hog the limelight.
Tugba Kaplan - Tech Journalist
Tugba Kaplan is a journalist with more than 8 years of experience. She is an award winning correspondent. She has worked for Article 19 / The Guardian Foundation/ P24 Knowledge Right Project. She has participated in See Media Observatory in Macedonia. She was Research Fellow at Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Germany.
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