ICO is a short form to mean Initial Coin Offering. In the case of launching a new cryptocurrency or crypto-token provide investors with a small amount of units that can be exchanged for other crypto-coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
ICOs are a great tool to quickly pour development funds that can help support the development of the development of new cryptocurrency. The tokens distributed in an crypto signals ICO can be purchased or traded through cryptocurrency exchanges as long as there is a sufficient demand for them.
The Ethereum Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is among the most notable successes , and the interest in ICOs are rising in the present.
An introduction to the overview of the history of ICOs
Ripple is most likely to be the first cryptocurrency to be distributed through an ICO. In the beginning of 2013, Ripple Labs began to create its Ripple payment system, which generated around 100 billion tokens of XRP. They were then sold via an ICO to help fund Ripple’s platform’s development.
Mastercoin is a different cryptocurrency that sold around a million tokens of Bitcoin in an ICO which was also conducted in 2013. Mastercoin was created to allow tokenization of Bitcoin transactions and implement smart contracts through the creation of an entirely new layer on top of Bitcoin code.
Naturally, there’s also cryptos that have been raised through Initial Coin Offerings. In the year of 2016, Lisk has raised around 5 million from the Initial Coin Offering.
But Ethereum’s ICO which was held in 2014 was probably the most popular one to date. In their ICO in 2014, the Ethereum Foundation offered ETH at 0.0005 Bitcoin each, raising nearly $20 million. Thanks to Ethereum harnessing the potential of smart contracts it set the stage for future generations of Initial Coin Offerings.
Ethereum’s ICO is a recipe for success
The Ethereum smart contract system has been able to implement an ERC20 protocol standard which sets the fundamental rules for the creation of other tokens that are crypto trading signals paid group compliant and are able to be traded via Ethereum’s blockchain. This has allowed other parties to develop their own tokens that are compliant to the ERC20 standard, which can be traded directly for Ethereum through Ethereum’s network.
The DAO is a prime instance of how Ethereum has successfully used its smart contracts. The investment firm raised $100 million in ETH and investors were given as exchange DAO tokens, allowing them to take part in the management that the blockchain platform. Unfortunately the DAO crashed when it was compromised.