EOS’ Year-Long ICO Raises Roughly $700 Million USD So Far
EOS is the brainchild of 31-year-old Hong Kong-based internet entrepreneur Brendan Blumer and programmer Dan Larimer. Mr. Larimer has garnered criticisms for working before abandoning both Bitshares and Steemit. A former colleague of Mr. Larimer, Charles Hoskinson, stated that Larimer “hasn’t finished a project yet.” The chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, Brock Pierce, serves as an adviser to EOS and is a minority partner in the company. Block.one is registered in the Cayman Islands, and comprises roughly 50 employees. Development for the project reportedly occurs through an open-source development platform, and as such, the company does not have a central office.
At the end of October, Brock Pierce stated that EOS’s 345 day ICO had “almost” raised $700 million USD during a discussion at Launch Scale 2017, adding that the company is currently selling 2 million tokens daily. According to the Wall Street Journal, the figure is larger than that raised by “all but 10 of the 195 U.S. initial public offerings this year.”
The funds generated make the EOS ICO the largest ever, and coupled with accelerating bullish momentum during December, EOS has come to comprise the tenth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization – boasting a total market cap of approximately $6.75 billion USD as of this writing. Mr. Pierce recently expressed his expectation that the ICO will raise “at least a couple” of billion USD before EOS’ development will occur.Despite the enormous sum raised, Block.one plans only to write the code for EOS before releasing such publicly. The company does not intend to develop the platform itself, which will be delegated to third parties “unrelated to Block.one.” As such, EOS tokens will not afford its possessor “any rights uses, purpose, attributes, functionalities or features, express or implied, including, without limitation, any uses, purpose, attributes, functionalities or features on the EOS platform.” Block.one also plans to use a portion of the capital raised to invest in companies seeking to operate using the EOS platform – although how investors will benefit from said investments is not presently clear.
According to The Wall Street Journal, many investors are choosing to disregard the lack of legal rights afforded by the EOS tokens, viewing such as likely to be no more than a benign necessity in order for the company to protect itself in the current climate of regulatory ambiguity surrounding the legal status of cryptocurrency startups. Matthew Roszak, an early investor in Block.one, has defended the EOS terms of service, stating: “I don’t think it’s fair reading into that language too tightly,” emphasizing his view that the “regulatory environment is as clear as mud.” Other Block.one investors have been more cautious in their assessments of the EOS ICO, with Agentic Group’s founder, Rik Willard, suggesting that the surging demand for EOS tokens is indicative of the current “frenzy” surrounding cryptocurrency technology.