The Curious Case of the Airtoken ICO

Airtoken (www.airtoken.com) aims to do two things:

1.To provide airtokens (redeemable for mobile data) to phone users for interacting with ads etc; and
2.To permit micro-loans based on pre-paid airtime and to establish credit history based on it.

Airtoken has several things going for it: an Ivy league team, an already established and successful Airfox company which has a browser that is already integrated with hundreds of wireless carriers, an impressive list of investors already behind them, and an actual product that is ready for lift-off.

Because of these factors it is no surprise that Airtoken received a high grade from investment platform analyzer Hacked.com (https://hacked.com/ico-analysis-airtoken/). Airtoken also had a very positive review from CoinCentral: https://coincentral.com/icos/airtoken-ico-token-sale-summary/

It is also no surprise that Airtoken's $15 million dollar ICO was quickly over-subscribed. The Airtoken team noted that they had received offers to sell over one million to a single investor, but had turned that down in an effort to ensure that the tokens were not concentrated in a few hands. A larger issue was that the team disqualified mass numbers of investors from the ICO after they decided to require stringent KYC and AML - some say that they disqualified about 2,000 investors. The comments on social forums made numerous allegations of unfair conduct and alleged greed etc. It was very clear that people were not happy.

When the ICO completed and the tokens were issued, they were only immediately tradeable on EtherDelta, which has a very low volume. The value of the token dropped precipitously the day after being listed. On some day less than $10,000 has been traded on EtherDelta, allowing just about anyone to impose any price that they wish. Some of the reddit members of the airtoken group have speculated that malice and revenge played into the price being purposely dropped and also to allow disqualified members to buy in at lower prices. With such low volume it does not take much for someone to be a "whale" sufficient enough to manipulate price.

People had not been required to wait between purchasing the token and receiving their tokens and so it is very odd that the price would simply drop the day after the token was issued. There were pre-sale investors who did receive a larger discount and it is possible that they began cashing out right after the ICO, but the low volume does not seem to suggest a massive exodus so much as someone manipulating the low volume ot influence the price.

If you believed in the team, project and possibilities enough to invest on the day prior to the ICO, it is difficult to believe that people are now willing to sell at a loss so shortly after.

The only change in the project from before the ICO to after the ICO is that they now have the millions to proceed with their plans and fund it. They have an aggressive schedule of new announcements and steps being taken.

For disclosure purposes, I did invest in the ICO and I have purchased additional tokens after the massive drop. I am storing them in an offline wallet so as not to get the itch to sell them. Airtoken can be found here on coinmarketcap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/airtoken/