Can An ICO Be Your Wonka Golden Ticket?
Everywhere you look there is another startup launching an ICO. According to the ICO calendar on tokenmarket.net, there are 27 ICOs in progress currently. That sounds like a lot at one time until you look at the month of July’s upcoming offerings which has a whopping 49! That’s just one company that assists with the ins and outs of launching a new cryptocurrency.
For those new to this, an initial coin offering is similar to the traditional Initial Public Offering, or IPO, that many investors are familiar with. Token market provides services including token creation, auditing, and launching. They define as ICO as such:
“Crowdfunding and kickstarting a digital asset. Analogous to an Initial Public Offering, which represents the moment when a private company is offered to the public for the first time. Unlike with IPO where stocks are issued, crypto tokens are created and divided among the crowdfunding participants.”
Best Buy Co, Inc.
ICOs have surpassed IPOs in popularity. It used to be that looking for venture capital was difficult, but lately it seems that anyone can put together a decent idea, a webpage,a creative coin name and within weeks be sitting on a small fortune. Or more. Much more. In March, Qtum broke the record by bringing in more than $15 million. Sounds good for a small company right? Sure until you hear that just a few weeks ago Status brought in more than $108 million in one day. Then last week we saw Bancor hit more than $153 million in just 3 hours!
Fiverr.com
Then just today Tezos set a new record and brought in more than $200 million.
It seems that at the moment there is no stoppage to the money people are willing to throw at these startups. If you’ve been reading my blog long enough you know that I like to put my money (or digital coins) where my mouth is and invest in what I am writing about. That way I can give a firsthand experience of what I see taking place. For the purposes of writing this article (and the very small chance I strike it rich) I bought into 3 ICOs in the month of June. The way it works is you send the the startup company the currency they want to raise (typically Bitcoin or Ethereum) and they issue you their newly created coins.
How did I go about searching for my lucky Wonka Golden Ticket? Well, I decided to buy what interested me. The first purchase I made was from a startup called Voise. I like music and they claim that their service will allow indie musicians to keep 100% of their hard earned revenue. I’m not a musician but if I were I would like the sound of that. I purchased 143 VSM for the equivalent of roughly $87. When they were released at the end of June, they hit a high of just over $3 each. They hit $6.58, and even though I had planned on keeping them, I couldn’t resist taking that $700 profit.
The 2nd company I bought was Monaco. They offer a Visa logo card that allows you to pay for everything with cryptocurrency even if the merchant doesn’t accept cryptocurrency. It automatically finds the best exchange rate and transfers you out of digital currency and into the local fiat currency. Also, while traveling abroad it does not charge you conversion fees. I purchased $90 worth of MCO and they issued me 30 of their coins. After the sale their coins came out at a strong $2.75 but have since fallen to $1.89. That makes my $90 investment now worth only $56.70.
The final coin that I bought was Wagerr (WGR). They are an online gambling site and I like to place an occasional so I thought that this match was a good fit for both of us. I picked up 1,000 WGR for $90. They entered the exchange at a very low $.053 (less than ICO price) and have now climbed up to $.073. Currently my initial $90 investment is now worth $73.13.
If you’re keeping score at home, that means my net total profit is $650.
Here’s my takeaway:
- I learned a LOT
- I made everything on 1 coin (VSM) and lost some on the others
- That Wonka Golden Ticket exists if you are lucky enough to find it
For more information, visit learncryptoinvesting.com