For many years, early-stage fundraising globally was dominated by venture capitalists. VC funds enjoyed the privilege of having the chance to invest in promising innovative business ideas and capitalizing on potentially multiple double digit returns. Established brands in the VC world, enjoyed even more privileges by virtue of high quality deal flow. Sequoia Capital is just one example, of a fund with access to companies like Google and WhatsApp from nearly day one. As a result,
Silicon Valley became the hub of entrepreneurship and had the monopoly in funding scalable global businesses.
ICOs offered a different way to crowdfund seed capital. It all started with Blockchain startups that issued coins and tapped into capital globally. Seed investments of millions, raised globally in minutes, became a new reality especially when in June 2017, the funding amount globally from ICOs surpassed that from VCs. Open source protocols creating the infrastructure for the Web 3.0, that VCs would never fund,were funded and global communities were built in a very short time
Ethereum is one example that is now considered as one of the first historic major ICOs which in 2014, raised $15 million in just 42 days. Today it is one of the world's leading cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of $77 billion 2. By the end of 2015, the ERC20 standard was created a technical standard for smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain which became popular for launching coin offerings (ICOs)
In ICOs There are 2 types of tokens issued
Utility Tokens
Utility tokens, also called user tokens or app coins, represent future access to a company’s product or service. The defining characteristic of utility tokens is that they are not designed as investments; if properly structured, this feature exempts utility tokens them from federal laws governing securities.
By creating utility tokens, a startup can sell “digital coupons” for the service it is developing, much as electronics retailers accept pre-orders for video games that might not be released for several months. Filecoin, for instance, raised $257 million by selling tokens that will provide users with access to its decentralized cloud storage platform.
Because the term “ICO” is a derivative of “initial public offering” (ICO), utility token creators usually refer to these crowdsales as token generation events (TGEs) or token distribution events (TDEs) to avoid the appearance that they are engaging in a securities offering.
Security Tokens
If a crypto token derives its value from an external, tradable asset, it is classified as a security token and becomes subject to federal securities regulations. Failure to abide by these regulations could result in costly penalties and could threaten to derail a project. However, if a startup meets all its regulatory obligations, the security token classification creates the potential for a wide variety of applications, the most promising of which is the ability to issue tokens that represent shares of company stock.
Security tokens, could include any combination of the following properties:
- The right to a share of the company assets
- The right to a proportionate increase or decrease of the token holdings in relation to changes in the company assets or capital stock
- The right to receiving dividends, interest or other forms of payments associated with the financial results of the company or with the increase in value of its assets.
- The right to participate in company shareholder or stakeholder meetings, either with or without voting rights.
- Other rights related to the issuance of new tokens, company sale, company restructuring, token repurchases.
What Desico Proposes
Fundraising without any legal or reputational risk
It aims to provide the complete infrastructure for an ICO's launch. Apart from the legal framework, it will offer a marketing package tailored for project promotion, plus a standardized interface for startups to conduct their crowdsale
High-quality smart-contract development and auditing
Infrastructure for launching ICOs
Have their own exchange and provide instant liquidity
Find out more at https://www.desico.io
