Bancor Raises $147M In Coin Offering

The Bancor token was able to raise around $147 million earlier this week via an initial coin offering, reported Reuters.

According to the report, it’s the second biggest venture capital fundraising by a player in the blockchain industry. Bancor provides technology for the creation of smart tokens that can hold one or more tokens or digital currencies to allow any party to purchase or liquidate them via a smart contract. There is no need to rely on an exchange with the currency technology, noted the report.

Citing Bancor, Reuters noted the offering raised 396,720 ether, the digital currency for the Ethereum network. The Ethereum currency last traded at $369.62. Bancor said 50 percent of the digital token will be given to contributors in the venture capital fundraiser, with 20 percent allocated to partnerships, community grants and public bounties; 20 percent to the long-term operating budget of Bancor’s foundation; and 10 percent to founders, team members, advisers and early contributors, noted the report.

Bancor isn’t the only blockchain company to have a successful capital raise in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Brave, a currency startup, launched a so-called coin offering last week to bankroll a new web browser and was able to raise the equivalent of $35 million. According to a report in Fortune, initial coin offerings, in which companies sell currency digital tokens to backers, is one of the hottest new trends in the bitcoin world. The Brave coin offering was funded in around 30 seconds, reported Fortune, citing CoinDesk. The report noted that around 130 people were able to buy tokens in the coin offering, with five buyers getting nearly half of the supply. While initial coin offerings are in the early stages of adoption, they are viewed by some as an alternative to share offerings. With the offering, investors get digital tokens that can be converted into digital currency like bitcoin or Ethereum instead of shares. Regulators have previously said they are looking into initial coin offerings to see how they should be treated, but as of today the market is largely unregulated, noted the report.