I was one of many small fish swimming in this ocean of cryptocurrency that got pushed to the side by the whales this morning in the Basic Attention Token ICO. The sale went on for all of thirty seconds when the block hit, and the vast majority of the tokens ended up in the hands of a few whales that snatched up as much as they could as soon as they could. This seems to be a dangerous occurrence in an ecosystem where decentralization is supposed to be the backbone of the technology. When such vast amounts end up in the hands of few, they can determine the marketplace for as long as they're willing to play the game. And then when they're ready, they can crash that market in the blink of an eye.
On top of the obvious drawbacks, I think it was also a missed opportunity for the community potential. An ICO with as much hype as BAT had, had a chance to really create the base of its community with enthusiastic early adapters eager to go on board in the early days. A strong and plentiful core in the community could have really helped BAT get off on a strong note and helped develop its community quickly and most importantly cheaply. A happy base gives a ton of free advertising. Instead many were left annoyed and down on the platform as a whole.
That's not to say its all bad. This ICO was absolutely massive. Within seconds BAT had raised their goal of $35 million. If I'm not mistaken it was the fastest selling ICO we've seen yet, which is awesome news and indicative of the incredible excitement surrounding this new technology. The team behind BAT is solid and now they have all the funds they need to make their baby grow. Their talented team is lead by the creator of Javascript and former CEO of Mozilla, Brendan Eich, so you know they have what it takes to deliver a very capable product. That team coupled with the money in advertising smells like a recipe for success, it would have just been nice if more people were able to get in on the early action. Perhaps future ICOs can go with a system that better distributes the initial sale so that little fish such as myself can swim along with those whales!
BAT Site: https://basicattentiontoken.org/
By the numbers: http://www.coindesk.com/35-million-30-seconds-token-sale-internet-browser-brave-sells/
Total raised: $35,000,000
Time Open: Just about 30 seconds
Number of Buyers: Less than 200
Top Heavy: Top 20 wallets hold more than 2/3 of available BAT+
For those late to the action, BAT are available on liqio.io and etherdelta.com. Current trades have it sitting around 0.00065-0.00070 ETH/BAT. The initial cost during the ICO was 6400 BAT per ETH, or about 0.00015 ETH/BAT. So right now BAT is going for 4 to 5 times its initial cost. May be a good idea to sit it out until the initial frenzy is over.
https://etherdelta.github.io/#BAT-ETH
https://liqui.io/#/exchange/BAT_ETH