BAT ICO
The Basic Attention Token (BAT) team has some big names behind it! The founder of BAT is Brendan Eich, who created JavaScript and co-founded Firefox. That name alone is worth some dough. Team BAT has created a browser that blocks all ads and makes the user experience faster and more enjoyable. The idea for the BAT token is to create an ecosystem between the user, advertiser, and publisher. Advertisers pay using BAT tokens, users and publishers get a piece of that. It's essentially a digital advertising token. Everyone wins except Facebook and Google if the idea takes off.Why does all of that matter? The BAT ICO was on May 31st. There was a cap of $35-36 million USD and Ethereum was the coin investors had to use. BAT hit their $35-36 cap in just 24 seconds! As pessimistic as I am, I tried to get in on that ICO...along with everybody else. There aren't many ICOs where the founder(s) is known and not of questionable character. On May 31st, Ethereum price spiked to around $230...it was around mid 100s in the days leading up the ICO.
Bancor ICO
Team Bancor also has some big names behind it. The founders started a few successful companies in the past...maybe not quite as big as Firefox and JavaScript. One of their big investors is Tim Draper...the billionaire who famously bought 30,000 bitcoin back in 2014 from the US Marshalls. With those names, it really doesn't even matter what Bancor does.What Bancor does it is interesting though. The Bancor protocol enables the Bancor token to be the super coin!! It's allows conversion into other coins. It's purpose is similar to exchanges today like Poloniex or Bittrex, except it claims it's algorithm will allow for trading low volume currencies at a proper price. Whether it works or not is irrelevant for now.
The point I am trying to make is that Bancor blew the BAT ICO out of the water. It was YUUUGE! Instead of having a hard cap on the ICO, Bancor set a hidden cap...but no cap whatsoever for the first hour. They raised $150 million in the first hour, all in Ethereum. What did the Ether price do leading up the Bancor ICO on Monday, June 12th? It went from mid 200s up to as high as $412 around the ICO time. It has calmed down since to the mid-high 300s.
This was a big ICO, which basically froze Coinbase. Coinbase seems to freeze a lot, somebody over there tell them how to scale properly so they don't miss out on transaction fees during the freezes...but that's a rant for another day! The average 24 hour Ethereum trading volume spike 3x it's normal amount...even surpassing bitcoin's 24 hour volume in the 2-3 days leading up to the Bancor ICO.
Sadly, I missed this ICO also. I wanted to get in, but had my times mixed up...and was working, so sad.
This is the Ethereum to Bitcoin chart to show the sharp rises leading up to the ICOs.
Status ICO
The Status is an open source messaging and browser that interacts with dapps that run on Ethereum. And you can mine on your phone! The idea sounds interesting for sure...seems to be some buzz on the street. The names behind it are not big, from what I can see. They aren't completely unknown (maybe). The founders previously co-founded Opulence...which I've never heard of. But the idea is interesting, and a lot of people missed out on Bancor/BAT ICO and are just dying throw money at an ICO that sounds halfway decent.Will I invest? Yes...I'll invest a small amount, just to see how it feels. Will Coinbase freeze from this ICO...probably not, it doesn't sound like it will be in the same realm as Bancor.
Civic ICO
Civic has big names behind it. Vinny Lingham is the founder, he also founded Gyft, which is a popular gift card trading site. He may also have silicon valley investors ready to invest, if they haven't already done so. Civic aims to provide low cost identify verification via the blockchain. Will this finally kill the Humaniq token? Hopefully...I can't watch anymore videos of that horrible business plan.Civic's ICO starts on June 21st. They have mediocre sized names behind it and an interesting idea. It's not clear to me what their cap is for the ICO. If they have learned anything from the Bancor and BAT ICO, they'll make it uncapped for a set time frame. Depending on the ICO terms, this one could be as big as Bancor. I will definitely try to get into this ICO.
https://tokensale.civic.com/
Winter is coming, Coinbase will freeze over for this ICO.