A lot of people have asked me recently about the Iota ICO. Here is a little rundown on how the token distribution took place. All of the tokens in existance, roughly 2.800.000 Gi were sold to investors in an ICO (Initial coin offering), that ran from 25th November to 21st December 2015.
At the time no tokens where kept by the developers. The generated BTC went straight into development of the IOTA ecosystem and technological advancement.
On November 27th, 2016 around 48% of all Iota were claimed by their owners. Until the 4th of February 2017, additional 12% of Iota was claimed for a total of 60%. The number of addresses with a positive balance increased from 472 to 657 (+39%) and the number of addresses with more than 1 Gi increased from 334 to 494 (+48%).
The time to claim IOTA ran out before the recent snapshot so that now all tokens are issued – with all unclaimed tokens now being in the sphere of the developers. It is not known how much remained unclaimed, but a good guess could be to add the top two addresses, which are known to belong to the foundation/the devs. This would be 406,834Gi or around 14.6% of total supply.
To give you a little update, as of mid June the total addresses with a positive balance increased from 657 to 5,229 holders in a matter of weeks. As more major exchanges start to adopt Iota, an even broader distribution will take place. In conclusion, if compared to other "mother coins" like bitcoin, data acctually shows a more even and fair distribution.
If you liked my report, make sure to upvote/resteem & leave a comment if you have questions or want to add something to the topic:)
Iotaforall
Info source: www.iota.org
Image sources: https://www.google.com/search?q=iota+token&client=firefox-b-ab&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiis8Cv8bvVAhVBEVAKHUNBCRYQ_AUICygC&biw=1280&bih=915#imgrc=2I6bDbGjSOW7xM:
https://www.google.com/search?q=iota+token&client=firefox-b-ab&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiis8Cv8bvVAhVBEVAKHUNBCRYQ_AUICygC&biw=1280&bih=915#imgrc=sYF2MDkOUdCubM: