Chinese blockchain project Antshares had raised over 3,500 Bitcoins in merely 10 days since its global ICO beginning on Aug. 8th. That is to say, based on current Bitcoin price, Antshares now enjoys a market cap of 13.6 million yuan or over 2 million U.S. dollars. Overseas investors make up over half of its 700 participants. This ICO is set to last till Sept. 7th.
ICO, or Initial Crowd Offering, is an unique crowdfunding mechanism often seen in blockchain projects.Just like that automobiles need gasoline, the operations of a blockchain require some form of fuel, which, in most cases, is presented as cryptographic tokens. The object of an ICO is exactly this fuel, a product, rather than stock equities. Since that most ICOs accept only Bitcoins, which is not recognized as fiat currency, ICOs could be seen as special product crowdfundings conducted by bartering
To date, the biggest crowdfunding project was exactly an ICO one, The DAO. During its 27-day crowdfunding in April this year, 12 million Ethers were raised, amounting to a historic height of 132 million U.S. dollars.
As the fuel of the Antshares Blockchain, AntShares, or ANS, are exactly the object of the ICO. By investing Bitcoins, investors get ANS in return and profit from the development of the Antshares Blockchain and its ecosystem in the future.
Antshares is one of the very few early community-driven blockchain projects in China. After 2 years of development, it welcomes 2 early birds in August as partners in exploring digital asset registrations: Bitrees and WeLand.