By Guest Author
Overstock.com on Monday launched the largest ICO yet as investors poured a $100 million into the initial coin offering. The CEO of the company Patrick Byrne during an interview with Yahoo Finance on Monday announced the launch of an initial coin offering (ICO) for tokens for a new trading platform called tZero. He further added that there would be the future of trading.
He added that the ICO was capped at $250 million, though they have the option to short=sell an additional $50 million at the underwriting price to get to $300 million in case the demand gets higher than expected.
He stated that “There seems to be overwhelming demand, and we don’t need more than $250 million to do all the disruption we plan on doing.” He announced that the capped CIO is only open to accredited and offshore investors.
ICO receives a warm reception.
Overstock’s ICO is regarded as the most anticipated ICO of the year and was cheerfully welcomed by investors on Monday, despite the initial setbacks.
The first of the two phases of the tZERO token sale went live on Monday, with the company presenting it in the form of Simple Agreements for Future Equity (SAFEs). Overstock made the tokens available via soft launch and is open to only KYC/AML-accredited investors who wish to invest in the token before it goes public.
Byrne while speaking to CoinDesk stated that the ICO attracted over 2,000 accredited investors on the first day. He further added that the investors they committed $100 million to tZERO, with an individual investor putting in $5 million, the single highest individual offer.
Byrne further added that the high level of interest from investors would force the company to reduce the length of sale. With regulations in place, Byrne couldn’t go into details regarding how the bonuses were structured under the SAFE sale.
It is expected that the SAFE presale will be available until January 18th. The company plans to run the second phase of the SAFE sales with other accredited investors and will have a cap of $150 million.
ICO to disrupt Wall Street.
Byrne told Yahoo Finance that he believes the ICO will disrupt Wall Street. He stated that tZero wasn’t designed to function like Bitcoin, rather they would be tokens that can utilize the tZero trading mechanism. This mechanism will future ICOs, trading, and short-selling. Byrne further added that tZero will operate as a “blockchain-ified” Wall Street exchange, thus giving traders and investors an alternative to the NYSE.
He explained that those who possess the tokens will be given dividend-like revenue share from tZero and will also have the ability to use those tokens in the platform to facilitate trading and shorting. When compared to traditional exchange platforms, tZero boasts of lower cost, transparency from a distributed ledger, and less shady business.
Byrne expects TZero, which is SEC compliant, to decrease transaction costs 80% to 90%.
