“Real value is not measured in days or months, it is measured in years.” – Moshe Hogeg, CEO Sirin Labs
In our previous article, we looked at how the top three ICOs have fared since their blockbusting crowdfunding. The results, we noted, were a mixed bag. Some companies have gone off the grid almost entirely, while others are making incremental progress toward their goals. Let’s see if the next three by amount in dollars raised fare any better.
ICO #4 – SIRIN LABS Token (SRN)
$157,885,825 raised in December 2017 at an initial token price of $0.47.
What it does:
Sirin Labs makes the blockchain smartphone. The phone solves for one of the biggest issues facing cryptocurrency, the fact that it’s extremely hard for an average person to use the technology as a payment method. The barriers to widespread usage on the customer end are numerous: difficulty of setting up and using a wallet, complex authentication methods, volatility, and few merchants who accept crypto, among others. In every way it’s less effective than swiping your debit or credit card. Sirin Labs’ phone aims to change that by acting as a storage and transfer device of bitcoin and other coins. The phone exists on its own blockchain, and transactions won’t require fees due to lack of mining requirements. Ultimately this is a project that wants to make cryptocurrency easily accessible to the common user.
How the project is doing as of writing:
Sirin Labs recently contracted Foxconn, maker of iPhones, Playstations, and suicide prevention nets, to manufacture their phone. Product cost looks to be quite high, hovering around the $1000 mark, but if other companies license the technology the price could come down. The release date is slated for November 2018, an encouraging sign that the company is making good on its promises, and a relatively quick turn around for its ICO. Numerous other startups are rushing to market with their own blockchain based mobiles, but none have received the attention of Sirin.
How the coin is faring as of writing:
SIRIN LABS Token (SRN) is currently valued at $0.106565.
ICO #5 – Bancor (BNT)
$153,000,000 raised in June 2017 at an initial token price of $3.86.
What it does:
Bancor enables the exchange of tokens without going through a middleman (an exchange). It attempts to address an issue at the heart of crypto: too many tokens, not enough people trying to buy and sell them. While major tokens attract lots of interest, the smaller ones go unnoticed, often languishing on obscure exchanges. Because most tokens serve a purpose beyond payment, like being used as a method of exchange on various blockchain platforms (so-called “utility tokens”), it’s a big problem if they’re hard to get due to exchanges not wanting to bother with small time players. Bancor’s mission, then, is to bring liquidity to altcoins on a massive scale. This is accomplished by using “Smart Tokens”, the pluripotent stem cell of the crypto world. These tokens can change into any ERC-20 token, and then into any token that particular ERC-20 variant is connected with.
If that doesn’t seem worthy of over $150 million, you’re not alone. Many blockchain and cryptocurrency experts at the time dubbed the amount of money and hype “insane”.
How the project is doing as of writing:
Recently catastrophic. In July 2018, the company suffered a $13.5 million hack, leading it to freeze its own token, BNT. In an ironic twist, many in the community were more outraged at Bancor than the perpetrators of the crime itself. Despite doing much to preserve the health of the company, Bancor’s freezing and reclaiming of their token constituted a grievous sin in the eyes of many. How can a platform call itself ‘decentralized’ when it has that much power over its own coin? Nevertheless, Bancor soldiers on, promising to do right by its users who were burned by the hack. As of now, the exchange is still up and running.
How the coin is faring as of writing:
After some serious ups and downs, Bancor (BNT) is worth $2.01.
ICO #6 – Status (SNT)
$108,000,000 raised in June 2017 at an initial token price of $0.036.
What it does:
Status is a mobile Ethereum client that allows users to send, receive, and store Ether and other ERC-20 tokens. There’s also a messenger and a browser one can use to access the decentralized apps (DAPPs) that are Ethereum’s bread and butter. In essence this is an attempt to bring the Ethereum network to a wider audience through easy to use and familiar UX. All the technical material associated with blockchain and cryptocurrency is hidden under a glossy, user-friendly interface, similar in spirit to the approach of the first Macintosh, with a healthy portion of the iPhone App Store for good measure.
How the project is doing as of writing:
Currently in community Beta, Status is making progress. Recently, the company announced Nimbus, a new client that enables “sharding”, aka the parallel processing of transactions on the Ethereum network. The company’s goal is to serve as the primary portal into the Ethereum network for the mobile space, and if and when Ethereum does gain mainstream traction, Status will certainly reap the rewards.
How the coin is faring as of writing:
After a single climb in value in January 2018, Status (SNT) is holding steady at around $0.053591.
Again we find a mixture of peaks and valleys in regards to performance. While the amount of money raised by each company may seem like a golden ticket to success, it also brings with it intense pressure to do right. Only the future knows if they will prove themselves worthy of the hype.
