What's going on: The ICO craze, that started in mid 2017, was bonkers. Hundreds of more or less shady startups promised to ignite the blockchain-revolution for ... you name it. There were some obvious scams, like Confido who's team simply disappeared with around 375k $ cash. And there were some successful yet bumpy ICOs like Tezos, who's founders still spend a significant amount of their time in court. And while most of the projects who financed themselves with ICOs in the last couple of months still have to deliver what they promised (spoiler: they won't ... remember that around 90% of startups fail?) more and more established and well known companies are giving this fancy new crypto-money some love.
WhatsApp competitor Telegram plans a multi-billion dollar ICO for it's own cryptocurrency. The “Telegram Open Network” (TON) will, unlike Kik Messenger's KIN, not be an ERC20-token but it's own and brand new third generation’ blockchain. Details have yet to emerge, but it seems that Telegram's ICO could be one of the largest to date. And it's potential is huge: a (most likely anonymous) cryptocurrency used in an encrypted, privacy focused messaging app that is independent from governments and banks. It's users could bypass remittance fees when sending funds across international borders, move sums of money privately thanks to the app’s encryption, deliver micropayments that would incur too high of credit card fees, and more. And: Telegram is already the favorite communication channel for the global cryptocurrency community.
What's even more interesting is that Kodak, a company that missed the boat with digital photography and is now only a mere shadow of it's former self, announced that it is planning to sell it's own crypto token, which caused it's stock to surge 70%. And harddrive manufacturer Seagate mentioned in a blog post that they may have a stake in ripple.
Why should I care: Just a week after Mark Zuckerberg announced that he and Facebook will take a very close look on crypto in 2018, it seems that it is gonna be one of the big trends during this year: established, big companies start implementing blockchain technology or even begin issuing their own crypto coins. It seems that 2017 was some kind of test run to show that ICOs really work and can be used as an alternative to venture capital or a classic IPO (though legislation in most countries is yet unclear).
Source: techcrunch.com, bloomberg.com
GIF: giphy.com
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