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$200 Million In 60 Minutes: Filecoin ICO Rockets to Record Amid Tech Issues
The ICO for the the blockchain-based data storage network Filecoin has raised as much as $250 million despite being beset by tech issues.
By Stan Higgins
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 6:49 a.m. Published Aug 10, 2017, 8:43 p.m.
An initial coin offering (ICO) for the blockchain data storage network Filecoin has raised an estimated $200 million from accredited investors despite being beset by technology issues.
The figures add to the roughly $52 million in tokens sold in a pre-sale to investors like Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures, announced last week. However, at press time, the ICO – which is being conducted via CoinList, a joint project between startup investment platform AngelList and Filecoin developer Protocol Labs – is paused.
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The sale halt came just over an hour after it first began at 1 p.m. PT.
Site issues cropped up soon after the sale began, with social media posts showing that some users had problems accessing the site. The Filecoin page on CoinList also displayed problems with the ticker meant to track the total amount raised.
Over the course of the first hour, it reset several times, reverting back to a baseline amount despite showing a rising minimum price. (Filecoin's ICO is utilizing a sale model in which the minimum price buyers would need to pay rises as more investors join in.)
Problems aside, the sale has generated a record-breaking level of investor interest.
Just over 30 minutes into the sale, the Filecoin team announced that it had garnered a total of $252 million in investments – a figure which includes the pre-sale figures.
Of that amount, $186 million is confirmed, according to the Filecoin website. Including the unconfirmed purchases, the ICO represents the largest to date, overtaking the $232 million record hit by the Tezos project in mid-July.
According to data from the CoinDesk ICO Tracker, roughly $1.7 billion has been invested through the ICO model to date, indicating that the Filecoin sale could push this figure past the $2 billion mark.
CoinDesk is monitoring this developing story.
Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invested in the Filecoin pre-sale.
Juan Benet image via Shutterstock
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