My First Experience With An ICO (Initial Coin Offering) / Initial Token Launch

Update: Apparently the Gigawatt Project filed for bankruptcy. What was surprising was I had come to find out through CoinDesk, rather than the company.

Ok, gotta admit the last post I wrote on blockchain, was only the beginning of the cryptocurrency journey. You can exchange your fiat currency for crypto currency, or you can get a bit more technical and mine (or mint the limited supply of coins). Mining is an energy intensive process, requiring fast processing hardware to execute it. Granted, you can do it on a small scale, but the cost of mining is going up. Or you can just opt for an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) or simply Token Launch.

I recently came across the Gigawatt Project - a turnkey blockchain mining company which has been around since 2012, helping miners with equipment, maintenance and repair to private blockchain servicing.

Now the same guys, came up with a crowdfunding solution for token launches or initial coin offerings a.k.a. ICOs - called Cryptonomos.

The flagship launch is the WTT (based on the Ethereum protocol) - which provides 50-year rent-free access to Giga Watt processing center.

The reason I went for this is two-fold. First I wanted to experience a token launch of Initial Coin Offering (ICO, no idea why anyone sticks to this terminology, but its probably a cosmetic familiarity to the IPO). Second, the WTT token has a utility as well, I can use it to pay for mining bitcoins. Now I'm not a technical guy, so I've asked my cousin who is a blockchain developer to utilize it, and take a percentage of the bitcoins mined as a reward.

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Even if my cousin didn't want to mine cryptocoins, the Gigawatt team believe the demand for mining is huge (at a cost of $1,000 vs. their cost of $500), and so I can rent out the tokens, generating on average around 30%-50% per year ($1 = 1WTT at the moment).
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I’m not going to explain the steps you go through to buy any cryptocurrency. Here we’re going to go through the steps in using the cryptocurrency in your wallet to make a “token” investment. If you’d like to understand more about tokens and ICOs, I suggest you sign up at zencapita right now where I provide my readers with more information on how to navigate and invest in blockchain.

Hopefully, this step-by-step guide will show you how easy it is, without the hassle of any intermediaries (a.k.a. meddlesome middlemen). It took me less than 20 minutes to do the entire thing, and have the tokens allocated. I've also include a couple of points to note at the bottom of this, read them as they'll help you when you invest in ICOs / ITOs.

Don’t get worried about the number of steps, I just had to show them by screenshots. I hope the Cryptonomos team makes the process / flow much more easier. For instance, I had to find out how much Ether (ETH) I needed, before I could buy the tokens, and then go to my wallet and transfer. It was a needless few steps.

STEP 1: Login To Cryptonomos Dashboard

STEP 2: Click To See Product Details

STEP 3: Head To Dashboard & Hover Over & Click On Buy Button

STEP 4 (Option I) - Buying Bitcoin Equivalent

STEP 4 (Option II) - Buy Dollar Amount ($1000)

STEP 4 (Option III) - Buying Ether Equivalent

STEP 5 (Option I): Top Up Account - Deposit US Dollars

STEP 5 (Option I): Top Up Account - Invoice Yourself

STEP 5 (Option II): Top Up Account - Deposit Ether Using Address

STEP 5 (Option II): Top Up Account - Deposit Ether Using QR Code

STEP 6: Open Jaxx / Blockchain Wallet

STEP 7: Paste Cryptonomos Address & Ether Amount Into Jaxx / Cryptocurrency Wallet

STEP 8: Review & Hit Confirm

STEP 9: Wallet Balance Reduced

STEP 10: Check Ether Balance (Refresh After 10 Minutes)

STEP 11: Ether Balance & Transaction Confirmation

STEP 12: After Clicking Buy (From Step 2)

STEP FINAL: Check Position After Allocation

Another thing that I misread, or didn't realize until after I invested - was that the tokens are not available immediately, but only after issuance (which was in two months). Which means that my invested amount of $1,000 or ETH 4.44  was locked up until August 7, 2017 (which is 2 months from now). And there is a possibility that the price of ETH or BTC could go up or down during that period, and I won’t benefit (or suffer) from it. Furthermore, I don’t generate any rental income during that period. If there was one suggestion to the Cryptonomos Team, is to reduce this period to 30 days, this helps build up the scarcity/demand.

And of course, for those who are particular about reading the fine print, you can click on the terms and read them. I'm not a lawyer, and not qualified to give you legal advice (get your own). The main thing to note is that with these tokens, you really don’t have much recourse to anything and you can’t even arbitrate or file a class action suite. It’s caveat emptor or buyer beware. In short, be prepared to write off whatever you invest via tokens. It’s not a gamble, its just a risk of losing your capital - which is the case with any venture capital investment anyways.

The Cryptonomos Support Team have been very responsive, given that they were handling a lot of pre-sales questions. I'm sure they wanted to make this a success and were willing to answer every possible question I threw at them.

Token launches or ICOs are new, the best practices will evolve soon. Even though there is no regulatory body, I believe that the free market will fix this. Expect to see sites similar to Yelp where they start rating and reviewing ICO / ITO launches and the people behind them. Just like in crowdfunding, there's crowdfrauding - the only advise I have, is caveat emptor (buyer beware) and don't invest / risk more than you're ok losing (be it because of a bad investment, or falling into an unlucky trap by fraudsters).

I'm doing an indepth report on token launches, as they evolve. If you're serious, then join me on the inside of zencapita.

APPENDIX 1: Token Purchase Agreement

APPENDIX 2: Token Purchase Agreement (Indemnification)

APPENDIX 3: Token Purchase Agreement (Reps & Warranties)

APPENDIX 4: Token Purchase Agreement (Arbitration)