Winding Tree's initial
coin offering closed at midnight on the morning of Feb. 15, raising 15,239
Ethereum tokens. At closing, each token was worth $934.95, according to
EthereumPrice.org. At that rate, Winding Tree's ICO raised $14.2 million,
coming from 7,000 backers, and generated 26.7 million Lif tokens, Winding
Tree's new cryptocurrency. Transactions are still being verified, and tokens are
frozen until Feb 24.
COO Pedro Anderson said that even if Winding Tree has to refund
some noncompliant ICO transactions, the ICO would combine with Winding Tree's
presale, which was held in September and raised $1.5 million, to total about
$15 million.
Winding Tree will receive only $10 million from the ICO now. The
excess will be deposited into a smart contract as part of a Market
Validation Mechanism. The mechanism can buy back and destroy Lif tokens, allowing investors
to recover at least parts of their investments if the project fails, said Crypto
Briefing lead ICO analyst Daniel Hockenberry. He added that it's an uncommon
ICO practice. "The more people use the buyback option over the two-year
vesting period, if the project is failing, the less money [that] will
ultimately be available for the team," he explained.
Measuring Success
Various investors and spectators are at odds about the value
cryptocurrencies hold, but they look to Bitcoin for market indications. In
November, the value of a single Bitcoin broke the $10,000 mark and hit a high
of nearly $20,000 on Dec. 18. However, 10 days later, following South Korea's
threats to shut down cryptocurrency exchanges, it fell to $16,064.
Bitcoin continued to dip, falling below $7,000 shortly after
Winding Tree launched its ICO on Feb. 1. Despite the volatile cryptocurrency
market and an "unorthodox approach to raising funds," though, Winding
Tree successfully reached its target of $10 million, Hockenberry said. The "ICO
was a success in economic terms." ICOs, however aren't measured by the
amount of funds raised, he added. "What's important is that the team uses
the huge amount of resources now available at their disposal to deliver on
their promises by developing and launching a successful project. That's what
makes an ICO successful."
Winding Tree will use the funds to continue to develop its
blockchain-based travel distribution platform. It plans to launch a minimum
viable product version of its hotel platform by midyear and have an alpha
version of the airline platform for testing around the same time, Anderson previously
told BTN.