What is an ICO?

An ICO (Initial Coin Offering) is a new crowdsale concept in the cryptocurrency and Blockchain industries.
It’s important to understand, what is special about them, what is the difference between ICO and other coins.

• Initial Coin Offering

  • ICO is a form of crowdfunding, used by startups. Imagine a team of developers who are working on a new promising project. They might need to raise money from public, so they create their own cryptocurrency. Those who want to support the project, would buy the rights of token possession during the initial crowdsale phase. As a result, the project gets the capital to fund development, and the audience members get their tokens’ shares.
  • What is an IOU?
    It’s very important to understand that during the initial phase new coins don’t exist yet, people are buying IOU (“i owe you”) – not the coins themselves, but the obligations. As soon as fundraising phase is over, IOUs are being transformed into usual tokens.

• How can I deposit ICO coins or sell them?
  

  ICO coins basically don’t exist until the issue date. There’s no blockchain for them. That’s why it’s not possible to perform transactions, send coins somewhere – for example, deposit your HitBTC account with them.

  Until the moment the tokens are released, only verified market makers and ICO communities, who chose our site for primary placement, are able to deposit ICO to HitBTC.

• What exactly does HitBTC provide then?

  Check out the “ICO” tab in the “Instruments” section on our exchange. You are able to buy IOU directly from us and store them on your HitBTC account. As soon as tokens are released, you’ll be able to trade, deposit/withdraw them – it’s exactly the same deal as with every other coin.

• Why it’s convenient to participate in ICO on HitBTC?

  You don’t need to spend time looking for new promising ICOs and figuring out how to join them – the most interesting tools are already here. You don’t even need to leave HitBTC – our familiar interfaces are here for you, participating in ICO feels exactly the same as buying any other coin.
  As tokens are released, you are the first to trade them right here, on HitBTC, which also is great.

There’s a whole set of ICO coins listed on HitBTC. CVC, SNT, BNT and a lot more, and there will be more!
The next post in our blog we will tell you about new ICO projects!

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