It seems like ICO fever just won’t quit.
In fact there have been a few lately that have raised several million dollars in mere minutes.
In April the Gnosis ICO raised $12.5 million in only 10 minutes with a valuation of $300 million.
Most recently the Aragon ICO managed to hit their cap of $25 million in 25 minutes.
The next promising ICO that has been making headlines is called Tezos.
Unlike most other projects that jump right into releasing an ICO, Tezos has been building their blockchain from scratch for a few years now with a team that is focused on delivering self-governance and decentralization in a way that other cryptos fall short.
As I said before in a past video on ICOs, it’s good to know the people behind the project.
For Tezos, it’s the married couple, Kathleen and Arthur Breitman.
Arthur has worked at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and Kathleen served as a senior strategy associate for blockchain consortium R3. Despite his background working at Goldman Sachs, both Arthur and Kathleen are verifiable crypto-anarchists who believe that technology should set us free, with the blockchain being the key.
The evidence can be seen with the ideals behind Tezos emphasizing transparency, security and governance by consensus.
True decentralization and self-governance will be accomplished by placing the power into the hands of the shareholders rather than the developers and miners. This will help to avoid hard forks and gridlocks like we are seeing in the bitcoin block size debate.
Tezos is an alternative to Ethereum in that it is an independent smart contract platform. It’s also similar to Ethereum in that there isn’t a plan to cap the supply of coins.
One big reason why Tezos has had increased exposure is due to the public support and endorsement of Tim Draper.
Yes, the same Tim Draper who scored 30,000 bitcoins from the US Marshals auction of their seizure from the Silk Road. Of course his endorsement doesn’t do much for improving or guaranteeing the success of the project, but it does go a long way for sparking interest in it.
Don’t follow blindly those who promote a crypto or project without first practicing your own thorough due diligence.
Seek out the critics, read the articles, and invest what you can afford to lose.
If you can’t commit by the time the ICO rolls out, you can always wait and see how it plays out on the open market.
So the initial date for the Tezos ICO was scheduled to be held on May 22nd, but they have since pushed the release date to be sometime in June. It will run for two weeks, with no cap, so this ICO may very well set some impressive records.
Be sure to check out the links I’ve provided down below to learn more and sign up for announcements for the Tezos ICO if you’re interesting in investing.
Additional Reading/Sources:
Tezos homepage and Signup Form for Announcements
Track the Tezos ICO
Reddit critique
Article with critical eye on Tezos
Tezos Explained by Kathleen and Arthur Breitman
Basic over view of Tim Draper and generic description of his influence with future ICOs