Indiegogo Crowdfunding Platform Gets on the ICO Bandwagon

Indiegogo now offers ICOs & Blockchain Investments

As reported by The Scope Weekly, ICOs reached a new height in 2017, raising over $3 billion. It came as no surprise that a crowdfunding platform would start to offer ICO and blockchain investment. Indiegogo, the San Francisco-based crowdfunding platform launched in 2008 and considered by many as one the pioneers of crowdfunding, is adding Initial Coins Offering and Blockchain to its array of funding options. Last year, it launched Equity Crowdfunding, enabling anyone to invest and own a piece of their favorite startups.

Indiegogo ICO logo

Even though there are risks involved – as seen this month with the NiceHash hack and PlexCorps scam- with offering ICOs, this decision is proof that the funding platform is listening to the market and, if the market maintains today’s trend should expect a good ROI.

Other Players in the Field

The lesser-known Republic and Silicon-Valley darling AngelList have tiptoed in the Initial Coin Offering water, and just yesterday, ICO HeadStart, a self-described “Kickstarter” fundraising platform for pre-ICO and ICO companies, announced that in the first weekend of its public ICO pre-sale, the company successfully raised $10.8 million.  But until now, established companies essentially were spooked by the risk factor and legal ramifications and kept their distance.But if one believes that 2017 is the Year of the ICO, it was, however, becoming increasingly hard for Indiegogo to ignore the market.

Indiegogo said in a blog post,”You’ve probably heard a lot about ICOs lately. This year alone, companies have sold more than $3.6B in cryptocurrency tokens, which is greater than all of the venture capital raised in the same period. Suffice it to say; digital token sales have proven to be revolutionary – allowing companies to provide greater utility and liquidity to investors than traditional investment instruments.”

And it Made the Announcement in a Tweet:

Excited to announce you can now invest in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) on Indiegogo through our partnership with MicroVentures. Join the cryptocurrency revolution: https://t.co/zAUNxgmNpq pic.twitter.com/SOiU2PJOEI

— Indiegogo (@Indiegogo) December 13, 2017

This week, it presented its first Initial coin offering (ICO) pre-sale with Indiegogo and MicroVentures on a Fan-Controlled Football League, the funding goal is $5,000,000, and at the time of publishing had already reached $2,120,817 from 253 investors. The League is described as:

The Fan-Controlled Football League (FCFL) is America’s first truly democratized sports league. FCFL lets, the crowd, decide everything, from calling the team plays in real time, to deciding who is on the field, to choosing team names and even designing uniforms. It’s like next-level fantasy football. FCFL is also a proven Indiegogo alum. They ran a successful perks campaign on Indiegogo and were able to buy a football team in the Indoor Football League, which allowed them to test their model and build the app that lets fans call the shots.

The FCFL token pre-sale lasts ten days and is selling up to $5 Million in tokens. The early investors have access to 25% bonus tokens as a reward, while the League plans to sell their tokens publicly early 2018, just around the corner.

Fan-Controlled Football League
Fan-Controlled Football League

Slava Rubin, co-founder of Indiegogo said during an interview,

“We have 10 million monthly users and reach people in 232 countries and territories. We can amplify token sales to a broad community of accredited and non-accredited investors.”

“We want to bring a brand of trust to the entire industry, which we think will bring ICOs to the mainstream.” Rubin said that Indiegogo was well-placed to run ICOs thanks to their global reach and compliance skills,” Rubin said.

The company hopes to become “the go-to platform for selling and investing in digital tokens and blockchain-based assets.”

Kickstarter Says “No way.”

It’s important to note that the Brooklyn-based crowdfunding giant Kickstarter has vehemently expressed no interest in jumping onboard, and has no plans to get into the initial coin offering (ICO) business, seeing it not aligned with their Charter and too risky. “The answer is 100% a very firm no,” a spokesperson for the Brooklyn-based Kickstarter told  CoinDesk when asked about its interest.


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