The currency of the formerly underground economy now pays for Silicon Valley startups, and my firm is riding the high tide.
The first 8 months of 2017 have seen 168 startups collect over $2.4 billion to get their projects underway (our in-house research numbers), my own firm sprinkling $40-odd million on top in our own and several of our clients’ ICOs. With an average ICO generating around $14.2 million worth of cryptocurrencies, more than twice as many companies held their ICOs in the months of July and August than did in the first 6 months of the year.
What often is left unsaid, or on the margins, is that the public perception of what cryptocurrencies are for is dramatically changing. Just a year ago the public perception linked blockchain and cryptocurrencies with shady activities, including those of terrorist groups, drug dealers, human traffickers, ransomware extortionists, and others who operate in the underground economy.
As far fetched as this distorted view of cybereconomy may be, the real sea change comes this year as ICOs have captured the imagination of business mainstream.
This has to do with the types of projects that are now completing token offerings. Where in 2014-2015 the majority of ICOs had to do with core technology, last year (mainly thanks to Bancor token sale), and, according to conclusions by Autonomous NEXT, continuing into this year, ICOs were conducted by startups in markets, investment products, media and identity space, etc.
We at ICOBox add to that our own stable of projects, some of which deal with launching new products on the market, offering inceptive marketing tokens, sports commissions productization, and the sales of the cannabis supply chain accountability products.
“Increasingly, as blockchain technologies penetrate the mainstream, token sales are used to generate resources for more mundane and everyday projects that have wide mainstream appeal,” says my colleague Mike Raitsym, another ICOBox Co-Founder.
A great example of how the times have changed is the story of AML Bitcoin, as told to the U.S. News and World Report contributing editor Peter Roff by Marcus Andrade, software entrepreneur behind AML Bitcoin.
For starters, AML stands for Anti-Money Laundering. The idea is that this token complies with The Patriot Act to keep terrorists and other designated groups from using the global financial system to fund their activities. It also complies with a whole array of banking laws and regulations.
"Digital currency creates economic and social possibilities that were not even imaginable 15 years ago," Andrade is quoted as saying in Roff’s column. "In the same way that the internet brings boundless opportunity to the remote corners of the earth, digital currency affords every person the chance to participate in the global economy, if they so choose. With AML Bitcoin, digital currency can now engage in mainstream commerce, taking its rightful place among traditional payment options."
And engage it does, as Andrade explains how the Port of San Francisco, like many other international ports and transportation hubs, is considering using cryptocurrencies and tokens in its payment system because it sees them as the wave of the future, AML Bitcoin ahead of the queue.
Andrade, who met with the port's leaders this month, hopes port officials will agree to utilize AML Bitcoin as a means of payment free from the taint of abuse and criminality historically attributed to the concept.
AML Bitcoin launches October 1, 2017, hoping to be the very anti-money laundering technology-based token that bridges the gap between the underground and the mainstream economies. If the Port of San Francisco adopts AML Bitcoin as a payment method, Los Angeles/Long Beach, San Diego, Oakland and Seattle-Tacoma may follow, Roff suggests in his column.
Many ICOBox customers like Paragon, Tokenstars and DSPlus, as are we at ICOBox, have long assumed that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has nothing to worry about when it comes to the kinds of ICOs that companies like us at ICOBox bright to token buyers. Hundreds of startups seem to agree. We hope that AML Bitcoin will join a long list of blue-chip tokens that thousands of business and government entities use around the world daily. We also hope that, having weighed all the pros and cons, the Port of San Francisco will start accepting cryptocurrencies. This will truly be a large step that will propel cryptoeconomy toward greater public acceptance.
Let the future begin today!