Cosgrove Gaynard Solicitors

As cryptocurrencies and their use become more widespread companies are continually developing innovative ways in which to use the underlying blockchain technology.  In order to provide funding for these projects companies are offering their own specific crypto tokens and coins to the general public through initial coin offerings or “ICOs”.  Due to the popularity the cryptocurrencies generally ICOs are quickly becoming a very lucrative fundraising mechanism.  The major advantage to the company running the ICO is they do not have to give up equity in the company in return for capital.

The ICO acronym is familiar and it works rather closely to how an IPO (Initial Public Offering) does.   An ICO is fundamentally a crowd funding camping where Instead of shares, the investor gets digital coins in the hope that their value will increase and they can be traded on an exchange. The attraction of an accumulating coins in this way lies in the fact that the exchange value isn’t mediated by any central authority and Central Banks or credit card companies are not involved in any way. 

Over the past few years speculators and investors in ICOs have seen huge gains on their initial investment and the popularity of ICOs look set to continue in the future. The companies running the ICOs are using the funds raised to develop their product offering and hire staff.  The ICO method of raising funds has become so popular that even established companies are now having their own ICOs.   As popularity of ICOs has increased we are starting to see companies having pre-sales prior to ICOs to select groups.  This gives the groups the opportunity to get the coins at a discount and provides funding to the company to market and create the ICO effectively. One such recent example saw the messaging application Telegram raise over $1.6 billion in pre-ICO funding according to reports.

At Cosgrove Gaynard we are seeing more and more international clients enquire about ICOs and we are proud to be the preferred legal partner to some every exciting ICOs originating in Ireland in 2018.

Should you wish to discuss any aspects of this article please fee free to contact us and a member of our technology team will be happy to assist you.