Blockchain Firm Algorand Raises $60 Million in New Token Sale
Blockchain company Algorand has raised over $60 million in a token sale on financial services platform CoinList, according to a company press release on June 19.
The Algorand Foundation — a firm that implements an open source public ledger and cryptocurrency payment system utilizing the Byzantine Agreement message-passing protocol — has reportedly raised $60 million in a sale of its native Algos token.
The recent equity funding was on top of the $66 million the company raised over the past year from investors such as venture capital firms Union Square Ventures and Pillar Venture Capital.
During the recent token sale, Algorand’s native asset Algos was worth $2.40 per token. As the foundation aims to grow the total number of Algos tokens to 10 billion in its first five years of operation, investors are putting the network’s market capitalization at $24 billion.
Ether (ETH), the native token of the Ethereum network and the largest altcoin by market capitalization, has a market cap of just over $28 billion at press time.
As previously reported, Algorand intends to launch its mainnet product this June, along with its token. In an interview this January, the project’s co-founder Silvio Micali spoke about his belief that blockchain technology has future potential for creating a borderless global economy. At the time, Micali stated:
“Only a true decentralized system, where the power is really so spread that is going to be essentially practically impossible to attack them all and when you don’t need to trust this or that particular node, is going to bring actually the security we really need and deserve.”
This week, Algorand also announced that its node repository has been open sourced and is now publicly available, along with the release of analytics tools for applications and details on its bug bounty program, among other features.
In late January, CoinList CEO, Andy Bromberg projected that cryptocurrency markets in 2019 are “going to be quiet for a little bit” while firms focus on building the crypto space. Bromberg said:
“[In 2019] it feels like people are focused on building... I think the market is going to be quiet for a little bit, while people focus on actually creating things. It feels like a little bit of a Mesopotamia, ‘cradle of civilization’ moment, where everyone has the ingredients they need, needs to focus in and start to build out those empires, and create what the future is going to look like, and that’s what this year is going to be about.”