A key factor that played an important role in Qtum’s ability to raise over $15 mln within five days of its initial coin offering is the startup’s ability to sell its idea globally.
Though the startup, which provides a Turing-complete Blockchain stack, seeks to help fuel Blockchain adoption across global business sectors to bridge the gap between Blockchains and the business world, the hybrid Blockchain application platform could have failed by not striking the right cord from the start.
The Singapore-based foundation’s main office is in China. It works with professional service providers with a global presence such as PwC, headquartered in the UK, and raised initial funding from investors that cut across both axis of the globe including Star Xu of OKCoin, Anthony Di Iorio of Ethereum and Jaxx, Jeremy Gardner of Augur and Bo Shen of Fenbushi.
East matters
Despite its promotion in the West where the knowledge of Blockchain technology and ICOs is higher and cryptocurrency-based platforms abound, most of the sites that participated in the crowdsale campaign are located in the East. Among them Bizhongchou, Yunbi, ICOAGE, Allcoin, ICO365 and BTC9.
The tactics have worked for Qtum, making it to the list of the all-time top 10 Blockchain-token crowdsale campaigns. It started its first day with $10 mln sales of its tokens in about two hours to cut down on the crowdsale’s scheduled 30 days, or until all tokens were sold, in which over 11,000 Bitcoins and 75,000 Ether (ETH) were raised in exchange for the available 51 mln Qtum tokens.
Another key issue that is also imperative to the ICO’s success is the application of these tactics’ overall purpose on beaming light on Qtum’s ability to integrate both Ethereum and Bitcoin.
Ethereum factor
Ethereum has been gaining greater interest in Asian countries of late. Its recent price rise seemingly shows it is being seen differently from how it used to be especially after last year’s DAO attack.
In a way, Qtum’s promise of facilitating the integration of Ethereum with Bitcoin (for its known backbone role for all cryptocurrencies) will contribute to the further breaking of the misconception that both are competitors.
Qtum will execute smart contracts and decentralized applications like the Ethereum Blockchain but is built on Bitcoin’s unspent transaction output UTXO transaction model and employs a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.
Aside from extending smart contract possibilities to environments that were previously out of reach for Ethereum, the new platform also aims to establish an array of services that include tools and methods to standardize the workflow of business smart contract development, and a hub of tested and verified smart contract templates, addressing various specialized business use cases.