Recently launched ICO hosting platform Binance Launchpad has recorded a successful token sale, with Fetch.AI tokens reportedly selling out within 11 minutes and 14 seconds. The token sale, which took place on Monday, February 25 was exclusively available to buyers using the Binance native token BNB. In total, the ICO raised a total of $6 million.
Immediately after the sale, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao took to Twitter to express his delight at another successful sale facilitated by Launchpad to add to the earlier completion of the BitTorrent (BTT) token sale. Writing on his official Twitter account he said: “It was over in about 10 seconds. The queue was totally packed within seconds. The processing is just draining the queue slowly. Congrats to @fetch_ai !”.
Fetch.AI Token Sale Excites and Disappoints Investors
Described by some analysts as possibly the hottest ICO of the year so far, the Fetch.AI token sale was feverishly anticipated by investors eager to put money into a project with genuine tech pedigree and growth prospects. In all, about 24,000 users signed the User Agreement to enable them to purchase the Fetch.AI tokens. The minimum purchase order was set at 230 FET, with the maximum order limited to 34602 FET.
Of the 24,000 eligible buyers, 19860 were able to submit a buy order, but only 2758 people succeeded in purchasing FET. Expectedly, this drew howls of discontent on social media from disappointed investors angry about the failure of their buy orders. While some accused Binance of being a “scam” others alleged that the process was designed to favor insiders at both Binance and Fetch AI.
Founded in 2017 following a merger of tech companies Itzme AI and uVue, the concept behind Fetch.AI, according to CEO, Humayun Sheikh is to build the deployment infrastructure to move the internet away from the e-commerce model it was designed for toward an “AI-based autonomous machine economy.”
Launchpad is an attempt by Binance to make ICO fundraising more credible following its unchecked and unmanaged rise in 2017 and early 2018, which directly contributed to its spectacular loss of popularity amid regulatory scrutiny last year.
Speaking earlier in the year in a statement about Launchpad, Zhao said: “In 2019, Binance Launchpad will help launch projects serving the universal cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole that benefits people around the world. Bringing on distinguished token sales to the Launchpad platform is part of our continuing efforts to create a more secure and open token launch environment, paving a healthier market in 2019 and beyond.”