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GM friends. Hereâs what Iâll cover today:
đWhy and how I am participating in ICOs
đ Crypto chart of the week
đď¸ The latest DeFi news
đWhy and how I am participating in ICOs
ICOs are finally back.
If youâre a crypto OG, you might remember that lots of people made fortunes in 2017 by joining the right ICOs (which are essentially public token sales).
Unfortunately, after 2017, most projects stopped doing ICOs because regulators made them illegal in many countries, giving the entire early-stage market to VCs.
But this started to change recently as the US SEC became way more crypto-friendly.
Weâve seen many highly successful token launches lately, where ICO investors have made significant profits by investing early, as public sales are gaining popularity again.
One recent example is Plasmaâs XPL sale on Echo, which certainly exceeded all expectations in terms of returns.
In this post, I am going to cover what I am looking for in ICOs, a few things to keep in mind, and the launchpad platforms I am using to participate.
Letâs dive in đ
First of all, I wanted to clarify this:
Initial coin offerings (ICOs) can be highly profitable, as you can see in the screenshot above with Plasma, but they are far from risk-free.
Iâve seen projects that raised funds from retail and then released their token at a valuation that was 90% below the ICO valuation. Iâve also seen cases where a certain project didnât even bother to release a token anymore after raising funds.
With that being said, personally, Iâve made a good amount of money from ICOs. But itâs crucial to be very picky when choosing what project to invest in.
For every 20 ICOs I research, I typically invest in only one or two at most.
Most of the time, my strategy is to invest in the token sales of the most hyped projects that meet at least two out of the following three conditions:
Their token is available for trading on pre-market - This way, you can check its pre-market valuation to see if itâs worth buying during the ICO
For instance, letâs say you want to buy token X by participating in its ICO at a $100,000,000 valuation.
If token X is already available for pre-market trading on Hyperliquid, MEXC, Bybit, or other DEX/CEXs, and itâs trading at a $400,000,000 valuation (4x higher than the ICO valuation), that makes it pretty likely that youâll make money by participating in its ICO as long as you manage to get an investment allocation.
The project has a strong community - If you see a lot of positive posts about the protocol you want to invest in on X, thatâs typically a green flag, as attention is crucial in this industry (no attention = no potential buyers)
The demand to participate in their token sale is very high - You can generally check if this is the case by looking at how oversubscribed a certain ICO is
If a sale is 10x+ oversubscribed, Iâd say it is a good sign as it shows thereâs a lot of demand for that token. In the example below from the Kaito Capital Launchpad, you can see that Limitless ICO had a target raise of 1,000,000, and the total requested allocation was over 200,000,000. This shows it was oversubscribed by 200x.
Now, letâs also dive into the platforms where you can find opportunities like this. Itâs worth noting that if you want to use them, completing KYC is a must.
This is required on all major launchpads for legal reasons.
I participate mostly in the ICOs hosted on these three launchpad platforms:
Legion - Legion is a fundraising platform that partnered with Kraken and raised $5M from VCs like VanEck, Kraken, Crypto.com, and Coinbase Ventures
What makes it stand out is its âLegion Scoreâ, a novel system that determines what investment allocation you will receive based on several factors.
If youâre a web3 developer active on GitHub, you have wallets with high on-chain activity, or you have an audience on CT, youâre likely to receive a bigger allocation when investing with Legion, as youâll have a higher Legion Score.
Kaito Capital Launchpad - Kaito needs no introduction. Its launchpad went live only 3 months ago, and already hosted twelve different ICOs
Investment allocations are determined by each project based on factors such as:
Social reputation (a strong social media presence on X helps, but itâs not a must)
On-chain holdings (especially if you hold KAITO, you may get a bigger allocation)
The thing I like about it is that you can see the estimated TGE date for the projects conducting token sales on Kaito launchpad, which isnât possible on many launchpads.
Echo - Echo is a launchpad built by Cobie, one of the most prominent CT figures
The way it works is unique. When you join, you complete an extensive KYC, and then you get access to a platform where you can apply to 80+ private investing groups led either by VC firms or prominent crypto investors.
Only after that, youâll be able to participate in token sales. Many well-known projects, such as MegaETH, Hyperbeat, Plasma, and Cap Money, raised funds using Echo.
Those are the main launchpads Iâm using.
As I mentioned above, you can make good money by participating in ICOs, but you really need to know what youâre doing and to be picky. Otherwise, youâll get wrecked.
I hope this guide will help you spot some good opportunities.
Together with Rumpel
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Crypto chart of the week
Prediction marketsâ notional volume hit a new ATH
Crypto Memeđ
The latest developments in DeFi
Uniswap added support for swaps on Solana
Hyperliquid Strategies Inc. filed to raise up to $1 billion to buy HYPE
Coinbase bought Cobieâs Echo launchpad for $375M
Ethereal, a USDe-native perps dex built as an L3 on Arbitrum One, was launched
MegaETH bought back 4.75% of its token supply from VCs
Almanak announced its token value accrual model, which will enable its stakers to direct emissions, launch vaults, and get discounts on computing power
Immunefi, the security Infra company securing 95% of DeFi TVL, announced its upcoming TGE
Jupiterâs first ever prediction markets powered by Kalshi went live
Solstice introduced YieldVault - a delta-neutral yield strategy on Solana. You can get exposure to it by locking USX into the YieldVault
Ethena announced plans to release two completely new products in the next ~3 months
Turtle released its token called TURTLE and the airdrop claiming portal
Yield Basis, a new AMM offering high BTC yields, launched its token YB
Rabby Wallet announced plans to integrate Polymarket into its wallet
Tempo, Stripe-backed blockchain, raised $500M in funding
VanEck filed for a Lido Staked ETH ETF
Kinetiq introduced KNTQ - the governance token of the Kinetiq protocol
Base announced plans to offer private stablecoin transactions
Sonic announced that S2 of its airdrop and Kaito campaign ends on Nov. 1
Aegis launched Aegis DEX - a perps DEX with YUSD as yield-bearing collateral
Thatâs all for this week!
Until next time,
The DeFi Investor
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have you seen the latest news in megaETH about their upcoming ICO on 27th?
ICO season đ¤đźđŤĄ