Crypto exchange BTSE’s initial exchange offering (IEO) has raised approximately $2 million after its token sale went live to the public yesterday, selling out 1 million BTSEs for $2 each. It took only four hours to hit this figure with tiered discounts and vesting options, the company said.
With this initial sale price, users were allowed to purchase a minimum of one and a maximum of 25,000 tokens per each verified account. BTSE has listed its native token and launched a BTSE/USD spot trading market on its exchange, which currently supports ten fiat currencies and seven cryptocurrencies.
The #BTSE token is now trading live on https://t.co/i2dlCKtoPL $BTSE is
➡️ fuel within the BTSE ecosystem
➡️ the first exchange token on the #LiquidNetwork
➡️ full of benefits for BTSE users!Thank you to everyone that has been supporting BTSE – we’re only getting started pic.twitter.com/yUGgSxyK2U
— BTSE (@BTSEcom) March 5, 2020
The niche market indicates it will use the funds raised to develop its platform and liquidity depth, expand into lending, over-the-counter (OTC), and mining markets.
Token holders will benefit from lower trading fees, higher rebates and bonuses for selected services, access to staking programs, and payment for additional services within the BTSE ecosystem, such as listing fees.
Although it is relatively limited in its offerings, the trading volume on BTSE’s futures markets has increased to $80 million in daily volume.
BTSE volumes above $80 million per day
BTSE announced in December it plans to raise $50 million through the sale of its token. It touted the event as the first-ever native exchange token sale based on Blockstream’s Liquid Sidechain Network, a Bitcoin (BTC) sidechain.
The multi-currency and spot/futures exchange went for the public sale after it completed a private sale round with participation from FBG Capital, Lemniscap, CMS Holdings, Taureon Capital, GBCI Ventures, and BCB Blockchain.
According to the white paper, the exchange plans to issue a total supply of 200 million tokens in due course, but any unsold tokens from the latest allocation will be burned.
BTSE is the first and the largest offering so far to be made on the bitcoin sidechain-based settlement network built by Blockstream, which offers faster settlements and is originally designed to speed up execution of huge transactions at lightning speed, hence the nickname ‘Lightning Network.’ The sidechain acts as a second data layer over the Bitcoin blockchain for faster settlements, improved transaction confidentiality, and tokenization for various assets.
At launch, a number of industry firms, including Tether’s sister firm Bitfinex, had already signed up to transact with the network using its bitcoin-pegged token L-BTC.