Text | Tea Liang, Lu Xiaoming
Editor | Lu Xiaoming
The madness seen in bull markets such as grabbing shares, ten times coins, and hundred times coins has recently reappeared in the IEO mode of Binance Launchpad.
It took less than 15 minutes for two items, BTT and FET, to be sold out. According to media reports, less than 10% of the lottery winners are awarded, which can be described as hard to find. After grabbing the share, the skyrocketed immediately after listing on Binance: "BTT's listing is up to 10 times, and FET's listing is 5 times."
In order to grab such profits, investors spend nights in Internet cafes and hire students to help them grab shares; Binance’s KYC (Investor Qualification Review) comes first, and an industry that specifically helps leeks pass KYC “came into being” as the times require.
Just like the original Fcoin, which can be denied but cannot be ignored, it has attracted a wave of imitation shows. "Even Huobi and OK have begun to deploy. The next plan for our small exchanges is to create a ten-fold coin and a hundred-fold coin to quickly ignite the enthusiasm of investors." Zhang Shaosheng, CEO of a small domestic digital asset exchange, is one.
secondary title
The Emperor's New Clothes: "ICO" Becomes "IEO"
Binance’s Launchpad is not new, it was born as early as the end of 2017.
In December 2017, after the launch of Binance Launchpad, the creator's decentralized universal gift protocol Gifto and the multi-asset wallet Bread Wallet were the first early adopters, and they also doubled. It’s just that the currency circle was caught in the madness of the bull market at that time, 100 times coins were quite common, and Launchpad was also submerged in the carnival.
Launchpad, which has been quiet for a year and has not launched any new projects, is now making a comeback, receiving unprecedented attention.
The old leek "Wang Yan" told Odaily that he has prepared 40 or 50 accounts and plans to grab the quota of Celer Network, the third project of Binance Launchpad, which is about to be launched at the Internet cafe on March 19th. Since many Internet cafes are near the university town, some people even hired some college students to help them grab the quota, and said triumphantly that "these cheap labor cannot be wasted."
Zhang Shaosheng told the Odaily reporter. In order to experience the product, I also participated in the snap-up of FET. I bought 5 accounts, but I didn’t get any of them.
This model of Binance also gave birth to a gray business of "overseas KYC certification buying and selling". In view of domestic regulatory pressure, each project launched by Binance Launchpad is only open to users outside of mainland China. Therefore, some people have started the KYC reselling business. According to a "practice", before BTT When it first came out, a set of KYC was 150 yuan, but now it has been fired to 800 yuan a set.
Fame starts with coining words. People in the currency circle who often call themselves "innovative" also gave Binance Launchpad a new name: "IEO (Initial Exchange Offering)", that is, the pre-sale of some tokens through the trading platform, and the participants go to the exchange Register and open an account to participate.
“Actually, is this model new? It’s not new at all. Apart from anything else, Binance’s own Launchpad started in 2017. It includes the famous FCoin, Laomao’s Bigone, and Yunbi back then. , CoinTiger and other exchanges have all played this model, so this is not a new model and concept at all.” Zhang Shaosheng recalled.
"This method is actually quite easy. The public offering is exclusively launched on the exchange, and then it is exclusively traded online. The circulation in the market is only a small part of the total amount (generally no more than 10%), and it is only listed on one exchange, so To be able to achieve 'high degree of market control' requires a professional market value management team to do it. With this model, it is very easy to increase the currency price, as long as you are willing to spend money and build an early consensus." Zhang Shaosheng told Odaily.
"It can be said that this is a model with low risk and high returns, especially for an exchange that is already well-known and has many users, this model can even be played directly." He also said .
Li Siwen, a senior analyst in the industry, believes that Launchpad is still a traditional ICO (Initial Coin Offering) model and has not innovated a business model. "I think the high probability is still the same as the logic of ICO, it's just that Binance artificially created such a popularity."
The process and gameplay of IEO and ICO are similar, but the public offering site is changed to the exchange, and investors can only rush to buy and sell the quota of the project through the channel of buying the exchange platform currency, which indirectly drives the rise of the platform currency.
Even the questioning of IEO is similar to the previous ICO. "As an early project, there is no profit in itself. If the project party spends most of the money for soliciting, how can we do things in a down-to-earth manner? This model will probably be over after one month of play at most. .” Frank Li, the founder of a mainstream digital currency exchange in China, commented on IEO.
Everyone understands the truth, but it still cannot resist these short-term temptations.
secondary title
The leek that grabs the share at night is a project that hopes to be "favored"
image description
image description
The price trend of FET since it was listed on Binance
Both projects showed a path of going high at the beginning and then falling. Industry insiders believe that this shows that most users are quick to sell after getting the share, rather than long-term optimistic about the project.
Leek, whose online name is "Wangyan", has this kind of thinking. He knows that this model will not last long, and he is not optimistic about the project at all. Many people even don't know what these projects are doing; If you grab it, you can earn 5 times, and if you grab it, you earn it."
When a reporter from Odaily mentioned that "the government banned ICO", Wang Yan said impatiently: "Don't worry about it, just use Internet cafes (to grab shares)."
"Actually, those who can understand Binance's model are generally old leeks, because new leeks don't pay much attention to this thing, and many new leeks leave the market after being harvested. Instead, those old leeks have the ability to grab the quota. They will sell it immediately after it goes online, and they will make a profit.” An exchange practitioner said, “They only want to make money, and they don’t pay attention to the subsequent trend of the currency price and the progress of the later stage of the project. "
Indeed, in the eyes of users, Binance’s IEO model naturally has three advantages:
1. IEO is a bit like an exchange acting as a proxy investor/underwriter, and Binance has enough bargaining power to obtain very low prices for users. Odaily learned that the IEO price of a certain project is even lower than the price of private equity investors, and the share is very small, so if you draw it, you will win the prize.
2. The exchange helps the project to do ICO, which quite opens up the primary and secondary markets. Generally, the project side that joined Launchpad has a high probability of being listed on Binance in the later stage, at least there is no need to consider the issue of subsequent exit. If the price is low, it may be more cost-effective than private equity investors who need to lock up positions.
3. It takes a few weeks to launch a currency, which means that it has received strong endorsement from the exchange, and it is expected that there will be an increase in the early stage of currency listing.
The project party is eager to be "favored" by Binance.
They all want to raise a sum of money quickly with the help of the brand of the top exchange and the skyrocketing model of tokens after listing.
secondary title
The BNB platform currency skyrocketed, leading exchanges struggled to enter the game
IEO may not be able to drive the price and liquidity of small coins, but it can drive the skyrocketing price of platform coins.
"The focus of Binance's money-making is definitely not on the project. For example, Binance released 10 million RMB funds for retail investors to earn. At that time, there were 300 people in a Binance quota group, and only one person in the whole group snatched it. The probability is very low, but there are a lot of people holding BNB, which drives up the price of BNB, which brings returns to Binance that far exceed the previous investment of 10 million RMB.” Zhang Shaosheng analyzed.
image description
BNB price trend since February 2019
Since Binance Launchpad officially launched the project, the price of BNB has also soared from $5.99 to the current $15.14, with a cumulative increase of more than 150%. The market value has also increased by several billion RMB, surpassing USDT, and ranking seventh in market value.
The transaction volume brought by the continuous first popularity has naturally been transformed into Binance’s increasing fee income.
"Binance Launchapd launches a new project every month, like a relay race: when one project falls, another project will take over. The purpose of Binance's doing this is to prevent BNB from falling sharply and trade time for space. Waiting for the arrival of the bull market. Maybe we will change to a new plan in the later period, and I heard from Binance’s internal staff that Binance intends to launch a node and require investors who participate in the rush to hold more BNB. Let more big investors hold BNB , so as to stabilize the price of BNB." Zhang Shaosheng said to Odaily.
The platform currency of the top exchange is also cold, and it is urgently needed to be blessed by the scene.
"Do it, it's too risky; don't do it, what if others do it and push yourself away?"
An insider revealed the entanglement of the top exchanges. He also said:
"Now domestic exchanges such as Huobi and OK are in an embarrassing predicament. Everyone doesn't do it. Watching Binance do it, Binance alone has made money and popularity. It was originally the three major exchanges, but now it is basically a currency exchange. An is already close to the dominance of one company. If it continues to develop like this for another year, there may be no other exchanges before the next round of bull market. Moreover, the remaining users and funds in the bear market are limited. If one family starts the blood-sucking mode, it will accelerate other exchanges. The death of the exchange.
But if you want to do it, you may become the first bird to be shot and the target of public criticism. After all, this year, global financial regulation is getting stricter.
How to do it? The bosses of the major domestic exchanges, especially those who are in the country, are also struggling at the moment.
Just like that time on 9.4, everyone closed the door, can you close the door? When you close the door, the new small exchange that does not close the door will take away all your market dividends at a rocket-like speed. "
Huobi took the lead in breaking this dilemma, followed by Bittrex and OKEx.
On March 7, Weng Xiaoqi, CEO of Huobi Global, said that “Huobi Prime, which is about to be launched by Huobi, is the preferred listing channel for Huobi, neither crowdfunding nor IEO. Prime will provide an innovative, fast and compliant comprehensive currency listing service.”
However, Zhao Hongjian, an employee of Huobi who is close to this project, revealed to Odaily that the gameplay of Huobi Prime is actually the same as that of Binance’s Launchpad, and Li Lin personally operates it. It is expected to be launched around the 20th of this month. Considering that there are many speculators on Binance Launchpad, one person operates 40 or 50 accounts at the same time to grab the quota, and sell tokens immediately after the project goes online.
Huobi Prime has made some "innovations" on this basis, requiring investors to hold a certain amount of HT in their Huobi account for 30 consecutive days before grabbing the quota for project sales, thus crowding out some speculators , and the value of HT can also be maintained at a relatively stable level.
On March 11, Bittrex International, a subsidiary of Bittrex, announced the launch of an IEO platform. The South Korean startup RAID provided 17 billion XRD for its IEO. “We’re excited about this IEO and look forward to helping many more innovative teams like this connect with users and build their platforms in the future,” said Bittrex CEO Bill Shihara.
At 15:58 on March 12, OKEx CEO JayHao said on Weibo: "For really high-quality projects and early entrepreneurs, IEO is not only a good way to raise funds, but also saves a lot of cost and effort to go online on the trading platform. , focusing on project R&D and community operations. After carefully evaluating the compliance of this model in various countries, we have a more compliant and complete plan. At present, the OKEX utility token sales platform 'OK Jumpstart' has everything from technology to products. It's ready and ready to go live."
This marks the beginning of the three major exchanges collectively marching into IEO.
After the OKEx news was announced, the three major platform currencies generally rose. According to AICoin data, at 16:00 on March 12, OKB rose from $0.9 to $1.02, an increase of 6.66% in 24 hours; HT rose from $1.7 to $1.82, The 24h increase was 3.41%, and BNB rose from 14 to 15.27 US dollars, and the 24h increase was 2.52%.
Small exchanges also hope that they can catch a wave of hot spots.
Zhang Shaosheng is also planning to follow Binance Launchpad. After all, the currency market has been bearish for almost a year. Many small exchanges have closed down, and the daily activity and trading volume of top exchanges have fallen off a cliff. However, Binance Launchpad can bring a wave of enthusiasm for the secondary market. Are businessmen jealous?
Zhang Shaosheng knew that his exchange did not have the reputation of the top three exchanges like BOH (Binance, OK, Huobi), and worried that he would not be able to attract project parties and investors, so they thought of a way: "First build A hot coin (i.e. ten times currency and hundred times currency), anyway, leeks in the currency circle only know to look at the K line.” Zhang Shaosheng is sure that leeks cannot resist the temptation of ten times currency and hundred times currency.
Several small exchanges told Odaily to see how these top exchanges play and prepare to improve on the basis of their gameplay. They will always study this model of exchange project sales and remain vigilant to keep up with it at any time.
secondary title
text
The profitability of the project is weak at the initial stage of establishment. "If the project party spends most of the money to pull the market, how can we do things in a down-to-earth manner? This model will probably be over after a month of play at most." Frank Li does not approve of the IEO model, "similar to Equity crowdfunding, if this model is reliable, various crowdfunding platforms 4 years ago will not be shut down, and IEO itself is an adventure, and having money in your pocket is the biggest risk control. I advise all media friends Be careful blowing."
"Start-up projects will definitely break in the later stage, and Ethereum has also broken. The key is to see whether the project can rise after the break." Frank Li analyzed that Binance Launchpad is actually a short-term "running fast" model, which needs to be given time in the later stage. They prove themselves. "Many leeks understand this truth. Since the project will definitely break in the later stage, there is no need to participate in the private placement of the project." People who look at the long-term might as well wait for the break before buying in large quantities.
According to this logic, IEO is a game for speculators.
George Wang, the owner of a digital asset exchange who did not want to be named, commented that this model is "Binance spends money to buy users, and the project party, investors and media play with it", and it cannot last."FET has already broken, and Celer Network may not be able to continue to play. It is a money-losing business. Personal speculation is short-term, and investors will take back some scum and leave the market."
Fcoin's popularization of "transaction is mining" has also accelerated the alienation and destruction of this model.
If there is no real value support, IEO is a low-profile version of transaction mining, which is short-lived: it depends on how long speculators are willing to play with it.
"Whether ICO or IEO, they are essentially a financial tool, the amount of value created by itself is limited, and the source must be valuable and sustainable assets." Analyst Li Siwen believes, "Unless there is a financial tool through Binance Launchpad The core lies in the fact that the project that comes out can grow into a towering tree in the later stage.”
"Just like the reason why Nasdaq was able to develop into an exchange with the same size as the New York Stock Exchange in the end, it was because of the emergence of excellent Internet companies. There may be bubbles in the early stage, but later changed people's lives, so Nasdaq Only a capital market like this can exist,” Li Siwen added.
Zhao Changpeng, the founder of Binance, also publicly stated: "The core of the IEO model is to find good projects and projects that actually work. Binance welcomes other exchanges to copy us. If they can help more good projects grow, it will definitely be beneficial to the industry. It’s a good thing. The industry becomes bigger, which is good for everyone, but we just don’t want to see bad projects, or even air projects to collect money, and other behaviors that hurt users, which will make the industry bad.”
What Changpeng Zhao does not want to see is happening.
Zhang Shaosheng revealed that the KNT (Kasoutuuka News) project, which was pre-sold on an exchange two days ago, also approached them for public offering, but he refused.
"I think they are empty-handed white wolves, who set up our leeks. If you give me a few BTC, maybe I can help you, but he wants us to help them do public offerings for free. This is not what empty-handed white wolves are." ?When something goes wrong, our exchange will have to take the blame. In addition, their fundraising volume is still very large, and the money they earn in the end will be distributed to the exchange and the media. How much money can KNT spend on the market in the end? I don’t know. At that time, we can only cut leeks. Who is to blame for the leeks? The exchange is to blame.”
Zhang Shaosheng believes that IEO is to use the exchange's brand to cut leeks. It may make a wave of money at the beginning, but it is not good for the image of the exchange and the long-term development in the future. "But the leeks of KNT must be harvested, because the exchange wants to make money, and the media wants to make money. Where does the money come from? Of course, the leeks are in their hands."Zhang Shaosheng analyzed.
Since it is destined to cut leeks, how long can IEO last? Zhao Xu, an analyst working for a leading exchange, predicted: "We are about to see a situation where all exchanges are engaged in IEO. In this case, this model will only accelerate its destruction, and the specific reasons need not be elaborated. Everyone They are not new leeks either.”
(Zhang Shaosheng, Zhao Hongjian, Li Siwen, Frank Li, Zhao Xu and George Wang are all pseudonyms in this article)
I am Odaily reporter Chaliang (WeChat: hao1250549397) and editor Lu Xiaoming (WeChat: lohiuming), exploring the real blockchain, breaking news and communicating, please add friends, please note your name, unit, position and reason.
