ICO Project That Ditched Blockchain Finalizes its Token Buy Back

Sead Fadilpašić
Last updated: | 2 min read

The small blockchain project known for its unusual announcement that it would buy back all of its native tokens and then shut down, is now in the final stages of the process, according to the founder.

Source: iStock/Viktor_Gladkov

Colu DLT, the Gibraltar-based company of the Colu Group, has received all of the Colu Network Local (CLN) tokens that the holders sent, and the company is in the process of paying them for it in ethereum (ETH) after the holders passed KYC (know your customer)/AML (anti-money laundering) checks done via the Swiss-based company Altconomy.

The offer was opened for a period of 90 days, until December 25, the website states. “Last week was the last week and we closed the process and closed the project,” Amos Meiri, co-founder and CEO of Colu, told Cryptonews.com. “We received some very good feedback from people from all around the world and I believe different projects will follow the same principles,” Meiri said, declining to elaborate any further on the process and its results.

As a reminder, the project said back in August that it will purchase all CLNs from the holders and destroy the tokens, while also concluding the entire blockchain project. At the time, the coin was ranked 1148th by its market capitalization (almost USD 2 million) and had jumped on the news. The company was looking to buy back approximately 54 million tokens at the same ratio of their token sale – CLN 8,600 to ETH 1. Which means they need to return c. ETH 6,279 (USD 900,000) in total.

Hillik Nissani, strategic adviser at Colu and administrator of the 2000-strong Colu Local Network Telegram group, which is about to close as well, also posted on December 26 that Colu DLT concluded its Colu blockchain project and that they have ended the three-month-long process of purchasing CLNs from holders. “If you passed the checks and have sent your CLNs by the 25th, you will be getting your ETH by the beginning of next week in our last distribution cycle,” says the post.

However, a number of countries have been excluded from the buyback, and Nissani has stated that “regulatory frameworks changed considerably since the ICO to the point where” they had to exclude them. In the case when a person couldn’t sell their coins to Colu due to the restrictions or to somebody else who could’ve sold them to Colu, “it would, unfortunately, become useless.”

By October 17, Nissani has posted that 6.9 million CLNs (worth c. USD 115,000) were sent up until that point. Etherscan shows that this address with a token tracker ‘Colu Network (CLN)’ has received 670 transfers since the first taker of their offer 103 days ago. Additional 30 have been sent to the address but have failed for various reasons. Out of the 670, 47 are from a crypto exchange HitBTC address.

Those who have received their ETH so far, have got it from this address, which has 404 transactions recorded (9 of which were incoming, mostly with a larger amount of ETH), the first of which was recorded 88 days ago. This would theoretically mean that, at the time of writing, 395 people got their pay in ETH so far.