Sign of ‘Retail Frenzy’ as DeFi Token Sale Gets Oversubscribed 46 Times
A new initial exchange offering (IEO) on crypto exchange Gate.io has recently raised eyebrows in the crypto community with a sale that got reportedly oversubscribed a whopping 45 times.
The token in question is the Meter Governance Token (MTRG) from a project known as Meter, which describes itself as “a DeFi [decentralized finance] infrastructure with the first crypto native low volatility coin” and a “permissionless alternative to Libra.”
“Meter uses an innovative economic and consensus design that separates currency creation (Proof of Work) with record keeping (Proof of Stake). Its value is supported by the price of 10 kWh of electricity, which is more stable in purchasing power than any fiat currency in the world,” the startup said on its website. Meter launched its mainnet on July 4th.
According to an announcement from the startup, the initial exchange offering took place on Gate.io yesterday.
Judging from information published on Gate.io’s website, the IEO had a goal of raising USD 600,000 in tether (USDT), with each token set to a price of 0.5 USDT. But according to a tweet from the team yesterday, the token sale has not only reached its goal, but exceeded it 45.7 times, with investors contributing a total of USD 27.4 million to the project.
As a result, each participant will get only about 2.19% of the tokens they thought they signed up for, the tweet said. MTRG is set to start trading on Gate.io tomorrow, July 17.
As one of the early Chinese crypto exchanges, Gate.io, which hosted the token sale, still has a large user base in China, which may have contributed to the strong investor interest. Meter, however, is currently based in Silicon Valley, California, although its founder Xiaohan Zhu has a background from the Chinese venture capital and tech industries.
The massive interest in the permissionless stablecoin alternative was also picked up by Kelvin Koh, Co-founder and Partner at crypto hedge fund Spartan Capital, who called it “another sign of the retail frenzy” that indicates “rising risk appetite, greed.”
Koh recently predicted that total value locked (TVL) in DeFi platforms will exceed USD 5bn by the end of the year. Today it stands at USD 2.5bn, or around USD 200m more than three days ago.
Meanwhile, a recent report by ConsenSys said that while so-called “yield farming” has taken the DeFi scene “by storm” of late – but has failed to bring large amounts of new people to the DeFi table, and has done little to help the “DeFi community grow beyond its current borders.”
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Learn more: DeFi Faces Multiple Challenges On Its Way To Dominate Crypto
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This article was corrected on July 23. The previous version stated incorrectly that Xiaohan Zhu is the managing director of Chinese investment firm JD Capital.
