Bitcoin Forum

Which coin was the very first one to use the term Initial Coin Offering [ICO]?

I know the [ANN] term has been around for a very long time. I believe Dogecoin started with [announce]. I've been following this board for several years, mainly just lurking about, but I'm truly curious as to who gets credit for inventing the term. Its rather genius, even if 90-99% of all ICOs fail in the long run (2 or more years).

if my memory serve me right,
it should be ETH or MAID a while ago,
but for the first time they made an announcement just like other but when with the process they're opening IPO and ICO.
so far until now they're the longest ICO and IPO runner,
but i do not know it's right or not because a years ago they did it.
other than that i have no idea,because most of them did not run for a while only for a few months

Oh buddy. It goes back years before that. Wikipedia says "Mastercoin" was the first one to use the term ICO, in July 2013, but I think there's some even before then.

Edit: I can't actually find the proof and MasterCoin (which later became "Omni"), was a "colored coin" built atop the bitcoin blockchain, kind of like Counterparty (XCP). I guess they can still technically have ICOs even if they are just using bitcoin to function, similar to how Ethereum tokens all run on the ETH blockchain.

First ICO should be mastercoin, aka MSC, current rebranded as Omni on poloniex. NXT is also veyr early ICO coin, they raised 21 btc and current return is 3000x. Amazing early ICOs change the world.

NXT, QORA, NEM were like ICOs. I think NXT was first. It was heavily criticised and then copied by everyone. Lol

Very good questions and interested to find out the answer! ICOs have come a long way since then and are still exceeding everyones expectations. A very interesting upcoming ICO I have come across is Propthereum.io. They are an asset backed cryptocurrency and are expecting a 1566% coin appreciation in a short period of time. Proceeds raised from their ICO will be used to purchase A-grade property worldwide. This will generate a rental income and underlying value for the PTC token holder. Check them out because I am very interested in investing and want to know what you guys think.

Someone's gotta do some digging through the ANN section to truly find out...

According to some sources the first token sale was held by Mastercoin in 2013 and Ethereum in 2014.

One of the projects implemented ICO earliest that Mastercoin (now the Omni). ICO took place in mid-2013 and Mastercoin (MSC) reached over 5000 Bitcoins at a price of 100 MSC for each BTC during the ICO period. This is information that I personally find to be, if the information is wrong please let me know more  :)

Wow facinating stuff! I really did not know that Ethereum had a crowdsale. Thankyou guys.

I remember the first ICO Mastercoin (MSC) in 2013 then it seems that NXT, ETH, ...
I'm not sure if I remember correctly, however early ICOs were rather difficult, not same ICOs nowadays.

I'm fairly certain that it's Mastercoin(renamed to Omni now) that is the first ICO. Now it's renamed Omni and is hosting Tether and Maidsafecoin on its platform. Obviously, they did not raise a whole lot of money compared to what is being raised now.

No, it's not ETH or MAID. They came afterwards.

NXT was one of the earlier ones as well from memory.

This is all great stuff you guys, but who _actually_ developed the term "Initial Coin Offering"?

I can't seem to find it in the original MasterCoin thread, despite claims by the dev that he was the one who invented it:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/09/21/heres-the-man-who-created-icos-and-this-is-the-new-token-hes-backing/#2dc688911839

I am still not convinced that this guy is actually the person who coined the term ICO, but about uptoken where he is involved currently looks promising.

On the other hand recently monaco have f##### up their token holders by removing value of token from their card because of regulatory requirements to get visa approval. This is quite different but bitcoin ATMs might also get regulatory and legal difficulties in future, I will buy some at current price only to get profit out of high speculation just like Monaco before.

Yes, Mastercoin was the first ICO project. It was launched in 2013 and managed to gather over 5 million dollars. Now it seems that each month dozens of new ICO appear. It seems projects invest into everything — IT, celebrities, computers and even religion!

Yes people keep saying this but nobody's actually provided any proof that he developed the term Initial Coin Offering. I want to know who invented the term.