[2017-12-06] Token Summit Surprise: OpenBazaar to Launch Layer-Two Coin

[bbc.reporter]

If anyone of you have been following Brian Hoffman and Open Bazaar, you would have never thought that he would start issuing a token. An Ethereum token of all things.

Is this going to be an ICO, an airdrop or something else?

In any case, I do not find it good or bad, but it is very unexpected coming from one such as Brian.



"Over the last six months, things have changed a lot, I don't think it makes any sense for us to be bitcoin only."

That's according to Brian Hoffman, CEO of OB1, the development company behind the decentralized e-commerce protocol OpenBazaar, who announced today the project will seek to incorporate a token into its existing product offering sometime in 2018.

Announced at Token Summit II in San Francisco, the news was revealed onstage by Hoffman, who indicated that it represents a response to ongoing congestion on the bitcoin network that he said has made it less useful for payments.

Still in its early stages, the white paper for the OpenBazaar Token (OBT) will be released in Q12018, with the goal of soliciting feedback from the community before any sale, Hoffman said.

Read in full https://www.coindesk.com/token-summit-surprise-openbazaar-launch-layer-two-coin/

[CryptoBry]

Well, there is always a biog room for new players in the altcoin market. Since many issuers of ICOs are hiding under the sleeves of being anonymous, we might as well welcome OpenBazaar into the market with an embrace. Such a project under a good management team and goodwill can be making the coming coin worth supporting of. We are now swimming in the sea of new ICO projects but only a few of these would be surviving in the next five years and this is just a natural business cycle and not really exclusive to the cryptocurrency business. We are wishing that OpenBazaar can be a good project too. Good luck!

[bbc.reporter]

@CryptoBry. An ICO as a framework for obtaining funds was scowled and was disapproved of by bitcoin maximalists, and I reckon Brian Hoffman was one of them until that announcement.

Maybe the pull of gaining 10s of millions of dollars to fund the development Open Bazaar is too much to leave on the table. Who can blame him?