IEO’s Nightmare: Ocean Protocol Lost 80% Following Its IEO On Bittrex

With the ICO era gone and Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs) in the spotlight, many believe that the new fundraising model will help curb fraud while helping promising blockchain-related projects raise funds through token sales on cryptocurrency exchanges and at the same time, rewarding investors with significant profits.

So far, several big exchanges, including Binance, OKex, and Houbi, have successfully organized IEOs for different blockchain projects, and the results were impressive: Both for the projects and the investors.

While IEOs offer many benefits over ICOs, mainly because trusted exchanges organize them, this model is not flawless, just as we have seen in the case of Ocean Protocol, a blockchain data sharing platform.

On April 30, 2019, leading crypto exchange, Bittrex, initiated an IEO token sale for Ocean Protocol. The project, which offered 56.4 million OCEAN tokens for sale for $0.12 per token, was able to raise $6 million at the end of the IEO.

Bittrex’s IEOs ROI

100% Raised, 80% Dumped

Upon the completion of the token sale which lasted for three days, the cryptocurrency was listed on Bittrex for trading on May 3rd.  Everything looked good until the price discovery.

The token has lost about 80% of its IEO price since it started trading on Bittrex exchange. This quick dump will no doubt haunt long term investors as they may likely begin to regret buying the token.

However, the price of project-based tokens (IEO in this case) falling soon after they are listed is not new in the industry – it happened with most token sales in the past. Although there are many reasons responsible for it, the primary factor is that too many investors go for “short” even when it is a long term project, and this tends to keep the price down for some time.

Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) price for the trading day is $0.03 with a daily volume of  $1,510,399 across all exchanges.