Equibit targets $7m coin offering

Equibit Development Corporation, which is building a blockchain-based securities platform, said it plans to raise as much as $7m in an initial coin offering, which is set to begin on 1 February.

EDC is offering to sell one million equibits or EQBs out of a total of 22 million equibits potentially available. The sale, which will run for 59 days to March 31, will be conducted on a special sale page at EDC's website. Purchased equibits will be delivered to user accounts at EDC's web wallet service, which is planned to launch concurrently with the release of the Equibit software later this year. EDC will retain any unsold equibits, as according to the sale's terms and conditions.

"To say that we're excited about the sale would be an understatement,'' said Chris Horlacher, EDC's chief executive officer. "We're writing financial history."

Proceeds will be used to expand EDC's team of developers, accelerate product development, support and expand the network of equibit supporters, install enterprise infrastructure such as supernodes and market Equibit blockchain applications, said a statement.

The offering will be partitioned into batches of 100,000 equibits, with the price schedule starting at $2 per coin. Keeping to a predetermined schedule, the price for equibits will increase with each batch. All equibits sold in the coin offering will be created in the EDC platform's genesis block, constituting the inception of the system's operation.

Nathan Wosnack, chief operations officer, EDC, said things have been going very well on the investors front, and the team has held meetings with a number of big financial industry players, including Wall Street banks.

He said: "Our upcoming crowd fund is likely to be one of the largest ever in Canada and so far the interest has been amazing, with investors as far away as China and Australia expressing interest.

"On January 31st EDC will be travelling to Washington D.C. to host an event celebrating the public launch of the ICO. There are a large number of key influencers that are assisting us with that project and will be in attendance."

For information on participation in the sale, please see the EDC website. EDC's complete white paper is available here and at Cornell University's arXiv e-print archive.