Blockchain company Block.one has completed an initial coin offering (ICO) for its EOS token.

The company’s ICO process was unique in that it ran over the course of one year. The initial close-date was set for early July but Block.one wrapped up the sale over the weekend.

A total of one billion tokens were issued, of which 900 million were made available to the public with a set amount released for sale each day.

The total amount raised exceeds $US4 billion, which makes Block.one’s capital raise the largest ICO ever seen to-date.

In May, Commonwealth Bank’s former chief financial officer, Rob Jesudason, unexpectedly announced his departure from the bank to join Block.one in Hong Kong as the company’s chief operating officer.

Block.one’s EOS tokens were offered in return for ether, the world’s second-biggest cryptocurrency.

According to reports, investors used 7.12 million ether to buy EOS tokens — which means the value of EOS tokens could shift if based on underlying fluctuations in ether.

Unlike buying shares in the company via an initial public offering (IPO), ICO tokens don’t have any associated functions, such as voting rights, attached to them.

The Financial Times reported that Block.one excluded US citizens from participating in the ICO, in order to avoid scrutiny from US regulators such as the Securities & Exchange Commission.

The company has been light on details when it comes to outlining how it will deploy the funds, aside from flagging that some of the money will be used for administrative and operating expenses.

Coinciding with the closure of its ICO over the weekend, Block.one announced the release of version 1.0 of its EOS.IO blockchain operating software.

The EOS.IO software has some similarities to networks such as Ethereum and NEO, in that it aims to provide an open-source platform on which developers can execute smart contracts.

Block.one’s value proposition is that it can run cheaper and faster than those networks, with capacity to process millions of transactions per second.

The value of EOS tokens rose from around $US12 to $US15 over the weekend once the completion of the ICO was announced.

A short time ago, EOS tokens were trading around 8% lower at $US13.42, in line with falls across other major cryptocurrencies.

According to the website coinmarketcap.com, the EOS token remains the world’s fifth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation.

 

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