Korean ICO Mission Shuts Down, Says ‘Unfavourable Perceptions’ of Crypto Made Enterprise Unimaginable

An $Eight million ICO undertaking is shutting down, citing regulatory uncertainty and difficulties in onboarding new customers.

Content material-sharing platform Contents Protocol introduced Wednesday that following quite a few makes an attempt to show its enterprise into a hit, the agency is closing down and refunding buyers as a lot as $7.5 million-worth of the ether (ETH) raised in its preliminary coin providing (ICO).

“We inform you that as a consequence of continued regulatory uncertainties in cryptocurrency and lack of enterprise prospect, we’ve got determined to finish our undertaking,” reads an announcement that has now wholly changed Contents Protocol’s web site.

Contents Protocol was a relative latecomer to the ICO increase, solely finishing its crowd sale in December 2018. It was created as a subsidiary of WATCHA Play, a preferred Korean streaming service, and was designed to incentivize content material sharing by successfully rewarding customers who rated and reviewed movies and TV featured on the platform with its native CPT token.

“The principle factor that the blockchain permits us to do is … compensate a brand new participant [users] who actually present free advertising and marketing for the content material,” stated John Kim, Contents Protocol’s world enterprise developer, in an interview with Ran NeuNer for CNBC, again in Might 2018.

The undertaking aimed to change into worthwhile by processing and analyzing sharing information, which might subsequently be offered again to content material suppliers to tell them on which films and TV sequence needs to be featured on their platforms.

However in Wednesday’s announcement, Contents Protocol complained that few shoppers needed to make use of the platform due to the “damaging notion towards cryptocurrency, value volatility and sophisticated consumer expertise.”

The corporate stated anti-crypto attitudes have been unlikely to enhance within the brief time period, and would impression how digital belongings could be regulated sooner or later. With no robust consumer base, it additionally made it troublesome to encourage different content material suppliers to offer information for the platform, limiting any doable insights that might be subsequently offered again to platforms.

Contents Protocol raised 29,333 ETH ($8.1 million) in its non-public and public ICOs in 2018. All remaining belongings, value roughly $7.5 million, have now been transformed again into ether and might be distributed to buyers who’ve requested refunds.

CPT token holders may even be capable to change them at a price of 1 token for $0.002 value of ether. All CPT collected might be destroyed when the corporate enters the liquidation course of, the corporate stated.

In line with Contents Protocol’s asset data, round 3,800 ETH was exchanged into $1.45 million to fund enterprise operations. Though a few of the funds have been transformed into bitcoin, the overwhelming majority of belongings remained in ether all through the corporate’s lifetime.

An organization spokesperson didn’t reply to requests for remark by press time.