No one knows what Civil’s failed token sale means
Yesterday, the world’s most ambitious media blockchain company had a very public embarrassment. It was the last day of a public token sale for the Civil Foundation, a media project using blockchain to launch a new generation of ad-free media startups. But when it came time to sell the token at the center of it all, the project came up short. Civil had initially planned to raise as much as $24 million, and pledged to return the money if it raised less than $8 million. In the final accounting, less than $1.5 million was spent on tokens, more than $1 million of it coming from Civil’s direct investors at ConsenSys.
The company put the blame on a needlessly complex process for buying tokens, and pledged to try again, returning donations in...