One of the most exciting opportunities of the year for crypto investors is Bitcoin.com’s public VERSE token sale scheduled for late June. VERSE is the new utility token of Bitcoin.com and it’s expected to play a key role in its ecosystem, with plans to weave it into all of its products.
For instance, users will be able to earn VERSE in the form of cashback when they buy, sell and swap tokens using its app or when they purchase goods using the Bitcoin.com debit card. In addition, VERSE will have utility in both the multichain Verse DEX and the Bitcoin.com cryptocurrency exchange. Finally, advertisers will be able to use VERSE to buy cheaper ads in Bitcoin.com News.
Given the massive size of Bitcoin.com’s user base, the upcoming sale of VERSE is expected to attract a lot of interest from the wider crypto community. Indeed, Bitcoin.com has already raised $33.6 million in a private sale of VERSE tokens in May. With that in mind, Bitcoin.com has opted for a modified token sale to ensure the distribution of VERSE is as fair as possible.
In a blog post on Medium, Bitcoin.com said it has opted for a token sale because it provides some major advantages over alternative distribution models. The most obvious advantage of a sale, of course, is that the project is able to raise some serious capital to fund its development. However, Bitcoin.com said there are other key benefits to a token sale that make it a much fairer way to distribute VERSE. For instance, a no distribution model like Bitcoin’s only benefits a very narrow subset of people who are actually going to do work (i.e. mining) for the project. As a result, those select miners would gain an unfair advantage by earning a greater percentage of the rewards. Bitcoin.com also contends that airdrops are unfair, as that model relies on prior use of one or more projects to become eligible.
Bitcoin.com stressed that it wanted VERSE’s token distribution to be accessible to everyone who’s interested in the project, rather than limit it to those who’re in a position to contribute or people who have interacted with specific existing projects in the past.
It did acknowledge that the token sale model is not entirely perfect though, with cons that include creating an arbitrary barrier to entry, and the danger of tokens selling at a steep discount, which can encourage early buyers to dump their assets quickly. Another common criticism of token sales is that developers and others who’re close to the project grant themselves a disproportionately large allocation of tokens. Also, sometimes tokens are sold at a predetermined price that creates an unrealistic market cap.
The VERSE token sale therefore has some modifications. One of the most notable is that the project has set a very realistic target market cap (based on the token sale price), with a fully diluted value of $504 million. Note that this is not based on circulating supply, as the full allocation of VERSE tokens won’t reach the market until seven years after the project’s launch.
“We are proud to be leading with FDV, so as not to confuse or mislead the community, which is something that has been unfortunately prevalent in the industry,” Bitcoin.com said.
The emission schedule of VERSE means that no tokens will initially be available when the project goes live. Rather, the tokens will only become claimable on a block-by-block basis, meaning that buyers are effectively reserving tokens that will unlock over time.
To avoid tokens being sold at a steep discount in earlier rounds, Bitcoin.com has dynamically priced the public sale. As a result, the more money that’s contributed in aggregate will result in a higher price per token.
“There are no steep discounts between token sale rounds, so early buyers have no immediate incentive to ‘dump’ the tokens,” Bitcoin.com said.
Bitcoin.com has also restricted its team allocation to just 15% of the total supply, far lower than most comparable projects, and has ensured that anyone can whitelist for the VERSE sale without extra requirements, where legally applicable.
“We make no limitations nor give preferential access,” the company explained. “It doesn’t matter how popular you are on social media, how early you are to whitelist, or whether you have a history of using our products or not.” Bitcoin.com is accepting registrations for the VERSE token sale now at getverse.com
