Stock tracking app Spiking raises $30m in private token sale

Photo credit: Wwelles14

Spiking is a Singapore-based app that allows users to track the stock picks of big-time investors. Now, it wants to do the same for cryptocurrency traders.

It has just raised the equivalent of US$30 million in a private token sale for Spiking.io, its blockchain platform that will help users to find top holders, traders, and miners of cryptocurrencies – known as “whales” in crypto-parlance – and keep tabs on their cryptocurrency trading activity.

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Charlie In, chairman of Sequoia Capital Hong Kong and Singapore-based financial consulting firm Raffles Capital, was the lead buyer in the private sale. He’s taking on an advisory role at Spiking, covering investment oversight and governance.

Spiking.io will use blockchain-based smart contracts to allow users to connect with “whales,” mirror their trading activity, and manage their own trading accounts securely.

Spiking said that the completed private token sale is a “strong validation that traditional equity investors are increasingly interested in diversifying their portfolios to include cryptocurrencies.” It added that it’s working with over 180,000 traditional investors to provide them with “a channel of entry into the cryptocurrency markets.”

Bear market

Photo credit: Chris Liverani / Unsplash

Despite Spiking’s apparent success, investment in token sales – or “initial coin offerings” (ICOs) – has plummeted in recent months, following the ICO craze last year and early this year which saw billions of dollars pumped into token-selling projects.

Startups running ICOs raised just US$326 million in August this year, compared to US$3 billion per month on average between January and March.

Cryptocurrencies more generally are going through a bear market – with poster-child Bitcoin recently hitting its lowest price in 21 months – and increasing negative sentiment towards digital tokens, as well as multiple reports of scam ICOs, has likely contributed to less-than-impressive token sales.

However, there’s also a sense that many startups that completed ICOs in previous months are now trying to exchange the tokens they raised for cash, both to cover operational expenses and because their own confidence in cryptocurrency is faltering.

Concerns surrounding legal and regulatory issues also appear to have affected ICOs. Increasingly, token sales appear to have a majority “private sale” component, or are exclusively marketed to venture capitalists and other professional investors rather than the public.