THE ICO CHALLENGE

Many blockchain-based companies are funding themselves with ICOs, or ‘initial coin offerings’. Entirely unregulated, and a deliberate play on the initial public offerings in the established investment world, they offer investors the chance to own a blockchain’s currency at its advent. The more successful the venture is, the more their investment becomes worth. B2Expand launched its ICO in November 2016 and raised 350,000, a tidy sum at the time, and since much of it is held in Ethereum its value has increased many times since, allowing the studio to quickly grow. However, if Ethereum should devalue, the value goes, too. Furthermore, B2Expand’s Nexium investors constantly pressure the studio to raise Nexium’s value.