Civil is a network of journalists that decided to set up blockchain network for likeminded journalists seeking an environment where they could exchange ideas, articles and, as they state in their website civil.io “We’re a fast-growing community of top journalists and technologists, working together to build a home for trustworthy, sustainable journalism.”
According to Civil, they are professionals from leading news sites including “The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, The Guardian, El Pais, Politico, NPR, The Atlantic, The New Republic, New York Magazine, New York Daily News, and DNAinfo.”
Well, it seems that journalism and the world of finance don’t always go together, even if journalists are great at communications. The date for the ICO was set for the 1st of October, yesterday, and they had already raised capital from various investors, but all rested on their ICO, which claimed that they needed to raise $24 million. The plan was to reach a minimum level of $8 million, if not they would refund the investors. Well, the ICO just managed to reach the $1.5 million mark and then fumbled. Over $1 million of this was raised from one source, investors from ConsenSys.
While blame was being put on the complexities of an ICO, the end result is still obviously blatant for everyone to see. ICO’s are no longer attractive, especially since people are beginning to understand the concept of what a token really is. So, unless you have a revolutionary idea, or are an extremely popular brand name, the possibilities if succeeding in an ICO is minimal. Mind you, there is a general consensus that an ICO will raise around $1 million, so based on average ICO’s, they actually did quite well.
Civil CEO Matthew Iles stated that “We haven’t tested any of the fundamentals yet. We knew fundamentally going in that we were going to be different, and some of the assumptions might be off, but we miscalculated just how off we were going to be.”
Iles continued to claim that “We’re going to regroup and we’ll be fine. Before the end of the year, these thousands of people who already participated in the first attempt will come along with us, and it will be the beginning of something.”
Well, let’s analyze the situation. First of all, Civil was raising funds to finance a nonprofit charity called the Civil Foundation. So the question arises, why did they need so much money, couldn’t the start out with a small amount, such as $1.5 million and then show results, and go for a further round?
The other issue arising is that ICO’s are meant to raise cash while giving tokens a base value for tradability. The tradability is based on the profitability of the tokens company, so in this case, since there is no profitability, why would anyone want to buy a token? It’s not even recognized as a charity asset that could possibly find a way to be a tax write off.
Civil runs two publications under its foundation, Popula, and Sludge. The income from the token was meant to fund these publications. Now this failed ICO sets the activity back, and as such, Civils activities will be scaled back.
Now let’s look at the costs. Why do they need so much money? Well, the reason is that they want to fund newsrooms and software development to create a comprehensive environment for safe journalism. As of today, the company has a budget of $3.5 million, from Consensus. This money is split between the foundation and the media company, both non-profit. However, since there are 18 newsrooms to support and the software development team to fund, the $3.5 is expected to run rather quickly.
According to Iles, “Any new thing needs a kickstart. Any new thing needs a first backer. So we’re at the beginning of a long road.”
Bottom Line
Civil is a feeble attempt at cashing in on the blockchain cryptocurrency craze. The concept is fully understood, they wanted to raise an ICO that would give the token a base value, and then market the concept so that the token would be traded for a higher value, thereby funding the activities, and the more tokens released to finance activity, the more activity, etc. etc.
In reality, Civil proves that tokens are no longer an easy get rich quick scheme. I honestly would have thought, that when thousands of journalists get together, they will succeed in promoting their interest to the public. However, as the saying goes “too many cooks spoil the broth,” perhaps too many journalists spoiled the context. Perhaps the best way to sum up the ignorance of the system is through the over-cleverness of Iles, who stated when the Verge compared Civil’s complexity to the more simple Filecoin (which is one of the most complicated tokens on the market). Iles stated “Filecoin is a way to pay people to run Dropbox on their computer. Civil is a way to crowdsource accurate and ethical information, at a minimum. We’re complicated only insofar it’s important how we do things.”
If you understood that statement then you are a genius.
The Civil way to fail an ICO
Civil is a network of journalists that decided to set up blockchain network for likeminded journalists seeking an environment where they could exchange ideas, articles and, as they state in their website civil.io “We’re a fast-growing community of top journalists and technologists, working together to build a home for trustworthy, sustainable journalism.”
According to Civil, they are professionals from leading news sites including “The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, The Guardian, El Pais, Politico, NPR, The Atlantic, The New Republic, New York Magazine, New York Daily News, and DNAinfo.”
Well, it seems that journalism and the world of finance don’t always go together, even if journalists are great at communications. The date for the ICO was set for the 1st of October, yesterday, and they had already raised capital from various investors, but all rested on their ICO, which claimed that they needed to raise $24 million. The plan was to reach a minimum level of $8 million, if not they would refund the investors. Well, the ICO just managed to reach the $1.5 million mark and then fumbled. Over $1 million of this was raised from one source, investors from ConsenSys.
While blame was being put on the complexities of an ICO, the end result is still obviously blatant for everyone to see. ICO’s are no longer attractive, especially since people are beginning to understand the concept of what a token really is. So, unless you have a revolutionary idea, or are an extremely popular brand name, the possibilities if succeeding in an ICO is minimal. Mind you, there is a general consensus that an ICO will raise around $1 million, so based on average ICO’s, they actually did quite well.
Civil CEO Matthew Iles stated that “We haven’t tested any of the fundamentals yet. We knew fundamentally going in that we were going to be different, and some of the assumptions might be off, but we miscalculated just how off we were going to be.”
Iles continued to claim that “We’re going to regroup and we’ll be fine. Before the end of the year, these thousands of people who already participated in the first attempt will come along with us, and it will be the beginning of something.”
Well, let’s analyze the situation. First of all, Civil was raising funds to finance a nonprofit charity called the Civil Foundation. So the question arises, why did they need so much money, couldn’t the start out with a small amount, such as $1.5 million and then show results, and go for a further round?
The other issue arising is that ICO’s are meant to raise cash while giving tokens a base value for tradability. The tradability is based on the profitability of the tokens company, so in this case, since there is no profitability, why would anyone want to buy a token? It’s not even recognized as a charity asset that could possibly find a way to be a tax write off.
Civil runs two publications under its foundation, Popula, and Sludge. The income from the token was meant to fund these publications. Now this failed ICO sets the activity back, and as such, Civils activities will be scaled back.
Now let’s look at the costs. Why do they need so much money? Well, the reason is that they want to fund newsrooms and software development to create a comprehensive environment for safe journalism. As of today, the company has a budget of $3.5 million, from Consensus. This money is split between the foundation and the media company, both non-profit. However, since there are 18 newsrooms to support and the software development team to fund, the $3.5 is expected to run rather quickly.
According to Iles, “Any new thing needs a kickstart. Any new thing needs a first backer. So we’re at the beginning of a long road.”
Bottom Line
Civil is a feeble attempt at cashing in on the blockchain cryptocurrency craze. The concept is fully understood, they wanted to raise an ICO that would give the token a base value, and then market the concept so that the token would be traded for a higher value, thereby funding the activities, and the more tokens released to finance activity, the more activity, etc. etc.
In reality, Civil proves that tokens are no longer an easy get rich quick scheme. I honestly would have thought, that when thousands of journalists get together, they will succeed in promoting their interest to the public. However, as the saying goes “too many cooks spoil the broth,” perhaps too many journalists spoiled the context. Perhaps the best way to sum up the ignorance of the system is through the over-cleverness of Iles, who stated when the Verge compared Civil’s complexity to the more simple Filecoin (which is one of the most complicated tokens on the market). Iles stated “Filecoin is a way to pay people to run Dropbox on their computer. Civil is a way to crowdsource accurate and ethical information, at a minimum. We’re complicated only insofar it’s important how we do things.”
If you understood that statement then you are a genius.
