Token Sales are BAT-Sh*t Crazy Right Now
By: Chris Remus
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, Advertising, Bitcoin

Token Sales are BAT-Sh*t Crazy Right Now

Token sales can’t get any crazier, can they? Then BAT sells out in 30 seconds, after raising $35 million.

I’ve participated in three token sales now. Today’s BAT sale is the first one I didn’t succeed in purchasing tokens. I’m not the only one. The sale sold-out of it’s $35 million allocation in 30 seconds. That’s BAT-sh*t crazy.

I attended Consensus and the Token Summit last week. The energy was electric with excitement, hope and optimism. Token sales were the hottest topic at both conferences.

Crazy but Not Too Crazy

The general agreement was we’re in a bit of a crazy time. Crazy but not too crazy was what we were telling ourselves. I tend to agree with that.

Blockchain’s in the infrastructure development stage. Infrastructure takes a lot of capital to build. These were also common themes. They resonated with me then. They still do today.

One speaker said there will be an overshoot. He said we can’t expect that if it takes $X to build the infrastructure, exactly $X will be invested. I get that too.

Brave Software and the Brave Attention Token (BAT)

I heard Brendon Eich speak at both conferences. He’s the founder, CEO and and President of Brave Software. That’s the company behind the BAT token.

Brave’s model sounds solid to me. The team looks strong and committed. They were transparent throughout the sale process, at least as I could tell.

They’re looking to disrupt a huge industry, digital advertising. They want to do this by breaking the stranglehold (85% according to the 2017 Meeker Internet Report) Facebook and Google have on it today.

All this sounds fantastic. I prepared to take part in the sale this morning. I generated my transaction in advance. It was waiting in MyEtherWallet. I set my gas limit 25% higher than the recommended limit.

Off the Chain

I waited for the well-publicized start block to hit. I admit it. The adrenaline was pumping now. FOMO was running wild in my consciousness.

Then a couple Ethereum blockchain explorers stopped responding, about 30 minutes before the sale. That was the first indicator sh*t was hitting the fan. Chatter in the official BAT Slack channel hit a fever pitch. That usually happens in these sales. I try to ignore it.

This time I couldn’t. Someone in the channel was publishing the block number countdown. (Note to self, install my own Ethereum blockchain explorer for future token sales…)

The start block hit. I hit send, less than 2 minutes after the start block hit.

No dice. The transaction generated my MeW couldn’t be found. I tried again. Nope.

I opened a new incognito window in Chrome and tried again. Another transaction generated. Another transaction not found.

(Fortunately, I added all the required transaction information in a Bear Writer note. This made it easy for me to generate a new transaction fast. I’ll write a separate post describing how I did that.)

The BAT slack channel was off the chain by now. Everyone was complaining their transactions weren’t going through.

Then I saw this tweet —

And then this one —

I’m still a big believer in this project and the space. But man…$35 million in less than 30 seconds…?

That’s BAT-sh*t crazy to me :)