Coinorb: An Initial Coin Offering to Launch a Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange

In March 2020, Harriet Lee, chief executive officer and co-founder of CoinOrb, was in discussions with her fellow executives. The company needed additional capital to build the MVP (minimum viable product) for their cryptocurrency futures trading platform. A year before, Bitcoin had been valued at US$9,268; it ended 2019 at $3,669, and it was currently trading at $9,668. CoinOrb believed demand would be strong because their proposed exchange would appeal to investors who were hesitant to invest in Bitcoin because of its volatility but were interested in trading Bitcoin futures. Rather than raise additional equity, the CoinOrb founders created an initial coin offering (ICO), a token sale that blockchain start-ups used to raise funds. CoinOrb planned to launch their ICO shortly after launching their platform in late 2020, but they first needed to prepare their white paper. To do this, they would have to determine how to market their ICO to investors, the terms of the ICO, and what value to assign to the tokens.