“Official Coin of Virtual Reality” Raises 1,022 BTC from Industry Leaders. Now Moves into 30-Day Public Crowdsale.
Voxelus, the world’s first end-to-end virtual reality content creation platform and marketplace, has completed its private pre-sale of 1.2 million Voxels (VOX) for a total of 1,022 BTC ($350,000 USD at the close of the pre-sale), with the vast majority of orders coming in the final 48 hours, following in-person presentations to industry leaders at the Money 20/20 and Bitcoin Investor conferences last week.
This represents the largest amount ever raised in a private crowdsale of a cryptographic token. The prior record was held by Swarm, which sold $250,000 of its tokens privately before selling a total of $1 million in the combined private-public crowdsale. The all-time record for a public crowdsale of a cryptographic token was last summer’s Ethereum crowdsale, which raised 31,529 BTC across a 42-day public crowdsale (valued at $18.4 million at the time).
Voxel’s public crowdsale at sale.voxelus.com will last 30 days and will sell up to the remaining 30.3 million tokens it has made available for the crowdsale. The tokens are priced in Bitcoin and are available for 0.0001 BTC (approximately $0.34 USD) each, based on today’s exchange rate. This rate will only be available for 24 hours, ending on Tuesday, November 3, at 8:59 am pst. After that, the rate will increase to approximately $0.38 USD (900 voxels per bitcoin) through Wednesday, November 11, at 8:59 am. Final tiers are at approximately $0.43 USD (800 voxels per bitcoin) through Sunday, November 22, and $0.45 USD (750 voxels per bitcoin) through December 2 (earlier if all voxels sell out first).
“We are delighted by the strong response from both the VR and cryptocurrency communities, who are excited by the possibilities that an in-game cryptocurrency can contribute to accelerate and globalize the spread of virtual reality content,” said Martin Repetto, CEO and co-founder of Voxelus. “Voxelus allows the 2.5 billion people in the world who have no bank account but have a mobile phone to create, buy and sell virtual reality content, and it’s just as easy for people in developed countries as well.”
The 30-day crowdsale is being facilitated by ShapeShift, a Voxelus strategic partner and investor run by iconic bitcoin entrepreneur Erik Voorhees. ShapeShift also recently facilitated the back-end for successful crowdsales for Augur (raising $5.2 million) and Spells of Genesis.
Fifteen percent (31.5 million) of all possible voxels will be sold during this time. The remaining 85 percent will be released over the next 20 years and will be used for development, content creator bounties, marketing and other corporate purposes. Unlike many cryptocurrencies which use crowdsales to build their token, the Voxel platform is already substantially complete, including wallets and internal mining pools, and will have its initial distribution of Voxel tokens following the crowdsale.
“Voxels are the official currency of virtual reality,” said Voxelus chairman and co-founder Halsey Minor, who previously founded or co-founded iconic companies CNET, Salesforce, Vignette and Google Voice. He is also founder and chairman of Uphold (formerly Bitreserve), Voxelus, and Reality Lab, which recently announced the first-ever 360-degree live broadcast VR camera.
- Voxelus chairman and co-founder Halsey Minor
Uphold is the world's leading cloud-based money platform. After the crowdsale, the voxel will join 24 other currencies and Bitcoin that members can move, convert, hold, transact and spend just like any of the fiat currencies supported. Approximately 22 percent of the world's publicly traded Bitcoin has been transacted on Uphold’s platform in less than 11 months, making Uphold one of the largest digital currency companies in the world. The Voxel will be the only cryptocurrency other than bitcoin supported by Uphold.
Voxels are the “coin of the realm” to purchase any of the thousands of digital assets, animations, games and immersive worlds on the Voxelus marketplace, which will go live in Q1 2016. Voxelus will offer a revenue share with content creators, 20,000 of whom have downloaded the creator software. Given the high cost of production prior to Voxelus and current paucity of available content, Voxelus co-founder and CEO Martin Repetto predicts that the Voxelus platform will quickly become the repository for the majority of the world’s VR content, including games.
About Voxelus
Founded in 2015, Voxelus is a revolutionary platform that allows anyone to create Virtual Reality games, experiences and virtual spaces without writing a line of code. The platform consists of Voxelus Creator, a 3D design app for PC and Mac; Voxelus Viewer, which works on desktop PCs, Oculus Rift and Samsung VR devices; and the Voxelus Marketplace, which allows creators to sell and user to buy VR content and games for the Voxelus ecosystem, using the unique voxel in-game cryptocurrency.