You’ve undoubtedly heard about Binance before. It was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao and Yi He. It was based initially in China, but then it moved to Japan as the Chinese government banned cryptocurrency trading in 2017.
By now it also has offices in Taiwan and Malta, which is one of the most cryptocurrency-friendly countries in the word. It’s even issued its very own digital token, called BNB. The thing about Binance is that it’s the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volume, and it’s probably the exchange with the broadest selection of trading pairs.
Earlier this year, in January, to be precise, the company announced that it would take advantage of its Binance Launchpad platform to raise funds for new tokens at the tune of one per month, more or less.
The results didn’t take long to show. Perhaps the most expected launch so far was the BitTorrent Token one (BTT). It’s a coin based on Tron’s token technology that will power the BitTorrent P2P decentralized network as it merges into Tron’s blockchain network.
It took fewer than 15 minutes to raise USD 7.12 million, which made the whole community pay a bit of attention. The move also winked at the possibility of ICOs making a spectacular comeback, more or less as it was in 2017.
BTT hasn’t been the only success story so far. Binance’s Launchpad’s second fundraiser was in support of Fetch.AI. It was even more rapid: USD 6 million in a very impressive ten seconds.
The tokens in question saw their prices soar after the Binance listing went live. And that, again, created massive interest in a big chunk of the crypto community.
Binance is calling these kinds of events “Initial Exchange Offering,” and that’s how it’s marking the commencement of massive exchanges using its platform to come online. Following Binance’s spectacular success in this regard, five other exchanges are taking a page from Binance’s book to come up with Initial Exchange Offering platforms of their own. They are Okex, KuCoin, and Bittrex, among others.
Since IEOs are becoming so popular, especially when launched at Binance over Binance Launchpad, we will use this article to offer you a thoroughly detailed guide so you can start using the platform and join in all the fun sometime in the near future by entering one of the planned events for fundraising.
Binance Launchpad: How to use it
We start with the basics. Login into your Binance account. Don’t you have one? Well, just get one. The initial process doesn’t even take three minutes; it’s effortless and direct (afterward you will need to prove your identity, but more on that later).
So now we’re in. Find the menu’s top left of the menu and click “Binance Launchpad”. The option will show as part of a drop-down.
The Home Screen
You’ll arrive at the platform’s home screen. There, dead center, you’ll see the featured projects at the launch pad. Each project’s status is carefully described to provide a full understanding of each project’s situation.
The projects on the left are about to start selling tokens, and you can find an abstract detailing the launch’s primary information. Among other pieces of data, you’ll find the number of tokens scheduled to be sold during the session, as well as the starting time.
Each project has a dedicated page within the platform, and you can see it by just choosing the project that interests you and click on it. There you’ll find the project’s information in full detail.
If you’re following us while using your Binance account so far, you’ll see that the general information about the project’s IEO event is at the top and it includes the following information: price, start time, session supply, starting date and hour. And there’s the “Buy Now” button. As we write this, that button didn’t work because the sale had not started yet, but it will be active when the time comes.
Requirements
- Then, below, there’s the requirements tab. If you want to join in the token sale, you have to complete all the requirements mentioned in the tab. Each project has a different set of conditions, but a fairly common requirement is to comply with the platform’s general verification process. It takes four steps:
- Type in your personal information.
- Once your personal information is complete, you’ll need to provide a picture of your ID. This is not as cumbersome as it sounds at first. It’s actually a quick process. Your laptop has a camera that can take pictures, but it’s a better idea to make the required picture using your smartphone’s camera. That’s because it’s essential for the text in your ID to be very clear and readable. That makes things move forward more quickly, and it will save you the hassle of repeating this second step because of a bad quality picture.
- The next step is about facial information. It’s not precisely about facial recognition, but about proving that your face matches your ID, that you’re the guy active right now on your account. Binance is meticulous, to say the least. You have to submit a picture of your face. The photo must include the date as well, and also the word “Binance” next to your face. This can indeed be done with your laptop’s camera, just make sure that the date and the legend “Binance” is obvious and readable. This is a standard step in most websites in which real money moves in and out of the platform.
- You’re done. Almost. The next step is just to wait a bit of time for the Binance team to contact you and tell you that you are indeed approved, or, to let you know that something went wrong and you have to repeat one of the three steps.
An important bit of information: not every user from every country can participate in the event. You need to know if users from your country are allowed and you’ll find that out at the requirements tab as well.
Project Information
You should always familiarize yourself with the full information of any project that catches your eye. Any responsible investment needs in-depth research before you put any of your hard-earned money into it.
All the information you need is either in the requirements tab or in the project’s dedicated page, and you should make sure you’ve read it all, analyzed it all, and understood it all. Pros, cons, potential advantages and challenges, use cases for the new tokens, etc. We strongly suggest that you don’t go in lightly. There’s no excuse. Binance makes sure you can find out everything you need to know to make a good decision.
If you, however, consider that you still don’t have all the information you need, there’s good news. Binance has built a research center in which they carry out very detailed reviews for each of the projects listed. Is reading a full report too much information to decide? We don’t think so. On the contrary, knowledge is power, and we’re talking about your money here, so any amount of research is justified.
And that’s it, pretty much. There’s nothing more to it. Once you’ve assimilated the information you need to decide, you are all set to invest in the Binance Launchpad for the first time.
If you comply with the requirements, then just make sure you know when the sale will begin and be prepared to be online and join in as it happens.
One thing you need to take into account is that you can’t use fiat currencies to transact at Binance. The exchange is crypto to crypto which means that you need to own digital assets beforehand (bought elsewhere, with your local legal tender), then transfer them to your Binance account, and in the case of IEOs, you also need to know what coins will be accepted.
Every project will sell its new tokens only in exchange for some specific coins, and if you’re going to participate in time, you need to know what tokens are those, and, more importantly, you need to own some of them in advance.
That’s how all the launches have happened during the year with one exception. The BTT (BitTorrent token) token thing used only BNB and TRX (Tron’s Tronix currency). Which is why that launch was essentially two sessions occurring at the same time.
As we wrote in the previous paragraphs, the “Buy Now” button won’t be active until the sale begins. When it becomes alive, it will allow you to buy the number of tokens of your choice using the session’s selected token.
So let’s say the button is alive and you click on it. What happens next?
You’ll see a small box. In this box, you define the number of new tokens you want to buy. On the top of the box, you’ll see your BNB (or the token relevant to the sale). Under, you’ll find the maximum number of coins you can buy based on your cap. At the bottom of the box, you’ll need to provide a verification code. Last, you submit your request for the Binance Launchpad token sale.
The request will get you assigned to the tokens’ sale queue. This is not the time to refresh or leave the page. Be patient and wait for things to happen. Once the token sale is finished, you’ll be told. The Binance team will let you know if your luck was kind enough to get in the sale or not. If you did, the new tokens would be shown in your balance. If you didn’t then your balance remains precisely as it was before you sent the request.
Final thoughts
We hope you can see that joining in a Binance Launchpad fundraiser is very easy and takes minimal effort. The Binance team has gone out of its way to ensure that everything is simple, accessible, easy to go through and, yet, very thorough and meticulous.
One thing to keep in mind, though, is that this kind of events create immense amounts of interest in the community. Thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of users try to join in. Remember the Fetch.AI sale: it was over in ten seconds, no more. So while participating is exceedingly comfortable, getting a good place in the queue is not. The amount of competition is just insane, and that’s the one thing that complicates everything else.
But aside from that competition, the rest of the process is utterly seamless, easy to do, and easy to understand. If you’re not going to join, it just can’t be because of the level of technical difficulty.
Binance has found a way to be innovative, useful. It’s a pivotal exchange in the cryptoverse because of the sheer volume it has, but the new tool (the launchpad) is making it even more critical because it provides an easy way for projects to launch their coins which, on top of everything, get listed at Binance which is already something of an achievement.
Of course, Binance isn’t inventing ICO’s. Ethereum has been doing that for ages, but Binance’s approach has several advantages over Ethereum’s. Ethereum can only launch cryptocurrencies based on Ethereum’s token technology (ERC20), and with the scalability problems it’s had for months, there’s just no way in which it could support events such as those happening in Binance.
Binance’s IEO’s, on the other hand, can launch new cryptocurrencies of any kind at all, it’s not limited to Ethereum’s only. And it can manage insane amounts of traffic successfully and dependable. So Binance’s solution is a lot more versatile, a lot more powerful, reliable and, because of the high gas prices at Ethereum’s network, a lot cheaper as well.
So now you know everything you need to know if you want to join the current IEO’s fever. Lots of interest projects are about to get released and make their sale. You’ll surely find an exciting project that takes your fancy and just calls for you to participate. Just get well informed, be thorough in your preliminary research, and try to make sure you join the sale in time to actually get some of the new tokens. We wish you the best of luck!
Image courtesy of Pixabay.
Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.