Investors on CoinList Pour $10M Into Celo Token Sale in Roughly 12 Hours

The Silicon Valley blockchain startup cLabs and its corresponding nonprofit, the Celo Foundation, just raised $10 million through a token sale to investors on the CoinList platform.

Roughly 509 investors from dozens of countries participated in the auction, paying $1 per Celo Gold (cGold) token. Most investors hailed from Germany, the United Kingdom, Turkey, India, Malaysia and Vietnam, according to a cLabs spokesperson. The average buyer spent $19,646.37, which is enough Celo Gold to theoretically become a validator on the network. They often earned 50 bonus tokens for referrals.

The sale, which closed on Tuesday morning, took roughly 12 hours to complete. 

The cLabs token sale builds on $30 million in venture capital funding from firms like Polychain Capital and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Polychain, in particular, is among 77 entities already running Celo validator nodes.

The buyers on CoinList expect to receive their cGold tokens on May 18, or at least have that option. CoinList co-Founder Andy Bromberg said buyers can automatically receive the cGLD in their CoinList wallets when the Celo mainnet goes live, or they can opt to send the tokens to an external, self-custodied wallet.

"As of Monday there's going to be live value on the network," said cLabs partner Vanessa Slavich.

Bromberg added this was the second successful token sale on the platform so far in 2020, after a $1.76 million raise for Solana.

Update (May 13, 2020, 18:27 UTC): This article previously stated that investors in the sale were accredited. This was not the case, though they had passed know-your-customer checks. The piece has also been updated to reflect details of the sale and launch plans.