It’s too late to invest in Airbnb but a company that bills itself as the Airbnb of cloud computer storage is raising cash — and anyone with an Internet connection can get in on the action.

Storj Labs Inc. is selling digital coins at 50 cents apiece to raise $30 million in an early stage financing round. In just five days, hundreds of contributors signed up for a piece of what they hope will be the next Silicon Valley unicorn. But there’s a catch — unlike traditional venture capital investments, the tokens don’t confer a claim on Storj’s equity or future profits.

Instead, the tokens’ value derives from their utility in the firm’s app, by providing access to data storage on a distributed network. They are the latest entry in the growing ledger of cryptocurrencies, digital coins that unlock myriad apps across the computing world.

The coins are tradable on dozens of online exchanges and demand for all sorts of them has exploded as people speculate on the next big tech startup.

“The average investor is missing out on the Ubers and AirBnbs of the world,” said Bart Stephens, a managing partner at Blockchain Capital, a VC firm that’s invested in blockchain-related startups since 2012. “If the next Uber decides to issue tokens, that would be an opportunity for more investors to get access to the most exciting technologies out there.”

The Storj sale is known as an initial coin offering, a model of finance spreading across the tech sector. Investors spent $332 million on tokens in the past year, more than double what VCs handed over in seed rounds, according to data compiled by coin-focused blog The Control. The haul is slated to hit $600 million in 2017, it says, adding to a market for tokens that’s nearly tripled in the past year.

Advertisement

ICOs are possible thanks to blockchain, the catchall term for a digital ledger that promises incorruptible storage of financial transactions. Banks and stock exchanges have spent millions on it, looking for ways to cut the costs for transferring money.

One of the latest to back the technology was the chief executive officer of Fidelity Investments, Abigail Johnson. Most famously, it’s the technology that underpins bitcoin — just as it does for every token offered in an ICO.

Their massive increase in popularity has more than a few detractors warning of a bubble, worried the allure of finding the next tech lottery ticket is fueling rampant speculation. The concern is particularly acute at a time when investors are fretting about stretched valuations for tech startups, with the likes of Uber commanding multibillion-dollar price tags even as they burn through cash.

Take Gnosis, a prediction market application based on the Ethereum blockchain that raised $12.5 million in 12 minutes on April 24, resulting in a market cap of almost $300 million. It’s generated no revenue and has little more than a white paper describing what it intends to do. Yet its tokens, which would allow users to bet on things such as election outcomes, soared eightfold in the three weeks since May 2, giving it a valuation of over $2 billion.


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.