Move over Bitcoinstarter hello Swarm. A new crowdfunding platform called Swarm launched and began funding itself with considerable success, raising more than 1200 Bitcoins in just eighteen hours (the sale began at 12:01 AM June 17, and will continue until the supply of cryptocurrency is depleted). As of this article Swarm has raised 28% out of 24M goal or about 4,500 BTC. Swarm is marketing itself as “the Facebook of crowdfunding.”
Swarm has launched its own cryptocurrency, “swarmcoin,” and is selling units of it to the public in an effort to fund their exchange. Those coins will then be redeemable for crowdfunding services in the future. The coins will continue to be sold for some time in lots of progressively higher and higher prices, to encourage early investment. The money raised by selling “swarmcoin” will be devoted to building a platform that will easily allow others to repeat the same process: Issuing a currency, selling it for Bitcoin, and using the funds to complete their project.
The plan is to make Swarm into a full-fledged, Bitcoin-funded startup accelerator, designed to take startups and allow them to pitch their value proposition to the masses, and survive and fail based on the strength of that pitch. There will be no traditional gatekeepers dictating success and failure, and no middleman crowdfunding services taking their ten percent off the top – and, the Swarm platform rules will allow companies to offer equity in the company, not just toys and T-shirts.
The Swarm campaign will run until July 20 2014.
You can learn more about Swarm – and help to fund it – at www.swarmcorp.com