Welcome to my Cryptocurrency column here at Unbox.ph where I document and share all my learnings about my “Bitcoin Journey”. If you haven’t read my first post “How to Buy Bitcoin in the Philippines“, please do so you have context on why I’m doing this series.

What’s an ICO?

One of my Bitcoin objectives for 2017 is to support an ICO, or an Initial Coin Offering. WTF is that? An ICO is like an Initial Public Offering in the stock market. Any company or start up can do an ICO. They will issue tokens or coins using blockchain technology and these tokens can be bought, sold, or exchanged for other currencies, including real money. Companies do ICOs to raise funds for product development, acquisition, or marketing. These efforts would, in turn, raise the over-all value of the company and the Tokens/Coins that you purchased during the ICO.

What’s in it for me?

Why am I trying this out? Two reasons.

First I want to learn everything I can about Bitcoin, Crypto, and ICOs. The best way for me to learn is by doing so I will just do. I am fully aware that there are risks involved and I will do my best to mitigate them.

Second is I want to profit from the ICO by having the value of the tokens/coins that I bought increase in value over time. The goal is to eventually sell the Tokens for Bitcoin, real cash, or other crypto currencies.

I’m kicking off my ICO adventure by supporting Salarium. I’ve met their management team (played Poker with them, lol) and their business fundamentals are sound. They’re not a fly-by-night company and I know where they actually operate here in the Philippines.

Why Salarium?

Simply said I believe that they are solving a real problem and that they can scale their business significantly with the funding that they can raise from the ICO.

Salarium is a payment ecosystem that allows companies from all over the world to pay people and companies in the Philippines. They use blockchain technology to allow remittances and payments at a fraction of the cost that banks offer. Apart from that, they give free software to their customers that allows them to track timekeeping for payroll computations. They’ve helped over 500+ companies (including 7-11, AnytimeFitness, and a lot of BPOs) and 10,000+ employees.

Don’t take my word for it though. If you have time, read their white paper and learn about their business. It’s critical that you research as much as you can about companies and start-ups doing ICOs because you are giving them your hard earned cash. Again, don’t just support them because they’re the ones I’m supporting. We need to all do our research and have that discipline especially if we will be doing more ICOs in the future.

How Did I Support Them?

I went to the Salarium ICO website, registered an account (inputed my Bitcoin and Ether wallet addresses), and transferred them 0.X amount of Bitcoin via my Coins.ph app. The minimum amount to support them is just around Php2,000 pesos though so it’s not that big.

You need an Etherum wallet to get your SalPay Tokens. I personally use MyEtherWallet. You can read the instructions how to create one in the site. It’s pretty straightforward. Salarium also gave a detailed tutorial how to set it up.

As of this writing there are only 32 days left to buy SalPay Tokens for their ICO. Once the ICO is done, they will deposit the SalPay Tokens to your Ethereum wallet and you can do whatever you want with it then.

Am I Supporting Other ICOs?

Yes, but I’m still researching. My good friend Kassy shared an ICO by PawnHero Philippines so I’m also studying that one. The plan is to build an ICO portfolio in the long term.

If you have ICO leads or suggestions, let me know in the comments section! Would love to read up on them.

And that’s it for now! For the next installment I’m thinking of doing a Facebook Live Q&A on the Unbox Facebook Page. Will share date and time but most likely we’ll do it on Thursday evening or the weekend.