Invest.com’s prediction market product Stox will launch a token sale using Bancor’s smart token protocol, TechCrunch reports. The funds raised will be used to develop the Stox open source, Ethereum-based prediction market platform, and increase the Stox marketing and sales groups.

To avoid giving the impression of a “me-too” casual joiner in the token craze, Stox CEO Ophir Gertner emphasizes that Stock is a serious business managed by experienced professionals. To further differentiate Stox from the unwashed ICO masses, they don’t refer to the move as a “Token Sale.” It’s a “Token Generation Event.”

“The biggest difference, is that there is a real, substantial, experienced company behind this,” said Gertner. “This isn’t a few folks and a whitepaper that have never managed a company, dealt with user acquisition, weather the ups and downs, etc.”

In fact, Invest.com is a solid business. “Invest.com is the hedge fund for the people,” claims the company’s Crunchbase profile. “With invest.com you have easy and affordable access to tailored investment portfolios comprised of cutting edge investment strategies… We adhere to international financial regulations and are authorised in the European Economic Area. We maintain the highest standards of security to protect your data and your money.” The company has 3 million registered clients and reported $50 million in annual revenue.

Prediction markets are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions. The current market price for a prediction ‒ for example the election of a particular candidate ‒ can be interpreted as an aggregate, crowdsourced estimate of the probability of the prediction. In April Crypto Insider reported that Ethereum-based decentralized prediction market platform Gnosis raised $12.5 million in a token sale that completed in three hours.

Stox wants to be an open source, Bancor based prediction market platform, which allows anyone to predict and trade the outcome of events in finance, sports, politics, the weather, and other categories.

“The end goal for Stox is to create the leading decentralized prediction market used by mainstream audiences by maintaining a thriving ecosystem of users looking to invest in event outcomes and providers looking to create events and be compensated for operating them,” states the Stox website. “The main role of Stox is to develop the open source technology required for running the decentralized Stox platform and network and create a successful model incentivizing both users and providers to join the network.”

No date is given for the start of the Stox token (STX) sale, just that it’s “coming very soon.” While Gertner emphasizes that Stox is more than a whitepaper, there is a detailed Stox whitepaper. From the whitepaper we learn that the team aim to implement the Stox internal token, dubbed STX, as a Smart Token based on the Bancor protocol – an ERC20-compatible token template, which offers continuous liquidity via an on-chain market maker.

Bancor, which raised $147 million with it’s own token sale last month, wants to become a “YouTube for currency” that allows anyone to create their own cryptocurrency token and operate it independently of a third-party exchange, Bancor cofounder Eyal Hertzog told VentureBeat. See also Crypto Insider‘s interview with Bancor CEO Guy Benartzi, published in May.

Image from Pixabay.