Bittrex, an international exchange platform based in the United States, has now entered the assisted token sale industry — allowing verified Bittrex users to participate in the token sale of a RAID, a South Korean startup looking to create a decentralized game-data ecosystem.

Bittrex is billing the token sale as an “Initial Exchange Offering (IEO),” which appears to differ from the standard Initial Coin Offering (ICO) only by the fact that the sale is being conducted through its exchange platform.

RAID is a project looking to leverage the vast amounts of data produced by the video game industry by breaking down some of the many challenges currently hindering the growth of this industry — including problems relating to data ownership and the credibility of such data.

To overcome these challenges, RAID will allow data to be freely exchanged or sold between users of its blockchain, which can then be used for a variety of purposes — including game marketing, data analysis, and product development.

As part of the solution, game companies will be able to purchase verified game data from the marketplace with XRD tokens and provide XRD tokens as a reward to help build their player bases.

Whales Stand to Benefit

According to the announcement, RAID will be selling tokens at a fixed rate of 0.00000010 BTC each — with a fixed allocation of 17 billion XRD available for sale on Bittrex, equal to 1 percent of the total token supply. Based on the potentially outdated contents of its Whitepaper, RAID will be selling 20 percent of its total supply, which indicates an additional 30 billion XRD will be made available outside of Bittrex.

As it stands, Bittrex enforces a 30,000 XRD minimum purchase amount, equivalent to 0.003 BTC, whereas the individual cap is set at 57 million XRD each, costing 5.7 BTC.

Assuming all investors use their maximum individual cap, this means that fewer than 300 investors will be required to buy out the total XRD allocation — potentially allowing the entire allocation to be hoarded by crypto whales, which will almost certainly spark outrage if the majority of would-be investors cannot contribute.

Not the First, Not the Last

Bittrex is not the first exchange to host third-party token sales on its platform. Instead, it appears to be following in the footsteps of its biggest rival — Binance.

Recently, Binance announced the launch of its third project this year on Launchpad — a token launch platform that aims to help high potential projects secure the capital needed for successful development. To date, a total of four projects have been successfully funded via the Launchpad, most of which sold out their token allocation within just minutes.

There also appear to be significant similarities in the sale process for assets on the Bittrex platform, compared to Binance. Both platforms require identity verification for all participants and guarantee that successful tokens will be quickly distributed and listed on the exchange.

However, questions remain as to whether token sales launched on Bittrex will have the same kind of success since it is widely acknowledged that the platform has vastly fewer users and less overall sway in the market compared to Binance.

What do you think about the new Bittrex token sale platform? Will it be a raging success, or will it fail to take off? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!