Origin is building a platform that enables the creation of new decentralized marketplaces in the sharing economy to compete with dominant incumbents like Uber, Airbnb, and Craigslist. One of our chief objectives is distributing the value created by these marketplaces more equitably to our network’s many participants.

We want as many people from our community to be able to participate as investors in Origin while remaining compliant from a regulatory perspective. We also intend to create a platform that allows our developer partners, individual buyers and sellers, and other ecosystem participants to earn rewards on our network when we launch. This is part of our focus in looking for multiple ways for our partners and community members to become stakeholders in the network. Today, we are excited to take an important step in this direction with our CoinList Round.

Previously, we announced that we had closed our Strategic Round from 190 strategic investors. These investors are now helping us build and develop our community presences in dozens of countries, making introductions to potential partners, and helping us add great team members to the Origin team.

A few of Origin’s existing investors from around the world

Today, we are excited to announce our CoinList Round that will allow for a much larger number of people who believe in our mission to participate as early investors.

One of the specific goals we had for this round was not to optimize for total money raised, but rather for total people able to participate. This means that we have decided to spread the opportunity to invest to as many people as possible while keeping our maximum investment per person at a lower capped amount. The total amount we’re seeking to raise with this round is capped at $6.6M USD. Due to SEC accredited investor requirements for private placements, China’s ban of token sales, and New York state’s stringent money transmission laws, there will unfortunately be some restrictions on which investors can participate in this round. Again, we are exploring having several additional ways for an even broader group of community members to participate in the future.

It’s important to point out that we are not raising this round because we need more money at this time, but rather because we want to include a wider swath of investors from all over the world that can ultimately evangelize our vision, spread the word to their local communities, and participate in the early growth of the network. Many of the investors in this round will be ones that likely would not have had access to traditional startup investments without being limited partners in institutional funds or members of tightly-curated angel investor syndicates.

CoinList’s investment platform makes pulling off our broadly-distributed offering possible. By working with CoinList (which was spun out of AngelList, the renowned investment platform founded by Naval Ravikant), we are also in great company with other reputable projects like Filecoin and Blockstack that not only used the CoinList platform for fundraising, but are also actively building meaningful technology and products. Just as importantly, we’ve developed a strong working relationship with the world-class CoinList team with the goal of pulling off a successful, compliant, secure, and well-designed offering. Origin’s offering is the first opportunity in CoinList’s new investment arm, CoinList Capital.

Starting today, you will be able to register for the Origin CoinList Round. During registration, prospective investors will have ample time to register, demonstrate accreditation status (this process can take up to 1–3 days), pass AML/KYC checks, and review all relevant deal materials. People will be able to start investing beginning on June 28.

For full details on how to participate, please check out the Origin Protocol CoinList Round page and let us know if you have any questions.

For individuals that may not be able to participate in this round due to regulatory requirements we must adhere to, please accept our sincerest apologies. Philosophically, we would like to allow for an even broader set of community members to participate at this time, but it’s absolutely essential that we build our platform in a legally compliant way. We are working on paths that will allow everyone to be able to use Origin Tokens to interact on our platform.

We will be posting regular updates leading up to the CoinList Round (and future developments), so now is a great time to subscribe to our Medium, join our Telegram, or sign up for our email newsletter updates if you haven’t already.

Thanks to the entire community for your support!

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