Civil’s token sale has failed. Now what? Refunds, for one thing — and then another sale -- NiemanLab

Also see What's Next for Civil (Civil founder Matthew Iles)

"It was clear — definitely by midnight last night, but also in the days and weeks leading up to yesterday — that journalism blockchain platform Civil’s initial coin offering, in which it aimed to raise $8 million, was not going to work. Civil ended up raising about $1.4 million, and around three-quarters of that was acquired by ConsenSys, Civil’s seed investor.

Some of the things that went wrong are clear. It was very hard to buy into Civil, though in the last couple of weeks the company had started letting people buy tokens with cash and was also, up to the last minute, asking possible contributors to email Civil customer service for help buying tokens.

“The biggest things to know are that a) we’re going to try this again in the near future, under more reasonable terms; and b) this doesn’t impact the grant funding for any of Civil’s initial, ‘First Fleet’ newsrooms, which will continue publishing per the terms of their respective agreements,” Civil cofounder Matt Coolidge told me in an email."

Civil’s token sale has failed. Now what? Refunds, for one thing — and then another sale -- NiemanLab