Stablecoin Blockchain Plasma Fills $500 Million ICO Instantly

Layer 1 blockchain Plasma showcased the massive demand for exposure to the stablecoin sector this morning, filling a $500 million initial coin offering (ICO) deposit vault in a matter of minutes.

The token sale was initially capped at $250 million, but after the vault filled instantly, the cap was doubled to $500 million, which filled as soon as market participants realized the cap had been increased.

The raise is being managed in collaboration with Sonar, which is the ICO arm of Cobie’s public fundraising platform, Echo.

Plasma is a ‘stablechain,’ or a Layer 1 (L1) blockchain optimized for stablecoin transactions, backed by Tether, the issuer of DeFi’s leading stablecoin, USDT. It’s offering 10% of its XPL token supply at a $500 million fully diluted valuation (FDV) through this sale.

The sale attracted significant whale activity, with just over 1,110 wallets filling the vault for a median deposit of $35,000. The largest contributor to the presale sent the maximum allocation of $50 million, taking up 10% of the total presale. 38% of the raise is held by the top 10 depositors, and 50% belongs to the top 17.

Despite some pushback due to the concentration of top holders, some analysts consider the raise a success.

“All things considered, insanely good distribution of holders for @PlasmaFDN at $500m total size of deposit. Seeing a ton of folks with smaller amounts on here and only one entity with $50m in a wallet. Well done,” said Zaheer Ebtikar, the founder and Chief Investment Officer at Split Capital.

It appears that Plasma may raise the deposit cap again, based on a Discord message from a team member, Nathan Lenga. It is unclear if any additional deposits would be offered XPL at the same valuation as the initial $500 million.