XPL Token Sale Raises $500M – ICOs Are Back?

Today’s public sale of XPL tokens brought in a staggering $500 million.

Remember ICOs? You probably thought they were long gone. But here we are – and this one was wildly successful. Honestly, I can’t recall a token sale this big in the past 5–7 years.

I thought the ICO model was dead. Apparently not – they raised half a billion dollars in just a few minutes.

What does this tell us?

• First, there is money on the market. It's just that not every project can attract it.
• Second, it’s still surprisingly easy to sell investors on a shiny promise.

Let’s look at what Plasma – the issuer of XPL – is offering:

• A Bitcoin sidechain compatible with EVM (something Rootstock already does – but hardly anyone uses it, as I can see from the near-zero activity on rabbit.io).
• Private stablecoin transfers (available on Liquid, another Bitcoin sidechain – and also largely ignored by users).
• The ability to pay gas fees in any token (a problem that was solved long ago in smart wallets – and now addressed in Ethereum at the protocol level).
• Zero-fee USDT transfers (offered on BNB Chain for over six months – and probably the only feature here that actually sees real demand).

In short, Plasma brings nothing new to the table. Some of its ideas have already flopped, others are just clones of working solutions. And yet – investors rushed in with massive hype. People are locking up their stablecoins for 40 days just to get a small allocation.

Did you expect this level of frenzy?

Screenshot: one investor spent nearly $100,000 in gas fees just to take part in the XPL token sale.