This is the english translation of the original articlein thenorwegian business newspaper E24
"The ship sales have gone very well, and the first ship we sold was worth $ 11,700, that is $ 94,212," says General Manager of Artplant Jack Wulff, on the sale of virtual spacecraft in the Parsec Frontiers game, developed today."
On May 15 at 4 o'clock Artplant opened the purchase of their own cryptocurrency called Parsecs. This will be used by future players to buy virtual spaceships, make other purchases in the game or sell for other crypto currencies in the open market. In addition to the crypto mission, the company also performs a dedicated ship sales for virtual spacecraft.
When E24 visited the company just before the ICO started, Wulff was a tad nervous, but at the same time sure that they had prepared themselves well .
Over the weekend the company has raise $100,000USD and is going to continue to raise money in June as well. The goal is a minimum of $1,7 million USD in Ethereum - so there is some way to go.
We had somewhat of a slow start, but we are hoping the sale is bettering throughout the summer
Wulff explains
Cryptokitties
Even though the ICO did not get quite the start they were hoping for, the sale of virtual ships have been going very well.
The first ship - the ARK 1, was sold for about $11,500USD and the other ships around $1400USD.
Funcom-veteran Morten Larssen who is the Publishing VP expected the ship sale to go well.
Many of the people we know are interested in these space ships are people who have made good money on crypto cats
Larsen says
Cryptokitties is a blockchain based computer game based on buying, breeding and selling digital cats. The most expensive cat has been sold for 246 ETH which is about $110,000USD, just under 1 million norwegian kroner, according to TechCrunch
In the same way as the cryptocats, the spaceships that Artplant is developing can be bought and sold by players.
The company did also in the end of January launch a pre-sale of Parsec Credits to a value of 699,89ETH which is about 5 million norwegian kroner.
Artplant and Wullf thinks that a crypto platform for raising capital has many advantages compared to a regular stock exchange listing.
Artplant has had success with Battlestar Galactica, and they wanted to be careful when it came to the ICO.
To develop a game like this is not that different from running a regular gamingstudio, except that you use a different technology and that the volatility in the crypto currency market is very high
larssen says
Wulff believes that some people are skeptical to the fact that they have demanded that investors must identify themselves to participate in the ICO
A lot of people don't like the fact that we ID our players. This was a discussion we had up front - it was not something we HAD to have, but we wanted to do this in a proper way as possible so we don't run into potential problems at a later stage
If the company is not able to raise the $1,6 million USD within the next 5 weeks, all investors from this round will get their money back.
We have a plan B and C, but the focus is of course to nail this
Read the original article in E24
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