Rentberry’s ICO Becomes the Industry’s Largest Raising Over $20M
| Updatedby Julia Sakovich · 3 min read
Long term rental platform Rentberry proves a hit with token buyers while a month of sale is still ahead.
Rentberry, the long term rental platform, has raised more than $20M in its Initial Coin Offering (ICO), with almost a third of the sale period still remaining. This makes it the largest ever raise for a real estate industry ICO.
“In part I think this is a testimony to the strong existing business we have underlying the token sale,” reflects Alex Lubinsky, the CEO of Rentberry. “The fact that our platform is already successfully operating in almost 5,000 cities puts it apart from more apirational tokens that don’t build upon an existing business.”
Rentberry was created with an aim to provide better connection between tenants and landlords and simplify the way of their communication eliminating the necessity of having a third party. With the help of this blockchain-based platform tenants have an opportunity to find their perfect offer considering landlords’ reviews and actions within the platform.
Rentberry have generated significant interest from both token buyers and institutional investors, including VC firm Zing Capital. The Rentberry auction rental platform has been in business since 2015 and operates somewhat like a cross between eBay and Airbnb, allowing prospective tenants to outbid each other on the rental rate they are willing to pay.
This was recognized from the outset as a disruptive technology, and the platform received significant media attention from major outlets including Vanity Fair, the BBC, and Wall Street Journal. In rent-competitive San Francisco, Rentberry was criticized for driving up the prices for renters by as much as 5%, though Rentberry insist that the trend has in fact been reversed in other cities with less extreme rental pressures, and has offered lower costs to renters.
The Rentberry ICO was launched on December 5 on the Cryptonomos platform where their BERRY tokens will be offered until February 28. Rentberry chose Cryptonomos for the full-service delivery of their ICO, with Cryptonomos providing everything from marketing, to token economics, and the build out of the ICO infrastructure of their blockchain.
Having reached the Soft Cap of $ 3 million with 2 673 contibutors in 48 hours the Rentberry ICO has raised more than $20 million in just 14 days. Thanks to such achievements Rentberry project was noted as one of the Top 10 ICOs to watch in 2018 and Top 10 Real Estate Startups of 2018 on Forbes. While the hard cap is fixed at $ 30 million, still there is some time left for potential invetsors to make their decision and consider the investment opportunities that are offered.
Rentberry is a compelling blockchain candidate – as well as offering the advantages of a streamlining a multi-faceted collection of services, and keeping an immutable record of transactions, the Rentberry token sale aims to leverage a decentralized blockchain to break up the money tied up in rental deposits.
Currently a renter’s deposit sits in an escrow account and does little to generate additional value. On the Rentberry blockchain, BERRY token holders will be able to crowdsource up to 90% of the rental deposit of renters and generate interest-type returns on their tokens. This should make rents and moving less of a hassle for renters, and offer a whole new crypto marketplace to token holders.
