Jack Dorsey Backs $10 Million Round for Token Offering Platform CoinList

Token offering platform CoinList has raised $10 million with backing from Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey.

CoinList announced Wednesday the closing of a Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital and joined by Dorsey and Collaborative Fund. The capital will go towards the further development of CoinList Trade, a new exchange platform, along with a crypto wallet, according to the Wall Street Journal and a company Medium post. The latest funding round follows a 2018 seed round joined by Polychain Capital and Digital Currency Group, among others.

Dorsey’s investment is reportedly his first in the platform, which the WSJ said has helped companies raise some $800 million in tokens since August 2017. A vocal bitcoin proponent, Dorsey launched a bitcoin-only developer arm at Square earlier this year and has recently come out as decidedly against the Facebook-initiated Libra project, which he said was "not consistent" with Twitter's values.

In a statement to the Journal, Dorsey said the San Francisco-based firm presents an honest solution for coin launches.

Launching in May 2017, CoinList helps firms navigate regulatory rules concerning initial coin offerings (ICOs), a popular capital acquisition vehicle for emerging projects. Projects Blockstack, Algorand, Filecoin and Dfinity have all leveraged the firm for token offerings and distributions. CoinList's exchange is initially operating in 38 states and some international jurisdictions with support for cryptocurrencies bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), algorand (ALGO) and USD Coin (USDC).

ICOs continue to be a prime target for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Earlier this month, messaging platform Telegram’s token distribution was held up following an emergency restraining order by the regulator over the firm’s $1.4 billion offering. The SEC and Telegram are set to go to court over the token issuance Feb. 18–19.

Jack Dorsey image via Shutterstock