Recently, one of the biggest cryptocurrency mining pools in China, ViaBTC finished its first high-value initial coin offering (ICO), using the Wormhole protocol and the bitcoin cash (BCH) blockchain.

Exchange data revealed the ICO, which was the first to ever take place on the bitcoin cash blockchain, was able to raise $30 million in 2.2 hours, despite the ongoing crypto bear market.

ViaBTC’s ICO

ViaBTC, which was launched in 2016 is currently fifth-largest mining pool in the world, accounting for over 10% of the bitcoin blockchain’s hashrate. After securing a 20 million RMB funding round led by hardware manufacturing giant Bitmain in March, it then started its own crypto exchange, CoinEx.

On October 1, ViaBTC launched a new token, the ViaBTC Token (VIAT). ViaBTC refers to it as a “value-added services and privileges token,” mainly used as “gas” or a tool of value transfer.

 The token has a fixed supply of 2 billion, with 750 million to be allocated via community support, including CoinEx VIP and CET users, 250 million are going to be shared by partners, and the rest is set to be released bit by bit as mining rewards. CoinEx users who traded VIAT tokens on October 9 received an airdrop from the exchange’s CET tokens.

ViaBTC’s white paper states that 50% of VIAT tokens will be released and issued via the “DUO Mining” method which gives ViaBTC miners steady mining payouts, and now an added payout of VIAT. The white paper also states the token will be subject to a repurchasing plan and a burning process.

An excerpt from the white paper reads:

ViaBTC will buy back and “burn” VIAT with 20% of its quarterly revenue at the end of each quarter. This will reduce the total amount of VIAT steadily on a benign deflation model.

VIAT tokens can reportedly be used to pay for pool fees and extra privileges like miner purchases, transaction acceleration and ViaBTC souvenirs. Among the advisers for this new crypto are Jihan Wu, the co-founder and CEO of Bitmain, and controversial BCH evangelist Roger Ver.

ViaBTC is not the only mining pool that has launched a token. Huobi’s mining pool issued its own native token called HPT in August and a few other smaller pools like UU Pool and BW Pool have also issued corresponding tokens