ICO of the Day #3: Status

10 Questions answered about an ICO. Today: Status for my new follower and steemit mate @justatg as he mentioned he was looking to invest in it. Bit later then I intended to post but I still don't make enough money here to sell my company. If you have any ICO you want me to write about do let me know. Tomorrow I'll write about Civic.

1. When will the ICO take place?
The ICO is currently ongoing and there have been some hiccups. It started at Ethereum Block Number 3903900. The ICO will end on the 4th of July 2017 at 15:52 GMT or within 24 hours after the First Ceiling has been reached.

2. What is the initial price?
1 Ether will give you 10,000 Status Network Tokens (SNT) and this is fixed.

3. What is the total supply?
The maximum total amount is 300,000 Ether. This will have a total value of $108 million considering an Ethereum price of $360.00. BUT please read the answer to question 5.

Status is making use of a Dynamic Ceiling. Which simply said means that there are multiple floors in the ICO and you won't know what is on the next floor until you climbed all the stairs and you reached the next floor. They only announced the First Floors height (limit) and the final hard ceiling (maximum amount) of Ether they will accept shortly before the start of the ICO. When contributions hit 12 million Swiss Francs the ICO will end within a maximum of 24 hours and a multiple other hidden ceilings will come in play. Status will have to publicly announce when a ceiling has been reached and what the next ceiling size is before accepting Ether again. Only allowing smaller payments of Ether to come in when the ICO reaches a certain amount helps the fight against a few whales snooping up all the SNT.

Currently raised $64 million already.

4. Will there be an additional issue of tokens?
No, the total amount of SNT depends on the total amount of Ether received in the fundraiser. BUT please read the answer to question number 5!

5. What is the ICO structure?
The amount of SNT given to investors that contributed to the ICO will be 41% of the total amount of SNT created during the ICO. The maximum amount of tokens for Pool A will be: 7,317,073,171

20% of the total amount of SNT will be given to the founders of Status and it's team. To guarantee investors that the founders won't immediately sell all there tokens the 20% will be handed over to them over a vesting period of 24 months and the first 6 months they can't sell anything (a so-called 6 months cliff).

A maximum of 10% of SNT created will be allocated to people that hold Status Genesis Tokens (SGT). These tokens have been handed out to people that in one way or another contributed to Status and its community.

The final 29% will be locked up for at least 12 months and is kept for future stakeholders/contributors. Status refers to this is SNT reserve which can help in acquiring additional resources with the single purpose of growing the network. If, at a later stage, there is no use for this 29% or any part of it they will re-lock it or burn it.

6. What is a Status Network Token?
According to the whitepaper of Status:

The Status Network token is a modular utility token that fuels the Status network. This includes a Decentralized Push Notification Market, Governance of the Status client, Community Curation of content, along with social communication tools such as Tribute to Talk. We also propose a fiat-to-crypto 'Teller Network', DApp Directory, Sticker Market, and demonstrate our research on a User Acquisition Engine to grow the Network.

7. How can I purchase and store Status Network Tokens?
To participate in the ICO you need to first buy Ethereum which can be done on all the big exchanges like Kraken and PoloniEx or you can ShapeShift. BUT whatever you do don't directly send it from you exchange to the Smart Contract Address as these exchanges can't receive your SNT. Transactions using other multi-currency wallets like Jaxx will also not go through. Therefore, make sure you have a wallet that supports SNT so use one of the following 5:

• MyEtherWallet.com
• Metamask
• Mist
• imToken
• Mist

My advice is to always check the official website of the coin, in this case status.im, to make sure you are using the right wallet, amount of gas, etc. In this case Status made some very helpful tutorial videos.

8. What is Status?
Status is a free and open source messaging platform and mobile interface (app), for Android and iOS, to interact with
decentralized applications that run on the Ethereum Network and so run on Ethereum technology.

9. The Team
I'll keep it short as the ICO is already happening. Status was founded by Carl Bennetts and Jarrad Hope whom started Status after having worked together operating a software distribution network and experiencing how personal data is being traded on the internet and how users are acquired and retained. You can type their names in google and check their track records. The team itself consists of 10 people and there are a bunch of advisers which will have influence on that 29% of reserve SNT.

10. Should you buy it?
I was a bit put of by the fact that all the people that will transfer Ether during the ICO will together only receive 41% of the tokens. Then there is the 29% that is sitting in a reserve which can possibly be burned but why would they burn millions of dollars. However, I do see a profit to be made when it hits the exchanges because the hype is there.
Personally I am going to keep a close eye on the project but will keep my money ready for another ICO.
Rather buy some Steem as an investment to hold on too.

Thank you for reading, please share your thoughts and don't hesitate to leave a comment, follow me or upvote my posts!

Sources:
https://status.im/whitepaper.pdf
https://contribute.status.im/status-terms.pdf
http://www.coindesk.com/ico-blues-status-raises-58-million-leaves-buyers-waiting/