From $730 To $83,000 In 2 Days: The FTX Star Atlas IEO

The initial exchange offering (IEO) for the tokens of a spacefaring game recently held on the crypto exchange FTX gave its participants astronomical returns.

What Happened: According to FTX, the Star Atlas IEO cost up to $500 plus five FTX Tokens FTT/USD for each ticket, for a total value of about $730 when the sale was held on Aug 26.

The offering prioritized the highest bidders, so it is highly unlikely that bids lower than those made received any compensation for their participation in the sale.

Each winning bidder received 180,000 Star Atlas ATLAS/USD and 1,800 Star Atlas DAO POLIS/USD for each ticket that was selected, giving them a sale price of $0.00138 per ATLAS and $0.138 per POLIS.

CoinMarketCap data shows that POLIS started trading on Sept 2 at about $8 — a nearly 57-fold increase — and reached a top price of $19.20 two days later, giving a staggering maximum price increase of 138x for a staggering value of $34,500.

When it comes to Star Atlas, CoinMarketCap data indicates that it started trading the same day at about $0.083 — nearly 60x from the IEO price — and registered an all-time high of $0.2719 two days later, for a price increase of over 196x.

The top valuation gives the coins obtained with a single ticket a value of nearly $49,000. Together, at their highest the coins were worth an incredible $83,442.

At their current value of $10.77 per POLIS and $0.1332 per ATLAS, the coins sold to single-ticket bidders are worth a total of $43,362 as of press time.

The Catch

While buying tokens that would be worth over $83,000 two days after their listing for $730 surely is tempting, this is a party in which not everyone can participate.

To obtain a single IEO ticket, a user needs to stake (lock) 150 FTT, which at the current price of about $75 is equivalent to $11,250, cutting a big chunk of investors out of the IEO in the retail-dominated crypto market.

On the other hand, this is probably the very reason why this IEO proved to be so profitable for those who managed to take part.

The Side Effect

The market apparently noticed that FTT serves as the key to buying highly sought-after tokens at discounted prices for potentially great profits.

As a consequence, its trading volume and price started taking off yesterday and resulted in the price reaching a high of $83.41 before Tuesday's market crash — a day-over-day price increase of about 33.6%.