Augur Sold 1 Million Ethereum at $0.7, Why Experts Say It Was the Right Decision

According to cryptocurrency researcher Dovey Wan, the decentralized prediction marketplace Augur sold around 1 million Ethereum at $0.7 immediately following its fundraising round.

If Augur had sold its Ethereum reserve on the upside, in the $1,000 to $1,500 region, the $700,000 it obtained two years ago could have been worth $1 billion to $1.5 billion.

Even after an 80 percent correction, 1 million ether is worth around $280 million as of September 2018.

Augur raised over 1M ETH when price was $0.7, converted almost all right away which would worth at least $200M now, missed the upside completely.

Joey Krug, the creator of Augur, responded to Wan's criticism with the simple argument that Augur was and still is a startup, not a hedge fund.

As a startup and an open-source project, the immediate action of Augur was and should always be to convert the money raised in an ICO to fund development.

Investors do not provide millions of dollars worth of ether to projects to benefit the pockets of the founders, but to finance the blockchain networks being developed by the projects so that they can solely focus on the development side of it, not investment.

Linda Xie, co-founder of Scalar Capital and advisor to 0x Project, echoed the sentiment of Krug, stating that the decision of Augur to focus on building with the funds raised in its token sale was appropriate.

You and the Augur team did the right thing and I have been advising projects to do the same.

As Xie, who works with many cryptocurrency-related companies and some of the biggest Ethereum projects, emphasized that startups are advised to focus on development rather than operating a hedge fund with raised capital.