Coinbase's Monad public token sale starts hot and then fizzles

Coinbase's new public token sales platform kicked into gear on Monday by selling Monad tokens to retail investors — but after a quick start, commitments began to slow. 

Roughly six hours after it began, the Monad token sale was 45% subscribed with more than $100 million worth of tokens remaining. Nearly half of that amount was generated less than half an hour after the sale opened Monday morning, according to Coinbase Product Director Scott Shapiro, who posted X. 

"$43 million in 23 minutes is insane," one enthusiastic X user replied to Shapiro. That figure accounted for roughly 23% of the 7.5 billion MON on offer. According to Coinbase, Monad's public sale has brought in $90.05 million in commitments, accounting for approximately 48% of the total amount of tokens being offered, as of publication time. 

While Monad's token sale might eventually pick up momentum once again before the offering's first 24 hours come to a close — perhaps after many Asian traders start their day — it appears that results could pale in comparison to the MegaETH token sale from last month.

MegaETH's public sale was so oversubscribed that it officially closed at a "hypothetical" fully-diluted valuation above $27.8 billion. With MegaETH seeking to raise about $50 million, investors committed over $1.39 billion.

Monad is seeking to raise about $187 million worth of USDC, with the maximum and minimum bid set at 100,000 USDC and 100 USDC, respectively. One person with close knowledge of the Monad offering told The Block that because the sale is for a "fixed period rather than being first-come, first-served ... there is less incentive for a big rush on day one."

There were plenty of people to took to X on Monday who disagreed. "Looks like most people ain’t overtly excited about the Monad sale," X user @sam6170 posted Monday, several hours after the token sale launched.

Staking provider Stakecito, which posted a video to X a few days ahead of the sale, suggested that reasons to avoid the Monad token sale could include the project taking too much money from venture capitalists, in addition to the team already raising a significant amount of capital in another token sale. The project has also set aside coins for a community airdrop. 

"VC coins are bad and Monad has raised over 20% from VCs and 50% of the total token supply belongs to teams and early investors," the Stakecito team member said, noting that Monad had raised over $260 million from previous token sale funding rounds.

Monad's token sale launched Monday at an estimated $2.5 billion fully diluted value (FDV), which Stakecito argued was too high.  The public sale is scheduled to run until Saturday night.

In another sign that enthusiasm for the token sale had waned, a Polymarket poll of the dollar amount Monad would secure slowly eroded throughout the day.

Although arguably off to a lackluster start, the Monad token could still prove to be a seminal moment for not only Coinbase but also crypto as a whole. 

After last decade's initial coin offering, or ICO, boom attracted some fraudsters seeking to take advantage of investors, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission began cracking down in 2018. The SEC classified many tokens as unregistered securities, which effectively ended the ICO era and pushed most new token launches offshore or into private sales limited to accredited investors.

Coinbase launched its new public token sales platform shortly after buying Echo, the onchain fundraising platform founded by popular crypto trader Jordan Fish (aka Cobie). The U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange has said it would launch a new token sale about once a month.