Although I supported a number of ICOs in the past, both as an advisor and as a pre-sale investor, I deliberately chose not to write about them too publicly. Securities laws can be far-reaching, and I certainly did not want to violate any. More importantly, however, I did not want to inadvertently make an open endorsement encouraging people to invest in these projects, all of which are highly risky and even some of dubious intent. In contrast, I don’t mind speaking about my VC portfolio from time to time, as these are private companies, closed to public investment, so limited risk of harm to readers of this blog.

I’ll make an exception to this precedent by mentioning one upcoming ICO in Europe. My reason for this is that the very question of VC-backed ICOs in Europe came up during my talk at Beyond Blocks in Tokyo earlier this month.

Not to overdo the disclaimers, but let me emphasize that I am not making a public recommendation of investment in any way here. I have no direct personal stake in this venture and have not even met the management team. I barely understand what it’s about.

But my “partners in crime” over at Truffle tell me it’s the first ever VC-backed ICO in Europe, so I thought it sufficiently newsworthy to mention, since this exact question was addressed to me at Beyond Blocks. And accordingly, this is a fairly momentous milestone for Europe’s cryptocurrency ecosystem.

The project is called MoneyTrack. Here are some links to press articles explaining it (here, here, and here). For you readers who happen to be in Hong Kong on May 5th, they’re holding a road show at the Shangri-La (invitation here).

Drop by if you’re in town and tell me how it goes !