Polkadot DOT token pre-sale has been announced

The Web 3 Foundation has to announced the Polkadot DOT token pre-sale on the main website. On the back of this I've created a subreddit Polkadot Market to discuss the ICO and for future token trading.

The key points:

• The sale is a "spend-all" second-price Dutch auction where a fixed amount representing 50% of the total genesis block allocation of tokens will be sold.
• In the sale the token price (and therefore "cap") starts high and decreases over time until all tokens are sold. The timetable of how fast the price reduces is predefined, starting fast and getting slower over time.
• Accepting Ether and possibly other cryptocurrencies (depending on technical feasibility and timeline).
• Targeting mid-August for the start of the sale.
• 14-day countdown will be shown prior to the start date.
• The final details, including identity requirements and auction timetable will be published along with the specific date that the sale will begin in the near future.
• Tokens purchased during this sale will not exist until the genesis block launch, currently estimated to happen in Q3 2019.
• From a comment made by Gavin Wood in the Riot chat: "20% of the tokens is reserved for later pre-launch distributions; probably sales, but can't rule out other mechanisms, too" (this was in response to what might happen to the remaining 50% of the Genesis block)

Analysis

I provided preliminary analysis here: My preliminary analysis of the Polkadot ICO

Now that the ICO has been announced with some more details, I have the following to add:

Basically, those folks who are most keen about the future of the project should buy the tokens as early as possible. It seems unlikely that the tokens will sell out on the first day. By the end of the auction the price will be lower than where it started which means that all investors get the best price. It has also been stated enough tokens will be available for everyone.

It would be great to see the timetable for the rates at which the price reduces. Although it isn't long now. They are looking at mid-August which is only ~2 weeks away now.

I'd be most keen to know what the starting price is: e.g. 1 Eth ~ 200 DOTs (so about a dollar a DOT). Hopefully, the price is lower though. While the exact exchange rate won't really affect the total amount raised I do see a there is a psychological about buying tokens that have a high value in dollars. As we don't yet know how useful the tokens will be, or how abundant they will be, we can't really put an exact value on the price.

Disclaimer: this is not investment advice.
Disclaimer: this is not the opinion of my employer.