Here's How Investors Can Take Part In The Clout ICO

Clout just closed out on the initial issue of the 2.5 million tokens that comprise its ICO presale. The presale was a success beyond expectations, with the company closing it down ahead of time on the back of strong demand for the tokens issued, and has allowed Clout to get a running start on the development of its flagship platform.With the presale now complete and platform development underway, attention turns to the primary token issue and – by proxy – the period across which the company intends to raise the lion's share of the development capital required to get the Clout platform to a public beta and, subsequently, to a commercial launch.While the ICO space has drawn a considerable amount of media attention over the last 6 to 12 months, the process through which potential traders and investors can pick up an exposure to a particular ICO remains somewhat complicated to (and, by proxy, out of reach for) a large majority of those who might be more familiar with the traditional equities markets.With this in mind, here is a look at what a trader or investor needs to do, step-by-step, in order to gain exposure to this promising launch.By way of a quick introduction, Clout is developing a platform that's pitched as a social network sharing platform over which users can create, share and be rewarded for the content they create.There is plenty of detail on the intricacies of the platform available at the company's website here so we won't go into the specifics right now. Instead, our focus is on what investor needs to do in order to allocate towards this launch.So, here goes.The way that the vast majority of these ICO's work is they seek to raise capital denominated in Ether, the cryptocurrency associated with the Ethereum platform, which they then convert into fiat (so, normally, US dollar) to use for operational purposes. Clout is no different.The token sale works as follows:A trader or investor who wants to buy CLOUT tokens needs to send Ether (ETH) to the company's ETH wallet.So, first step, head on over to this website where the company has displayed a widget above the fold on the right-hand side that is designed to facilitate participation. Click Participate, click to acknowledge a couple of terms and conditions and then enter the address of the Ethereum wallet that you want the CLOUT tokens to be sent to. You then choose to contribute in either BTC or ETH (this is pretty rare for an ICO, normally participation is limited to ETH contributions) and, once the choice has been made, you send the amount of ETH or BTC you want to convert to CLOUT to the company's ICO address.This is:0x1eadec9027847685a39fdd73cb38745c8850c8d3The system is built on a smart contract type framework meaning once you have sent funds to the above address and, subsequently, the funds have been confirmed as received, CLOUT tokens will be automatically issued to the address you entered in the previous stepNote, CLOUT tokens are ERC20 compliant, meaning they can be sent to and stored in any compatible Ethereum wallet. For anybody that doesn't have an Ethereum in wallet, it's possible to pick one up from MyEtherWallet, which is one of the more popular resources available right now.So that's it.Relatively simple.As a side note, this is all assuming that readers have bitcoin or ETH stored somewhere prior to heading over to the Clout website to participate. If not, probably the quickest and easiest way to pick up either of these cryptocurrency is to use Coinbase, which is an exchange through which it's possible to buy BTC and ETH quickly and easily in exchange for fiat currency (US dollar, sterling, euro, etc.).The Clout ICO will close 30 days post-opening.Image courtesy of InvestmentTotal.com via Flickr