Initial Coin Offering
A sale of a newly created token to the public to raise funds, typically before the product the token is meant for exists.
In the 2017 and 2018 wave, buyers sent bitcoin or ether to an address and received a new token in return, often on the strength of a document describing an unbuilt system; many projects never delivered, and regulators in several jurisdictions subsequently treated specific sales as unregistered securities offerings. The mechanics persist under later names. Token generation event, or TGE, is the broader modern term for the moment a token is first created and distributed, whether through a sale, an airdrop, a launch auction, or an exchange listing program, and it is usually preceded by private rounds at lower prices with their own vesting terms. Readers meet these terms in an asset's distribution history, where the sale price, the amount raised, and the lockups attached to each round explain the supply structure that follows.
In practice
A distribution history that lists a seed round, a private round, and a public sale at successively higher prices, each with its own lockup, describes who received supply and when it becomes transferable.
The common misunderstanding
Taking part in a token sale is not the same as buying equity: unless the documents say otherwise, buyers receive a token with no ownership of the issuing entity and no claim on its assets.