[wwwv]

It's worthwhile to note that not a single once of the thousands of "ICO" things that have been launched in the last year have actually done anything of value. They all generate hype, raise money, and then give up and go to work on other things. It happens over and over again with no memory of the past failures, apparently.

That said I wouldn't fault you for believing that a lot of the $xM raised in x ICO just turned out to be largely the creator seeding the pot and a minority of other people buying into something "big". You could even take out a loan, there's nearly zero risk other than the operator of the ICO running with the scratch.

[EthanHeilman]

>It's worthwhile to note that not a single once of the thousands of "ICO" things that have been launched in the last year have actually done anything of value. They all generate hype, raise money, and then give up and go to work on other things.

I agree that many ICOs are scams, but I disagree with your statement for the following reasons:

1. Most large ICOs have not been scams, but several have failed (see theDAO). Because you choose a short time horizon (launched in the last year) it excludes both successes like the Ethereum ICO and failures like theDAO.

2. We say "They all" however most of the larger ICOs have not been scams. I only need to provide a single counter-example: look at the Brave ICO.

>It happens over and over again with no memory of the past failures, apparently.

I'd be interested in seeing some examples? What ICOs over 5 million USD in the last year were scams? For the record I don't doubt you can find some.

[TeMPOraL]

> It's worthwhile to note that not a single once of the thousands of "ICO" things that have been launched in the last year have actually done anything of value.

I honestly thought there was like a few of ICOs to date, and that the whole thing is like a month or two old. Does anyone track these things? A continuously updated list would be great!

[bismark]

Here is a list I've come across, I'm not sure how exhaustive it is: https://www.smithandcrown.com/icos/

[richardknop]

Oh no, this has been going on for about a year, with increasingly more ludicrous amounts of money when random people living in exotic countries with questionable jurisdiction are starting companies and without any product, just a whitepaper (so PDF file with some nice pie charts and buzzwords) raise tens of millions of USD in exchange for blockchain tokens which then get traded on exchanges where speculators further drive up their price.

It's becoming especially more concerning now that we have one man companies raising hundreds of millions of dollars in couple of hours/days. This can't end well.