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by wmf 3191 days ago
You make it sound like VCs and CoinList don't exist.
1 comments

I am well aware, but YC is extremely anti-ICO as is HN, so I am trying to communicate reality to the general commenters here.
You'd think HN would be pro-ICO, but there's too many people here with sunk costs in the VC paradigm.
VC isn't against ICO, VC has a very important part to play in the ICO system in terms of due diligence and "stamp of approval". I know many prominent VC's who are serious about tokens, but usually they are spinning out new funds without the LP agreements they currently have.

The scary thing to the current system is that entrepreneurs are getting more power. The bullshit common in fundraising (i.e. last minute changes that threaten to blow up the raise, unreasonable asks from capital, multi-month full-time fundraising, I can go on...) will become abnormal as raising money gets easier.

People forget that VCs also raise money. Setting up a venture fund that is backed by an ICO token would be a good way to give public accredited investors access to the private market.
To which this quasi-legal shitshow of a shell game is the solution?!
Compare the time to liquidity and global access between VC investments and tokens, and you'll see its the beginning of a solution. But you all would rather see it trampled before being optimized for the benefit of all, for some reason.
I see one benefit coming with a hoard of downsides, and nothing like an attempt or desire to fix those downsides, which in fact play like financial upsides to the ICO providers and high-level players with money to lose.
You can't compare benefits and downsides like that. The single benefit could dwarf all of the downsides by several orders of magnitude.

As for the downsides, these will gradually diminish through inherent market dynamics, like rising collective knowledge within the cryptocurrency investment community, the emergence of reputable services that aid token buyers in vetting token options, etc.