[alexasmyths]

"the mechanism behind the ICOs is a solid one "

No - selling a 'fantasy number' in exchange for real currency is not 'solid' model.

ICO's have been big recently because buyers were hoping to get in early on a pyramid-like scheme. (Yes, I know it's not quite pyramid), i.e. it's been hype.

Because ICO's offer no ownership of assets ... well ... in the long run they're not worth much.

And 'ownerhip of an economy' is not saying much if there is no economy.

Kik's Kin coins are down 80% and not only that - Kik has 900 Billion of the Kins they can dilute the 100 Billion in market with, meaning another 90% devaluation is coming.

And Kin's get you a share of what economy exactly? The 'Kik' economy? There is no Kik economy.

[mrwong]

Dismissing ICO in this early stage is equal to dismissing eCommerce 20years ago because someone got scammed buying something online.

Countries like Switzerland and Singapore created and will further create a legal structure to connect the real world transactions to the tokens.

Sure some countries will ban it, just like China has banned free internet access, this doesn't mean that free internet access is bad.

[vidarh]

If you were around 20 years ago, or more like 25 years ago, you might remember any number of micro-payments platforms that are no nowhere to be seen. Believing that most of these ICO's will lead to failures is more akin to believing that most of those would fail than it is to having believed e-commerce overall was set to fail.

A lot of people will lose a lot of money, and some will come out of it with huge profits. The problem is we don't reliably know which will fail and which will succeed.

[wpietri]

Excellent point. RIP DigiCash, CyberCash, First Virtual, Beenz, Flooz, et cetera, ad nauseam.

And come to think of it, I think Flooz reached better merchant adoption than any blockchain-based digital currency has managed to get.

[EugeneAZ]

That's why I encourage Elon Musk to save us all! https://www.reddit.com/r/elonmusk/comments/7f1utt/em_should_...

[empath75]

Name one ICO that has backed a legitimate, on-going, profit-making business, beyond selling ico tokens.

[mrwong]

ICO sales took of this summer, early stage startups usually, so would be naive to think that most of them should be profitable already.

But here are a two.

Startup that issues you a Mastercard that is backed by your BTC, ETC. So you can shop at any store that accepts CCs, but never hold actual Fiat currencies. You recieve tokens as a form of cashback for your CC revenue. And all tokenholder get a share of all the revenue that happens on all the TenX issued CCs. https://www.tenx.tech/

An online casino that shares it profits with the tokenholders (shareholders) https://www.edgeless.io/#!/index

[alexasmyths]

"ICO sales took of this summer"

They're almost all flat.

Why does anyone think that anyone will be interested in buying 'Kin' tokens?

These tokens are magic numbers that someone made up.

You people are buying Monopoly money. Worse - Monopoly money is at least made of paper you could use for something possibly.

Kik's Kin tokens are way down, and they are not coming back up. Why on earth would they?

Billions of people around the world are going to start sinking all their money into thousands of fantasy tokens that have no use, and have no value? I don't think so.

[52-6F-62]

I'm not sure how it will go in the long run, but TenX is now listed as an agent with VISA. They have their own token called PAY.

https://www.visa.com/splisting/searchGrsp.do?companyNameCrit...

(I don't own any, but I've been watching it since I heard)

[jozzas]

Stellar (https://stellar.org) - is trying to solve real problems: low-cost cross-currency payments, micropayments, enabling mobile bank branches, mobile money and services for the underbanked. Their tooling for integration with FSPs is looking very good.

[xtracto]

I know that OPSkins created DMarket

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/opskins-founders-to...

[asymmetric]

storj.

[gruez]

>Dismissing ICO in this early stage is equal to dismissing eCommerce 20years ago because someone got scammed buying something online.

no, that's dismissing the mechanism (buying stuff over the internet). the problem with ICOs is that they're essentially penny stocks, but worse (at least penny stocks are somewhat regulated). ability to raise funds anonymously + promise of riches + unregulated market = maximum potential for scams.

a more accurate description would be to dismiss online pyramid schemes (not saying all ICOs are pyramid schemes, but bare with me) because their offline counterpart is flawed, and doing it online doesn't address any of the issues.

[mrwong]

I think your opposition is a political one. I would argue that the free market will sort it out.

Sure people will get scammed a ton. But we can't ignore the insane liquidity that those types of fundraises allow. This has huge overall benefits for the society, after the first few waves of mania settle down.

After a while some people will stay away from it, others will benefit.

We have a ton of high variance financial instruments on the market already, like options, and tons of people got burned. We kept the financial instruments because they were overall beneficial for price discovery and liquidity in the market. The people that got burned now stay away and we didn't need to ban anything.

What I always notice is that those discussion tend to be very nationalistic, which means that its usually 95% of the world is excluded from the picture.

There are maybe guys in Israel, Ukraine, Singapore, Japan etc. that want to raise money with an ICO or that fund to fund an ICO with 100$ or 10000$.

I think the next silicon valley will be the jurisdiction that will offer the best legal structure to run serious ICOs. It will be a no-brainer for the founding teams to move to this jurisdictions. Just like many international startups setup offices in Silicon Valley to get better access to capital.

Your point that most ICOs so far were shitty companies actually shows how much potential this mechanism has. Serious founders with a track record will be able to raise billions this way.

[gruez]

>I think your opposition is a political one. I would argue that the free market will sort it out.

that seems like a liberterian cop-out, and it doesn't take into account that it takes time and energy to do due diligence, most people are naive and can't do due diligence, and there's a huge incentive for ICO founders to lie, which creates an asymmetry of information.

>We have a ton of high variance financial instruments on the market already, like options, and tons of people got burned. We kept the financial instruments because they were overall beneficial for price discovery and liquidity in the market. The people that got burned now stay away and we didn't need to ban anything.

at least with those instruments, you know what you were getting into. all of that goes out the window when it comes to unregulated securities, where the seller can outright lie to you.

>What I always notice is that those discussion tend to be very nationalistic, which means that its usually 95% of the world is excluded from the picture.

how? is it the mention of the SEC?

>I think the next silicon valley will be the jurisdiction that will offer the best legal structure to run serious ICOs. It will be a no-brainer for the founding teams to move to this jurisdictions. Just like many international startups setup offices in Silicon Valley to get better access to capital.

SV = in US = SEC jurisdiction. the ideal jurisdiction would be somewhere where banking privacy is high, and securities regulation is low. so probably a random Caribbean island.

[CryptoPunk]

>>that seems like a liberterian cop-out, and it doesn't take into account that it takes time and energy to do due diligence, most people are naive and can't do due diligence, and there's a huge incentive for ICO founders to lie, which creates an asymmetry of information.

People learn surprisingly quickly. A consumer base has a sort of collective wisdom that evolves as it gains experiences. Years ago, people would trust fly by night Bitcoin wallets that store the bitcoin client-side, and numerous scams and hacks cost people hundreds of thousands of bitcoin as a result.

Now everyone stays away, even new users, because only highly secure and reputable wallets that store cryptocurrency client side, or credible exchanges with cold-storage, are recommended on all major information portals, and everyone (including any likely first contact point for a new cryptocurrency user) strongly warns users to avoid storing their cryptocurrency on untrusted websites.

[CryptoPunk]

The "client-side" should be "server-side" here:

>people would trust fly by night Bitcoin wallets that store the bitcoin client-side,

[wpietri]

The main difference is that 20 years ago, eCommerce was actually good for pretty common use cases. 20 years ago today I'd already had 9 successful orders from Amazon totaling 38 books. I was hardly an early adopter; at that point Amazon had been going more than 2 years.

In contrast, I'd be willing to bet that the bulk of ICOs to date will in 10 years time be seen as failures.

[CryptoPunk]

Token sales using an immutable ledger that guarantees open access to third parties to trade digital assets, and a payment system that is open, censorship resistant and global, have advantages over the prior art. These two features combined reduce financial friction and provide a stable platform for the development of financial technology (e.g. decentralized exchanges like EtherDelta and OasisDEX, and token wallets like MyEtherWallet and Jibrel).

[eru]

> No - selling a 'fantasy number' in exchange for real currency is not 'solid' model.

How are fantasy numbers any worse than fantasy equity of a new startup?

[alexasmyths]

You can buy a piece of a startup, and that has risk, but you take on that risk.

When you buy tokens, you're buying nothing.

So - ownership of something that may have value, vs. ownership of nothing.

[eru]

I don't get it. A company _is_ a fiction, too. And that fictional nature is very close to the surface in a startup. Especially when you add in vesting schedules, dilution, getting squeezed out, etc.

(For more established companies, their equity's value works more like bitcoin: they might still go bankrupt and be worthless in eg thirty years, but they are unlikely to totally crash in the next few months.)

[baby]

It'a the same as buying shares for a company

[svennek]

Except that companies have real (and for bigcorp, relatively stable) value, and that you are entitled to a fraction of it's dividend payouts (if it pays out dividends)

[baby]

Legit ICOs work the same way. They have a solid product to support.

[svennek]

I fail to see the value of "legit ico" vs. stocks..

The only real difference is the lack of oversight and "common rules" - both of which I value when I invest my own money...

Stock (or bonds for that matter) have a long and stable legal history and are mostly standardized and well understood. (Not that investing in them is easy, I primarily buy ETFs).

ICOs are more wild-west anything goes, which just opens up so many cans of worms IMHO.. And if/when it gets too big or to wild-west all financial bodies declares the securities and they are then under the exact same rules...

[alexasmyths]

"Legit ICOs work the same way. "

No - they don't.

'Shares' give you ownership of the companies assets.

ICO 'Coins' give you ownership of a made up number - nothing more.

[gruez]

but not "company" like Apple or Google, more like "company" like an anonymous entity that have 0 revenue and can run away at any time with no recourse for you.