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No. 2013 was a lot of clones of bitcoin with a few parameters changed. Nowadays ICOs I'm seeing involve a lot of very hard work. The risk is that the teams m

No. 2013 was a lot of clones of bitcoin with a few parameters changed. Nowadays ICOs I'm seeing involve a lot of very hard work. The risk is that the teams may way under-estimate how much work it is (And I think that's what's going to cause them to fail) but they are a lot more ambitious than you are characterizing.

davidgerard 9y ago
This doesn't appear to be an accurate description of the ICO market as it exists. The hardest work in ICOs is the marketing. At the back end, they literally put in the fine print that the thing you just bought is worthless. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/icos-magic-beans-and-bubble-machines/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/icos-magic-beans-and-bu... Look up the EOS fine print. They took down the PDF, but I kept a spare: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/references/EOS%20Token%20Purchase%20Agreement%20-%20June%2022,%202017.pdf https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/references/EOS%20Token%... TODO this evening: write up a blog post on the ICO for (I am not making this up) synthetic rhino horn dick pills.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  It's literally saying "Give us your money and we will give you nothing in return"! WTF?!
  - davidgerard 9y ago
    And EOS has been one of the biggest ICOs. Also, despite the "no US citizens" bit, it's been advertising to the general public in the US (and in the UK). They are selling an ERC-20 magic bean to be traded on the bubble machines, and both buyers and sellers are going nod-nod wink-wink.
    - prostoalex 9y ago
      Offtopic, but I just finished reading your book, and you, sir, are very eloquent.
richardknop 9y ago
No it is still the same as Bitcoin clones in 2013. These days ICOs are cloning the same smart contract template and just making small edits to it. Most of the time they barely have any other code than just the slightly edited smart contract template and white paper which is also pretty much a copy paste with buzz words relevant to their niche. And based on that they are raising millions of dollars. Of course there are couple of exceptions of projects that actually seem to have some tech foundation (like Sia for example) but these are rare. Scam copy cats without any tech are majority of ICOs. Their reasoning is "we have an idea, let's raise millions of dollars and we will hire bunch of devs to write the software". Mostly founders are non technical "idea people" so I would doubt their ability to even know if their idea is feasible. Projects which start with strong technical foundations and don't try to raise money to build their tech (putting cart in front of the horse) are the solid ones. Projects which have no tech and raise money first, those are not likely to succeed imho.
prostoalex 9y ago
> Nowadays ICOs I'm seeing involve a lot of very hard work. For example? What ICO idea is not a previously failed startup? Distributed file storage that's been built a few times and each time turned out to be painfully slow and impractical? An iOS and Android port of the wallet software? Yet another browser?

davidgerard 9y ago

This doesn't appear to be an accurate description of the ICO market as it exists. The hardest work in ICOs is the marketing. At the back end, they literally put in the fine print that the thing you just bought is worthless. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/icos-magic-beans-and-bubble-machines/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/icos-magic-beans-and-bu... Look up the EOS fine print. They took down the PDF, but I kept a spare: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/references/EOS%20Token%20Purchase%20Agreement%20-%20June%2022,%202017.pdf https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/references/EOS%20Token%... TODO this evening: write up a blog post on the ICO for (I am not making this up) synthetic rhino horn dick pills.

dingo_bat 9y ago
It's literally saying "Give us your money and we will give you nothing in return"! WTF?!
- davidgerard 9y ago
  And EOS has been one of the biggest ICOs. Also, despite the "no US citizens" bit, it's been advertising to the general public in the US (and in the UK). They are selling an ERC-20 magic bean to be traded on the bubble machines, and both buyers and sellers are going nod-nod wink-wink.
  - prostoalex 9y ago
    Offtopic, but I just finished reading your book, and you, sir, are very eloquent.

richardknop 9y ago

No it is still the same as Bitcoin clones in 2013. These days ICOs are cloning the same smart contract template and just making small edits to it. Most of the time they barely have any other code than just the slightly edited smart contract template and white paper which is also pretty much a copy paste with buzz words relevant to their niche. And based on that they are raising millions of dollars. Of course there are couple of exceptions of projects that actually seem to have some tech foundation (like Sia for example) but these are rare. Scam copy cats without any tech are majority of ICOs. Their reasoning is "we have an idea, let's raise millions of dollars and we will hire bunch of devs to write the software". Mostly founders are non technical "idea people" so I would doubt their ability to even know if their idea is feasible. Projects which start with strong technical foundations and don't try to raise money to build their tech (putting cart in front of the horse) are the solid ones. Projects which have no tech and raise money first, those are not likely to succeed imho.

prostoalex 9y ago

> Nowadays ICOs I'm seeing involve a lot of very hard work. For example? What ICO idea is not a previously failed startup? Distributed file storage that's been built a few times and each time turned out to be painfully slow and impractical? An iOS and Android port of the wallet software? Yet another browser?