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What is an ICO?

• prawn 9y ago
  Initial Coin Offering. An unregulated fundraising method.
• Gaelan 9y ago
  Essentially, selling some amount of your cryptocurrency to your investors before you launch.
• Iv 9y ago
  A new way to fund companies. Instead of selling parts, issue tokens that work like a cryptocurrency and promise they will entitle to some profits. Sell these for bitcoins. Recently some companies raised a billion USD that way (yes, billion) The concern, that I share, is that this system is very vulnerable to Ponzi scheme. And unlike Bitcoin, the crash of the pyramid is not a feature in this system. I think people are right to warn and forbid this thing. Pyramid scheme can have large-scale effect in an economy. I think etherum provides way to do things more responsibly but I understand that authorities moved quickly when they saw anonymous companies with no products receiving a billion USD. Even that will cause ripples when it collapses. You don't want it to grow more.
  • turk183 9y ago
    The reason a lot of Wall Street finance types are running to these altcoins is exactly what you say--it's the new penny stocks. There's no regulation and so they are free to manipulate prices however they wish. I'm not sure it's a Ponzi, but it's definitely manipulated by the insiders.
• freyir 9y ago
  It's an Initial Coin Offering, a unregulated way for a company to raise funds, but which has also been associated with scams and Ponzi schemes recently.
• davidgerard 9y ago
  Magic beans from bubble machines. People buying tokens that are literally defined as being worthless, and trading them on exchanges as fast as possible. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/icos-magic-beans-and-bubble-machines/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/icos-magic-beans-and-bu...