5 ms·

Crypto boom spawns blockchain accelerators to help startups raise funds with ICO

23 points by schakraberty 9y ago

dreit1 9y ago
As someone who deeply believes in the ICO model, recent developments make me sad. In my view the ICO was a step towards solving wealth inequality. Average joes could take on risk via investing in small projects. They would have liquidity so that they could pull out at not a 100% loss if they absolutely needed to, and have the potential of a large upside. It also provided small businesses a way of achieving financing, and get an initial batch of customers. Small businesses and small investors both win. Now what I see is slimeball middleman trying to "advise" ICO's despite having zero credibility which extracts capital from the small business. Small teams are raising stupidly large amounts of money, instead of raising small amounts and actually CREATING value, and marketing has become 100x more important than product. I guess this is why we can't have nice things
- danieltillett 9y ago
  This is the way it has always been. Do you think the SEC was just created because someone in government thought it was a good idea?
  - Sangermaine 9y ago
    Many libertarian types do seem to believe something like that. The rise of crytpocurrencies and "smart contracts" has been an exercise in people relearning why we have these regulations in the first place.
    - numismatex 9y ago
      I think you're forgetting that often the shoe is on the other foot -- regulatory agencies create relationships between said agencies and industry leaders, so much that they assist them in creating a marketplace impossible for new faces to get into. There will always be as much Caveat Emptor as there is Caveat Venditor because people have, and will continue to take the easy way or get in over their heads. Half of businesses survive four or five years. It'll probably be more with the stupid amount of funding ICOs generate in some cases. I'll personally be creating a token and crowd-funding my business in the near future with a rather simplistic business-plan, on a far-smaller scale, relying on the business's success to grow rather than getting 100 mil tossed at me. I think most big ICOs have an investment in making "the little guy" look like a dumbass, and the only credibility possible being large teams of big faces in various industries. New tokens picking up the slack bitcoin, litecoin and ethereum offer definitely have a vested interest in the larger coins failing, including value-services like MonaCo, PIVX and (possible scamcoin) PlexToken, so there's that pressure as well. All in all, regulation would've prevented cryptocurrencies and ICOs overall, so saying that regulatory agencies stepping in, is a good thing, when they were all sourced from a CypherPunk that didn't believe government and regulation were a good thing for a variety of reasons.
- zht 9y ago
  can't the average Joe do the same with stock?
  - Mc_Big_G 9y ago
    The ROI on post-IPO stock is nothing compared to what the VCs get.
  - numismatex 9y ago
    And has to jump through hoops, and pay stock exchanges far more than is paid for service for cryptocurrency exchanges, without easy transfer. Much less be able to buy a fraction of a stock.

23 points by schakraberty 9y ago

As someone who deeply believes in the ICO model, recent developments make me sad. In my view the ICO was a step towards solving wealth inequality. Average joes could take on risk via investing in small projects. They would have liquidity so that they could pull out at not a 100% loss if they absolutely needed to, and have the potential of a large upside. It also provided small businesses a way of achieving financing, and get an initial batch of customers. Small businesses and small investors both win. Now what I see is slimeball middleman trying to "advise" ICO's despite having zero credibility which extracts capital from the small business. Small teams are raising stupidly large amounts of money, instead of raising small amounts and actually CREATING value, and marketing has become 100x more important than product. I guess this is why we can't have nice things

danieltillett 9y ago
This is the way it has always been. Do you think the SEC was just created because someone in government thought it was a good idea?
- Sangermaine 9y ago
  Many libertarian types do seem to believe something like that. The rise of crytpocurrencies and "smart contracts" has been an exercise in people relearning why we have these regulations in the first place.
  - numismatex 9y ago
    I think you're forgetting that often the shoe is on the other foot -- regulatory agencies create relationships between said agencies and industry leaders, so much that they assist them in creating a marketplace impossible for new faces to get into. There will always be as much Caveat Emptor as there is Caveat Venditor because people have, and will continue to take the easy way or get in over their heads. Half of businesses survive four or five years. It'll probably be more with the stupid amount of funding ICOs generate in some cases. I'll personally be creating a token and crowd-funding my business in the near future with a rather simplistic business-plan, on a far-smaller scale, relying on the business's success to grow rather than getting 100 mil tossed at me. I think most big ICOs have an investment in making "the little guy" look like a dumbass, and the only credibility possible being large teams of big faces in various industries. New tokens picking up the slack bitcoin, litecoin and ethereum offer definitely have a vested interest in the larger coins failing, including value-services like MonaCo, PIVX and (possible scamcoin) PlexToken, so there's that pressure as well. All in all, regulation would've prevented cryptocurrencies and ICOs overall, so saying that regulatory agencies stepping in, is a good thing, when they were all sourced from a CypherPunk that didn't believe government and regulation were a good thing for a variety of reasons.
zht 9y ago
can't the average Joe do the same with stock?
- Mc_Big_G 9y ago
  The ROI on post-IPO stock is nothing compared to what the VCs get.
- numismatex 9y ago
  And has to jump through hoops, and pay stock exchanges far more than is paid for service for cryptocurrency exchanges, without easy transfer. Much less be able to buy a fraction of a stock.