5 ms·

The word 'stolen' doesn't have its usual meaning in the ICO world. Isn't all or most money made on ICOs, effectively stolen? Everyone knows that ICOs are a scam

The word 'stolen' doesn't have its usual meaning in the ICO world. Isn't all or most money made on ICOs, effectively stolen? Everyone knows that ICOs are a scam.

charlesdm 9y ago
Not really. There are plenty of ICOs with legit projects. Have they gotten too much capital? Probably. But that doesn't make it a scam necessarily.
- SurrealSoul 9y ago
  Plenty of pyramid schemes lay on the back of some sort of product, knives or energy drinks or what have you. The existence of a product doesn't mean it isn't a scam
  - charlesdm 9y ago
    It also doesn't mean it is. You could say the same about companies raising venture funding, or the stock market, or private equity dumping companies onto the balance sheet of other companies, etc
    - aje403 9y ago
      The equivalent venture fund to these ICO's is run by that token sketchy brazilian guy who spends half of your money on flying a bunch of models to a big house in Ibiza he rented for the weekend. He's not exactly stealing your money, he's wisely using it to entertain executives and potential investors.
      - jrs95 9y ago
        Sounds wise to me, where do I sign up? I can take a pay cut for awhile.
  - cortesoft 9y ago
    I mean, I hate MLMs as much as the next guy, and would never participate, but they are slightly different than a pure pyramid scheme.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      They're a pyramid scheme with a pinch of showbusiness sprinkled on top :).
    - vkou 9y ago
      No, they are not pyramid schemes per se - they are more of an inverse funnel.
      - Y_Y 9y ago
        I would have called it a shady trapezoid.
  - ojr 9y ago
    So we should rather invest in IPOs that pop as soon as they're available to retail investors right? If our monetary system was so good we wouldn't be in 19 trillion in debt and cryptocurrencies would have no reason to be adopted, there is a reason why Bitcoin debuted in 2009 after the 2008 Recession... When the government does bailouts and Quantitative Easing, this can be seen as a scam to some
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      > So we should rather invest in IPOs that pop as soon as they're available to retail investors right? IPOs are regulated, so there isn't that much of a mess around them, and it's more difficult for people who shouldn't be investing to play that game. That's on purpose, and it came to be through some hard-learned lessons. > If our monetary system was so good we wouldn't be in 19 trillion in debt National / international debt is, first and foremost, a tool, and it doesn't work the same way the "regular" debt does. > and cryptocurrencies would have no reason to be adopted They still don't. They live as long as they get to be financial wild-west, where it's easy to get rich off fools. > there is a reason why Bitcoin debuted in 2009 after the 2008 Recession... Yes, because it was developed around then. > When the government does bailouts and Quantitative Easing, this can be seen as a scam to some Maybe, but then again taxes are seen as theft by some. We can talk about ideologies all day, but in the real world, the "traditional" system still remains somewhat suitable for running a technological civilization, whereas cryptocurrencies are not, and will not because they don't scale well.
      - ojr 9y ago
        Facebook, Google, etc, didn't scale well from day one either. The software infrastructure for blockchain space is improving. Cryptocurrencies markets are more egalitarian so they will always be more favorable than traditional markets who tell people they shoudn't invest because they are "less equal".
  - Firebrand 9y ago
    I present to you...BANANA COIN!: https://i.imgur.com/4p7XFyd.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4p7XFyd.jpg
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > There are plenty of ICOs with legit projects It's too early to say anything about the economics of ICOs, apart from that people are being oblivious to their risks. Until we see a business redeeming tokens for goods or services which which cannot otherwise be procured and are improved by virtue of their tokenization, ICOs will remain closer to moonshots than investments.
- prophesi 9y ago
  Yeah, good business is essentially the art of scamming people out of their money.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > There are plenty of ICOs with legit projects. Name three.
twostorytower 9y ago
You can't generalize and say all ICOs are scams. Sure, a lot of them are useless. But look at NEO (formerly Antshares). It had an ICO a while ago and it's becoming a top crypto.
- aitrean 9y ago
  Hahahahahaha... ha... you probably haven't read their codebase if you really think that. Tell me, how many of their promised features do you think they've implemented?
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > You can't generalize and say all ICOs are scams Honest question. Is there a single ICO where one can use the tokens to redeem a good or service which cannot otherwise be procured and which is improved by way of using a token to purchase it instead of cash?
  - Etheryte 9y ago
    Bonus question, is there a good or service with the aforementioned properties which also isn't illegal?
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    I can name one potential case, pretty much the only ICO so far I still think might be actually useful - Filecoin. The idea is to use the cryptocoin to provide an incentive layer for people to pin each others' stuff on IPFS. You could technically use dollars for the same purpose, except the required micropayment infrastructure doesn't exist, and AFAIR (from reading the whitepaper), Filecoin has a nice, integrated way of ensuring the counterparty is actually rehosting your data - so together with IPFS, this has the potential to create a distributed, bandwidth-efficient, universal CDN network. I say potential case, because while the goal seems noble, so far I don't see the tokens available, and it seems the project is still knee-deep in some mathematical and technological issues around the coin itself.
- weego 9y ago
  You've picked a bad example. NEO is likely a long con based on how much actual work has ever been done on it
superquest 9y ago
Ethereum was an ICO. Was Ethereum a scam?
- barbegal 9y ago
  To some degree yes. Many members of the Ethereum foundation have made large profits from the price of Ethereum going up. They have also taken a cut from the more scammy ICOs by acting as advisors (brand ambassadors). Furthermore the Ethereum foundation itself has been spending a lot of its reserves on research grants and other activities that directly benefit the members without providing much benefit to the public at large. Under Swiss law it should be audited regularly however no audit had been published publicly.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > Many members of the Ethereum foundation have made large profits from the price of Ethereum going up. So what, many early adopters and sellers of Bitcoin have done the same - and heaven forbid Satoshi decides to cash in, that person / group alone is a billionaire (on paper though).

The word 'stolen' doesn't have its usual meaning in the ICO world. Isn't all or most money made on ICOs, effectively stolen? Everyone knows that ICOs are a scam.

charlesdm 9y ago

Not really. There are plenty of ICOs with legit projects. Have they gotten too much capital? Probably. But that doesn't make it a scam necessarily.

SurrealSoul 9y ago
Plenty of pyramid schemes lay on the back of some sort of product, knives or energy drinks or what have you. The existence of a product doesn't mean it isn't a scam
- charlesdm 9y ago
  It also doesn't mean it is. You could say the same about companies raising venture funding, or the stock market, or private equity dumping companies onto the balance sheet of other companies, etc
  - aje403 9y ago
    The equivalent venture fund to these ICO's is run by that token sketchy brazilian guy who spends half of your money on flying a bunch of models to a big house in Ibiza he rented for the weekend. He's not exactly stealing your money, he's wisely using it to entertain executives and potential investors.
    - jrs95 9y ago
      Sounds wise to me, where do I sign up? I can take a pay cut for awhile.
- cortesoft 9y ago
  I mean, I hate MLMs as much as the next guy, and would never participate, but they are slightly different than a pure pyramid scheme.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    They're a pyramid scheme with a pinch of showbusiness sprinkled on top :).
  - vkou 9y ago
    No, they are not pyramid schemes per se - they are more of an inverse funnel.
    - Y_Y 9y ago
      I would have called it a shady trapezoid.
- ojr 9y ago
  So we should rather invest in IPOs that pop as soon as they're available to retail investors right? If our monetary system was so good we wouldn't be in 19 trillion in debt and cryptocurrencies would have no reason to be adopted, there is a reason why Bitcoin debuted in 2009 after the 2008 Recession... When the government does bailouts and Quantitative Easing, this can be seen as a scam to some
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > So we should rather invest in IPOs that pop as soon as they're available to retail investors right? IPOs are regulated, so there isn't that much of a mess around them, and it's more difficult for people who shouldn't be investing to play that game. That's on purpose, and it came to be through some hard-learned lessons. > If our monetary system was so good we wouldn't be in 19 trillion in debt National / international debt is, first and foremost, a tool, and it doesn't work the same way the "regular" debt does. > and cryptocurrencies would have no reason to be adopted They still don't. They live as long as they get to be financial wild-west, where it's easy to get rich off fools. > there is a reason why Bitcoin debuted in 2009 after the 2008 Recession... Yes, because it was developed around then. > When the government does bailouts and Quantitative Easing, this can be seen as a scam to some Maybe, but then again taxes are seen as theft by some. We can talk about ideologies all day, but in the real world, the "traditional" system still remains somewhat suitable for running a technological civilization, whereas cryptocurrencies are not, and will not because they don't scale well.
    - ojr 9y ago
      Facebook, Google, etc, didn't scale well from day one either. The software infrastructure for blockchain space is improving. Cryptocurrencies markets are more egalitarian so they will always be more favorable than traditional markets who tell people they shoudn't invest because they are "less equal".
- Firebrand 9y ago
  I present to you...BANANA COIN!: https://i.imgur.com/4p7XFyd.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4p7XFyd.jpg
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> There are plenty of ICOs with legit projects It's too early to say anything about the economics of ICOs, apart from that people are being oblivious to their risks. Until we see a business redeeming tokens for goods or services which which cannot otherwise be procured and are improved by virtue of their tokenization, ICOs will remain closer to moonshots than investments.
prophesi 9y ago
Yeah, good business is essentially the art of scamming people out of their money.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
> There are plenty of ICOs with legit projects. Name three.

twostorytower 9y ago

You can't generalize and say all ICOs are scams. Sure, a lot of them are useless. But look at NEO (formerly Antshares). It had an ICO a while ago and it's becoming a top crypto.

aitrean 9y ago
Hahahahahaha... ha... you probably haven't read their codebase if you really think that. Tell me, how many of their promised features do you think they've implemented?
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> You can't generalize and say all ICOs are scams Honest question. Is there a single ICO where one can use the tokens to redeem a good or service which cannot otherwise be procured and which is improved by way of using a token to purchase it instead of cash?
- Etheryte 9y ago
  Bonus question, is there a good or service with the aforementioned properties which also isn't illegal?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I can name one potential case, pretty much the only ICO so far I still think might be actually useful - Filecoin. The idea is to use the cryptocoin to provide an incentive layer for people to pin each others' stuff on IPFS. You could technically use dollars for the same purpose, except the required micropayment infrastructure doesn't exist, and AFAIR (from reading the whitepaper), Filecoin has a nice, integrated way of ensuring the counterparty is actually rehosting your data - so together with IPFS, this has the potential to create a distributed, bandwidth-efficient, universal CDN network. I say potential case, because while the goal seems noble, so far I don't see the tokens available, and it seems the project is still knee-deep in some mathematical and technological issues around the coin itself.
weego 9y ago
You've picked a bad example. NEO is likely a long con based on how much actual work has ever been done on it

superquest 9y ago

Ethereum was an ICO. Was Ethereum a scam?

barbegal 9y ago
To some degree yes. Many members of the Ethereum foundation have made large profits from the price of Ethereum going up. They have also taken a cut from the more scammy ICOs by acting as advisors (brand ambassadors). Furthermore the Ethereum foundation itself has been spending a lot of its reserves on research grants and other activities that directly benefit the members without providing much benefit to the public at large. Under Swiss law it should be audited regularly however no audit had been published publicly.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Many members of the Ethereum foundation have made large profits from the price of Ethereum going up. So what, many early adopters and sellers of Bitcoin have done the same - and heaven forbid Satoshi decides to cash in, that person / group alone is a billionaire (on paper though).