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For the most part, only rich people can hand their cash over to venture capitalists and private equity groups to invest in young firms. That means small-time in

For the most part, only rich people can hand their cash over to venture capitalists and private equity groups to invest in young firms. That means small-time investors have no way of investing in most of the new, fast-growing startups, according to the authors. Seems like authors aren't considering ICOs as a new form of IPOs for startups. Any computer and finance literate person can invest, not only small American residents. Volatility is higher in ICOs and there are practically no regulations, so investors should be more careful. Nonetheless, the underlying basic concepts are the same

deleted 9y ago
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jacquesm 9y ago
I haven't seen an ICO yet that is even close to as realistic a proposition as your typical IPO would be. ICO's are for the most part simply scams. For an IPO to take place you have to have a business first.
sethammons 9y ago
> so investors should be careful. How? For companies that have gone through an IPO, there is GAAP, SOX, SOC2 controls, etc. These were all designed to help investors be informed so they can manage risk. With ICOs, what have you got? "Trust us, we've not written a bug into our system that will give us unlimited coin to offload after the price reaches a certain point."
- jalcazar 9y ago
  Understanding finance, risk, time valuation, researching the team behind the startup, understanding the white paper, not investing more than what they can afford to lose, reading reviews and comments online, automating orders to sell before the tokens reached a certain price.
sjg007 9y ago
You could ICO as an alternative to IPO I would guess as long as you meet the same requirements. In this case the ICO token would be your stock. So ICOs have the potential to disrupt wall street stock recording and transactions. Essentially remove wall street entirely if you want. Is that good or bad? Exchanges have stop loss and other braking mechanisms/regulations.. Are those desirable?

deleted 9y ago

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jacquesm 9y ago

I haven't seen an ICO yet that is even close to as realistic a proposition as your typical IPO would be. ICO's are for the most part simply scams. For an IPO to take place you have to have a business first.

sethammons 9y ago

> so investors should be careful. How? For companies that have gone through an IPO, there is GAAP, SOX, SOC2 controls, etc. These were all designed to help investors be informed so they can manage risk. With ICOs, what have you got? "Trust us, we've not written a bug into our system that will give us unlimited coin to offload after the price reaches a certain point."

jalcazar 9y ago
Understanding finance, risk, time valuation, researching the team behind the startup, understanding the white paper, not investing more than what they can afford to lose, reading reviews and comments online, automating orders to sell before the tokens reached a certain price.

sjg007 9y ago

You could ICO as an alternative to IPO I would guess as long as you meet the same requirements. In this case the ICO token would be your stock. So ICOs have the potential to disrupt wall street stock recording and transactions. Essentially remove wall street entirely if you want. Is that good or bad? Exchanges have stop loss and other braking mechanisms/regulations.. Are those desirable?