58 ms·

The only explanation model I have for this round is money laundering. Can someone with more insight enlighten me on what would make someone seriously invest in

The only explanation model I have for this round is money laundering. Can someone with more insight enlighten me on what would make someone seriously invest in this with more than pocket change?

repomies69999 8y ago
Well most ico investors are just totally irrational. It is mostly fueled by the meteoric risw of cryptos in general. People are just throwing money around. Of course money laundering might be involved as well.
lacker 8y ago
One source said an early investor who acquired a tranche of tokens at a price of $0.37 is actively seeking to sell for $1.30 — potentially a 3.5-fold increase for a token that hasn’t left the gate yet. People believing they can make a 3.5-fold increase is what makes them invest.
- gowld 8y ago
  Naive question: Does "selling" a token generate cash, or some non-/semi-liquid "money" sitting in a database of an unlicensed broker/exchange like a MtGOX?
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    You normally can exchange into bitcoin and sell out, so yes, it is cash.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    On most of the exchanges that deal in ICOs, they're usually traded for other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Tether. These are "funny money" in the sense that they're unbacked by any assets or hard currency, but are liquid in the sense that you don't have any practical problem finding a buyer for them. (This is changing rapidly, BTW, since Coinbase and other licensed crypto-to-fiat exchanges have recently announced support for the ERC20 tokens that ICOs typically use.) In practice it's not much of a problem, because you sell your ICO tokens for Bitcoin and then you sell your Bitcoin for dollars/yen/won/euros at a licensed crypto-to-fiat exchange like Coinbase, Bitthumb, Gemini, etc. You do lose anonymity because all the fiat exchanges have KYC identity-verification procedures, but each step of the transaction is legal (for the ICO buyer), so there's little risk.
- charlesdm 8y ago
  It's not just believing they can make a 3.5-fold increase. People are actually making those kinds of gains on various ICOs, which is part of the reasons why cryptocurrencies were propelled to their recent highs.
  - baby 8y ago
    3.5-fold increase is nothing. People make much more than that. I have a friend who made 100k from 100$
oh_sigh 8y ago
Another explanation is that a lot of people made a lot of money by "investing" in bitcoin early, and may be constantly looking to parlay those gains into something even bigger. If you spent $1000 on BTC 5 years ago, you now have ~$100k of bitcoin. So why not let $30k ride on telegram ICO exploding and getting it up to a million?
golergka 8y ago
It's the platform that has huge potential to drive mass adoption of crypto currency. Messaging platform is a natural base for payment system, just look at wechat. Right now, most of bitcoin's liquidity comes from drugs – if you want to purchase anything, you have to go through it, or other, much less safe payment systems. However, the marketplaces move rapidly from darkweb to Telegram; and since buyers already heavily use it to connect to dealers and dealer's bots, it's an easy and natural progression to pay in the same app, too. Out of personal experience with above points, I have no doubt that Gram will be huge on day one.
lozenge 8y ago
Do we even know that this $1 billion figure is accurate?
- coolspot 8y ago
  IIRC it was officially reported to SEC[1][2], so it is unlikely to be incorrect. Two forms, $850M each: [1] - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1729650/000095017218000030/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1729650/000095017218... [2] - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1729650/000095017218000060/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1729650/000095017218...

The only explanation model I have for this round is money laundering. Can someone with more insight enlighten me on what would make someone seriously invest in this with more than pocket change?

repomies69999 8y ago

Well most ico investors are just totally irrational. It is mostly fueled by the meteoric risw of cryptos in general. People are just throwing money around. Of course money laundering might be involved as well.

lacker 8y ago

One source said an early investor who acquired a tranche of tokens at a price of $0.37 is actively seeking to sell for $1.30 — potentially a 3.5-fold increase for a token that hasn’t left the gate yet. People believing they can make a 3.5-fold increase is what makes them invest.

gowld 8y ago
Naive question: Does "selling" a token generate cash, or some non-/semi-liquid "money" sitting in a database of an unlicensed broker/exchange like a MtGOX?
- conanbatt 8y ago
  You normally can exchange into bitcoin and sell out, so yes, it is cash.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  On most of the exchanges that deal in ICOs, they're usually traded for other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Tether. These are "funny money" in the sense that they're unbacked by any assets or hard currency, but are liquid in the sense that you don't have any practical problem finding a buyer for them. (This is changing rapidly, BTW, since Coinbase and other licensed crypto-to-fiat exchanges have recently announced support for the ERC20 tokens that ICOs typically use.) In practice it's not much of a problem, because you sell your ICO tokens for Bitcoin and then you sell your Bitcoin for dollars/yen/won/euros at a licensed crypto-to-fiat exchange like Coinbase, Bitthumb, Gemini, etc. You do lose anonymity because all the fiat exchanges have KYC identity-verification procedures, but each step of the transaction is legal (for the ICO buyer), so there's little risk.
charlesdm 8y ago
It's not just believing they can make a 3.5-fold increase. People are actually making those kinds of gains on various ICOs, which is part of the reasons why cryptocurrencies were propelled to their recent highs.
- baby 8y ago
  3.5-fold increase is nothing. People make much more than that. I have a friend who made 100k from 100$

oh_sigh 8y ago

Another explanation is that a lot of people made a lot of money by "investing" in bitcoin early, and may be constantly looking to parlay those gains into something even bigger. If you spent $1000 on BTC 5 years ago, you now have ~$100k of bitcoin. So why not let $30k ride on telegram ICO exploding and getting it up to a million?

golergka 8y ago

It's the platform that has huge potential to drive mass adoption of crypto currency. Messaging platform is a natural base for payment system, just look at wechat. Right now, most of bitcoin's liquidity comes from drugs – if you want to purchase anything, you have to go through it, or other, much less safe payment systems. However, the marketplaces move rapidly from darkweb to Telegram; and since buyers already heavily use it to connect to dealers and dealer's bots, it's an easy and natural progression to pay in the same app, too. Out of personal experience with above points, I have no doubt that Gram will be huge on day one.

lozenge 8y ago

Do we even know that this $1 billion figure is accurate?

coolspot 8y ago
IIRC it was officially reported to SEC[1][2], so it is unlikely to be incorrect. Two forms, $850M each: [1] - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1729650/000095017218000030/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1729650/000095017218... [2] - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1729650/000095017218000060/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1729650/000095017218...