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The difference is that unlike taxes, these research projects are 100% opt in and you get to pick which project to support.
by jacoblambda 8y ago
The difference is that unlike taxes, these research projects are 100% opt in and you get to pick which project to support.
- zapita 8y agoI think most ICO participants expect something in return other than “lots of cool research that won’t be immediately practical, but might indirectly advance society in 20 years”. They expect either financial gain through speculation, or a successful launch of the product specified by the ICO whitepaper. They will most likely not get either of those things.
- nostrademons 8y agoI wonder if this is really true. My understanding is that the majority of ICO funding actually comes from Bitcoin & Ethereum "whales" who got in early, own thousands of coins worth tens of millions of dollars, `and are looking for something cool to do with it that won't trigger a huge tax bill. (Well, technically investing in an ICO is a taxable event, but when you can just use your private key to send Ethereum from your pseudonymous address to a smart contract that exists everywhere and nowhere at once, enforcement is difficult.) Most of the newbie Bitcoin investors I've met at meetups have been very wary of ICOs. Too risky; they won't go near them. Occasionally they'll be someone who spreads maybe 5% of their crypto portfolio across a dozen ICOs, but they're the die-hard exceptions. If this is the case, the analogy really is more like Google X or YCombinator: an already-wealthy firm who spends money on passion projects because they can, with the potential added benefit of a small chance of an even bigger payoff down the road, and a nice PR boost in the meantime that increases the value of their primary holdings.