8 ms·

A far bigger story would be an ICO-backed company that did not leave all their backers wondering where their money is. Aside from the startups selling tools an

A far bigger story would be an ICO-backed company that did not leave all their backers wondering where their money is. Aside from the startups selling tools and services to the crypto ecosystem itself, does anyone know of an ICO-backed project that has turned into a successful company?

Nuzzerino 8y ago
You say that as if the projects are all run by greedy grubby fraudsters. While that is often the case, there are plenty out there who are working day and night on a bare bones income, to keep their projects alive through the market crash. Sometimes, that involves pivoting from a head-in-the-clouds decentralized pipe dream in favor of a viable business, even with customers from outside the industry. Yes, even they are capable of that. Astonishing!
- timoth3y 8y ago
  > You say that as if the projects are all run by greedy grubby fraudsters I think you are reading in something that is not there. I have several friends who have run successful ICOs and they all sincerely believe in their vision and all are working very hard. However, the fact that yet another an ICO-backed token economy has not developed as pitched is not really news. My point was that it would be news if a token economy actually did develop as pitched. It's an observation. It's not a judgment about the people working on the projects.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Nuzzerino 8y ago
    Fair enough, I can agree with that. Hopefully 2019 will bring such news.
chrisco255 8y ago
ETH itself, OMG, QTUM, BAT, Augur, etc. Although "successful" is a bit difficult to determine. Did these projects ship? Yes. Will they be successful in the long run? Who knows? That's like picking winners in startup land...there's going to be a lot of strikeouts and a few home runs.
- timoth3y 8y ago
  ETH is used only within the blockchain ecosystem. Its greatest utility has been enabling ICOs. OMG and BAT are both interesting proof of concepts, but they are not really operating at any kind of scale. I don't see how they can transition to a stable and growing company. I love the idea of Augur, but they have something like 50 daily users, and that's not a sustainable business. Perhaps my original comment was a bit too snarky, but my point was after a few years of hype about how the blockchain was going to revolutionize everything, and billions of dollars of investment, we should have at least a few real-world use cases. Something beyond the PoC stage.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    > my point was after a few years of hype about how the blockchain was going to revolutionize everything, and billions of dollars of investment, we should have at least a few real-world use cases. Something beyond the PoC stage. Perhaps the wild claims and shoot-for-the-stars plans prevented most the blockchain startups from capitalizing on where the easy money was (and usually is), enterprise sales. IBM sells blockchain solutions. I bet they've made some money doing so (at worst because they could probably sell digital toilet paper and make a profit off enterprise contracts before they phase it out).
    - timoth3y 8y ago
      Absolutely. There is always money to be made selling picks and shovels. IBM, ConsenSys, and others selling blockchain "solutions" to large customers has made a great deal of money over the past two years.
    - decentralised 8y ago
decentralised 8y ago
The vast majority of ICOs so far have not been scams. It might seem counterintuitive because we hear about the SEC closing down on a few projects but if you look past the headline you'll see that most of the cases brought to justice so far where for complete scams that didn't even have a working token model or a business model. I'm not saying that having an ICO will make your company a success, in fact as far as I can see the average survival rate for blockchain startups is in line with any other startup, bootstrapped or IPO'd
- WAHa_06x36 8y ago
  Literally the opposite is true: https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-study-says-80-percent-of-icos-conducted-in-2017-were-scams https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-study-says-80-percent-of-...
  - decentralised 8y ago
    Ok we have a problem here: The one study you mention from the "ICO advisory firm Statis Group" does not the truth make. Just because an article that matches your own bias... There have been thousands of ICOs around the world and companies such as Statis use FUD and lies to scare customers away from competitors. I'm involved in the space as you can probably tell and I assure you this isn't even the most underhanded tactic I've seen so far.
nl 8y ago
I agree, but I did come across Erasure[1] the other day, which is a blockchain based prediction market. That makes a lot of sense, because it's a great way to sell insider trading. Not sure if they are doing an ICO though. [1] https://erasure.xxx/ https://erasure.xxx/

Nuzzerino 8y ago

You say that as if the projects are all run by greedy grubby fraudsters. While that is often the case, there are plenty out there who are working day and night on a bare bones income, to keep their projects alive through the market crash. Sometimes, that involves pivoting from a head-in-the-clouds decentralized pipe dream in favor of a viable business, even with customers from outside the industry. Yes, even they are capable of that. Astonishing!

timoth3y 8y ago
> You say that as if the projects are all run by greedy grubby fraudsters I think you are reading in something that is not there. I have several friends who have run successful ICOs and they all sincerely believe in their vision and all are working very hard. However, the fact that yet another an ICO-backed token economy has not developed as pitched is not really news. My point was that it would be news if a token economy actually did develop as pitched. It's an observation. It's not a judgment about the people working on the projects.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Nuzzerino 8y ago
  Fair enough, I can agree with that. Hopefully 2019 will bring such news.

chrisco255 8y ago

ETH itself, OMG, QTUM, BAT, Augur, etc. Although "successful" is a bit difficult to determine. Did these projects ship? Yes. Will they be successful in the long run? Who knows? That's like picking winners in startup land...there's going to be a lot of strikeouts and a few home runs.

timoth3y 8y ago
ETH is used only within the blockchain ecosystem. Its greatest utility has been enabling ICOs. OMG and BAT are both interesting proof of concepts, but they are not really operating at any kind of scale. I don't see how they can transition to a stable and growing company. I love the idea of Augur, but they have something like 50 daily users, and that's not a sustainable business. Perhaps my original comment was a bit too snarky, but my point was after a few years of hype about how the blockchain was going to revolutionize everything, and billions of dollars of investment, we should have at least a few real-world use cases. Something beyond the PoC stage.
- kbenson 8y ago
  > my point was after a few years of hype about how the blockchain was going to revolutionize everything, and billions of dollars of investment, we should have at least a few real-world use cases. Something beyond the PoC stage. Perhaps the wild claims and shoot-for-the-stars plans prevented most the blockchain startups from capitalizing on where the easy money was (and usually is), enterprise sales. IBM sells blockchain solutions. I bet they've made some money doing so (at worst because they could probably sell digital toilet paper and make a profit off enterprise contracts before they phase it out).
  - timoth3y 8y ago
    Absolutely. There is always money to be made selling picks and shovels. IBM, ConsenSys, and others selling blockchain "solutions" to large customers has made a great deal of money over the past two years.
  - decentralised 8y ago

decentralised 8y ago

The vast majority of ICOs so far have not been scams. It might seem counterintuitive because we hear about the SEC closing down on a few projects but if you look past the headline you'll see that most of the cases brought to justice so far where for complete scams that didn't even have a working token model or a business model. I'm not saying that having an ICO will make your company a success, in fact as far as I can see the average survival rate for blockchain startups is in line with any other startup, bootstrapped or IPO'd

WAHa_06x36 8y ago
Literally the opposite is true: https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-study-says-80-percent-of-icos-conducted-in-2017-were-scams https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-study-says-80-percent-of-...
- decentralised 8y ago
  Ok we have a problem here: The one study you mention from the "ICO advisory firm Statis Group" does not the truth make. Just because an article that matches your own bias... There have been thousands of ICOs around the world and companies such as Statis use FUD and lies to scare customers away from competitors. I'm involved in the space as you can probably tell and I assure you this isn't even the most underhanded tactic I've seen so far.

nl 8y ago

I agree, but I did come across Erasure[1] the other day, which is a blockchain based prediction market. That makes a lot of sense, because it's a great way to sell insider trading. Not sure if they are doing an ICO though. [1] https://erasure.xxx/ https://erasure.xxx/