6 ms·

Thanks to this I've found building a product in the cryptocurrency market has been the most challenging for applying typical online marketing strategies - I've

Thanks to this I've found building a product in the cryptocurrency market has been the most challenging for applying typical online marketing strategies - I've exhausted most avenues of advertisement - basically the only tools left are the more expensive sponsorship arrangements as every advertising platform will instantly reject your content. I can appreciate why the pendulum swung hard against ads - it's incredibly hard to differentiate between real and fake ICOs, and we're seeing that again with the defi craze at the moment. It's just made it so much more expensive as an emerging company to try to sell services in this market even when you _aren't_ trying to sell a coin.

seibelj 6y ago
Having a coin is a marketing strategy - people get in early because they have the most to gain, and then they spread the word to all of their friends to use the service, and it grows from there. Plus early adopters are extremely crypto-focused and have different groups and contacts who would be your ideal customers. The coin is the marketing - it's as if a tiny SaaS made it super simple to sell equity to their first customers, even in tiny increments.
- NationalPark 6y ago
  Do speculators make good product advocates? Seems like they have a pretty obvious conflict of interest.
  - seibelj 6y ago
    They shill your product endlessly. What's the conflict of interest? They market for you, as they have a vested financial reason to do so. I mean it's no more a conflict than anyone else promoting their investment.
    - rodonn 6y ago
      The US financial system does not allow or encourage people who "shill" for investments. We in fact have many protections and policies that limit your ability to solicit investment in unregistered securities, which is what virtually all ICOs are/were.
      - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
        Investments aren't always in money. They can be in a form of vendor lock-in. It eventually results in massive hidden losses nobody warned about, but shilling was above sky.
    - NationalPark 6y ago
      I mean that the subjects of their "marketing" might come to the conclusion that advocates are primarily interested in attracting more speculators rather than selling a product they genuinely think will help you.
  - apetresc 6y ago
    I think they meant a conflict with the person they're advocating to, not advocating for.
- vkou 6y ago
  > Having a coin is a marketing strategy - people get in early because they have the most to gain, and then they spread the word to all of their friends to use the service, and it grows from there. So do ponzi schemes. The early investors into them make money, and have a lot to gain by spreading the word to other people. Investing into a growing ponzi scheme is a rational investment strategy. That's why people do it, and that's one of the reasons for why they are illegal. As far as I can tell, the majority of interest in ICOs comes from people who are hoping to dump their investment onto a bigger fool. Ironically, the worse the ICO is as a business, the more fools will be interested in it, which makes those ICOs more attractive to invest in.
pjc50 6y ago
Almost all ICOs have no reason to exist other than to extract money from the ICO. The entire space is full of fraudulent actors by design.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > by design Non-native English speaker here but doesn't "by design" refer to something being designed explicitly for that purpose? I agree that lots of ICOs were indeed scams and/or attempts of just taking money for low-quality work, but I don't think fund-raising was initially designed for that. It just happened to be that lots of fund-raising are scams. But to say that it's by design it's going a bit far, and making your point weaker, not stronger.
  - bootcampwhere 6y ago
    This is more typical hn news anti-bitcoin nonsense of course initial coin offerings are not fraudulent by design.
  - r--man 6y ago
    I think their point is that the holders of the money after ICO can easily get away with doing nothing and just extract the funds. In reality, their payment is not tied to the interest of the coin holders, legally, or for the sake of their reputation. They can be anonymous.
  - nullc 6y ago
    The ICO ecosystem was expressly designed to help liquidate illiquid positions created by the super-massive eth premine without collapsing the market. I suppose you're right that there wasn't any requirement for that design for the ICOs to be scams, there just wasn't any particular need for them to not be scams. Virtually all (actually all?) ICOs themselves have been designed to have scam friendly terms-- e.g. no real ownership or control for the buyers, no accountability for the sellers, and little to no transparency. Even the least scammy of the ICOs have some term or another that effectively enables their issuers to just walk off with the funds with no recourse in the contract.
  - 6y ago

seibelj 6y ago

Having a coin is a marketing strategy - people get in early because they have the most to gain, and then they spread the word to all of their friends to use the service, and it grows from there. Plus early adopters are extremely crypto-focused and have different groups and contacts who would be your ideal customers. The coin is the marketing - it's as if a tiny SaaS made it super simple to sell equity to their first customers, even in tiny increments.

NationalPark 6y ago
Do speculators make good product advocates? Seems like they have a pretty obvious conflict of interest.
- seibelj 6y ago
  They shill your product endlessly. What's the conflict of interest? They market for you, as they have a vested financial reason to do so. I mean it's no more a conflict than anyone else promoting their investment.
  - rodonn 6y ago
    The US financial system does not allow or encourage people who "shill" for investments. We in fact have many protections and policies that limit your ability to solicit investment in unregistered securities, which is what virtually all ICOs are/were.
    - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
      Investments aren't always in money. They can be in a form of vendor lock-in. It eventually results in massive hidden losses nobody warned about, but shilling was above sky.
  - NationalPark 6y ago
    I mean that the subjects of their "marketing" might come to the conclusion that advocates are primarily interested in attracting more speculators rather than selling a product they genuinely think will help you.
- apetresc 6y ago
  I think they meant a conflict with the person they're advocating to, not advocating for.
vkou 6y ago
> Having a coin is a marketing strategy - people get in early because they have the most to gain, and then they spread the word to all of their friends to use the service, and it grows from there. So do ponzi schemes. The early investors into them make money, and have a lot to gain by spreading the word to other people. Investing into a growing ponzi scheme is a rational investment strategy. That's why people do it, and that's one of the reasons for why they are illegal. As far as I can tell, the majority of interest in ICOs comes from people who are hoping to dump their investment onto a bigger fool. Ironically, the worse the ICO is as a business, the more fools will be interested in it, which makes those ICOs more attractive to invest in.

pjc50 6y ago

Almost all ICOs have no reason to exist other than to extract money from the ICO. The entire space is full of fraudulent actors by design.

capableweb 6y ago
> by design Non-native English speaker here but doesn't "by design" refer to something being designed explicitly for that purpose? I agree that lots of ICOs were indeed scams and/or attempts of just taking money for low-quality work, but I don't think fund-raising was initially designed for that. It just happened to be that lots of fund-raising are scams. But to say that it's by design it's going a bit far, and making your point weaker, not stronger.
- bootcampwhere 6y ago
  This is more typical hn news anti-bitcoin nonsense of course initial coin offerings are not fraudulent by design.
- r--man 6y ago
  I think their point is that the holders of the money after ICO can easily get away with doing nothing and just extract the funds. In reality, their payment is not tied to the interest of the coin holders, legally, or for the sake of their reputation. They can be anonymous.
- nullc 6y ago
  The ICO ecosystem was expressly designed to help liquidate illiquid positions created by the super-massive eth premine without collapsing the market. I suppose you're right that there wasn't any requirement for that design for the ICOs to be scams, there just wasn't any particular need for them to not be scams. Virtually all (actually all?) ICOs themselves have been designed to have scam friendly terms-- e.g. no real ownership or control for the buyers, no accountability for the sellers, and little to no transparency. Even the least scammy of the ICOs have some term or another that effectively enables their issuers to just walk off with the funds with no recourse in the contract.
- 6y ago