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> 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 we

> 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.
pjc50 6y ago
Cryptocurrency was designed to be resistant to law enforcement and allow money to be transferred irrevocably to opaque pseudonyms, and to prevent blacklisting by any central agency. Once fraud happens, you've irrevocably lost the money.
- artaak 6y ago
  This is a hilariously uninformed statement. Which cryptocurrency? I'd even argue that the juggernaut BTC was _designed_ to be trackable, and as the recent history shows, law enforcement successfully and multiple times did exactly that when needed - tracked, identified and penalized bad actors.
- dQw4w9WgXcQ 6y ago
  The leading blockchain tech out there (Algorand) supports both freezing and clawback: https://developer.algorand.org/docs/features/asa/ https://developer.algorand.org/docs/features/asa/
getcrunk 6y ago
The phrase "by design" can be used emphatically and/or to mean in effect. Or at least that's how I also use it. Intetstingly, according to Webster's 1913 I'm using the word emphatically in an obsolete fashion.

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.

pjc50 6y ago

Cryptocurrency was designed to be resistant to law enforcement and allow money to be transferred irrevocably to opaque pseudonyms, and to prevent blacklisting by any central agency. Once fraud happens, you've irrevocably lost the money.

artaak 6y ago
This is a hilariously uninformed statement. Which cryptocurrency? I'd even argue that the juggernaut BTC was _designed_ to be trackable, and as the recent history shows, law enforcement successfully and multiple times did exactly that when needed - tracked, identified and penalized bad actors.
dQw4w9WgXcQ 6y ago
The leading blockchain tech out there (Algorand) supports both freezing and clawback: https://developer.algorand.org/docs/features/asa/ https://developer.algorand.org/docs/features/asa/

getcrunk 6y ago

The phrase "by design" can be used emphatically and/or to mean in effect. Or at least that's how I also use it. Intetstingly, according to Webster's 1913 I'm using the word emphatically in an obsolete fashion.