Usually this kind of blatant negativity would be down voted to oblivion but for some reason HN has a special place in it's heart for crypyocurrency haters.
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What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?
31–40 of 219 posts
Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?
#32Usually this kind of blatant negativity would be down voted to oblivion but for some reason HN has a special place in it's heart for crypyocurrency haters.
It's worthwhile to note that not a single once of the thousands of "ICO" things that have been launched in the last year have actually done anything of value. They all generate hype, raise money, and then give up and go to work on other things. It happens over and over again with no memory of the past failures, apparently.
That said I wouldn't fault you for believing that a lot of the $xM raised in x ICO just turned out to be largely the creator seeding the pot and a minority of other people buying into something "big". You could even take out a loan, there's nearly zero risk other than the operator of the ICO running with the scratch.
Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?
#33A lot of people are calling these things Scams. People arent wrong and to a certain degree they do attract the "quick buck" type to them. Keep in mind though that these are also very useful for companies to get the Digitial Currency and block chain into the hands of the masses without some of this money, which large parts of that may be burned, will yield some killer apps. The people doing an ICO do it to raise a bun…
> The allure for people starting a company is that you can raise millions and give 0% of your company away. Some people will scam, it's true maybe a lot will, but some will undoubtedly start something big and will want to do more than just scam.
A system which enables scamming like that is a horribly broken system, and the occasional success story does nothing to change that fact.
Contrast this to an IPO, where you have to more or less lay all your cards on the table before you can sell your stuff to the public.
Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?
#34A lot of people are calling these things Scams. People arent wrong and to a certain degree they do attract the "quick buck" type to them. Keep in mind though that these are also very useful for companies to get the Digitial Currency and block chain into the hands of the masses without some of this money, which large parts of that may be burned, will yield some killer apps. The people doing an ICO do it to raise a bun…
That's the point isn't it? A company is offering this to raise money but doesn't actually give anything away? Then where is the value coming from? It's all based on herd mentality and trying to buy the first ticket on the free money train. ICOs are pyramid schemes, the sad thing is that there's a bunch of smart, young internet types falling for it.
The answer is a little unfortunate, even though things are said to be worth $xxxxM market cap, but the depth of the market is so shallow that the true value is near zero.
Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?
#35Previously, we had a filter screening new altcoins (expletive deleted) in that you had to know enough about bitcoin to at least fork the repo, build it and make some modest changes to create a new namespace. We could see whether those coins are worth anything by looking to see if there was a novel PoW or other network changes, premine, etc. Now, Counterparty and much moreso Ethereum have created an opportunity for an…
I wonder what percentage of ICO investors actually read through the corresponding whitepaper to try and discern the real claim of value... I truly do.
Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?
#36FTA: ICOs conclude once the coins or tokens are tradable in the open market. This is a part that has eluded me thus far: how are the new coins tradable on the open market? I'm genuinely asking - most exchanges don't support all crypto coins, and certainly not the dozens of new ones being created. How does one invest in an ICO and then 'cash out'? I see the ROI stats on some of these ICOs but I'm curious as to if thos…
The open market in crypto is very, very open. As others have pointed out there are centralized and decentralized solutions for trading a lot of these things.
Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?
#37Previously, we had a filter screening new altcoins (expletive deleted) in that you had to know enough about bitcoin to at least fork the repo, build it and make some modest changes to create a new namespace. We could see whether those coins are worth anything by looking to see if there was a novel PoW or other network changes, premine, etc. Now, Counterparty and much moreso Ethereum have created an opportunity for an…
I wonder what percentage of ICO investors actually read through the corresponding whitepaper to try and discern the real claim of value... I truly do.
They just scroll it. And do you know who they are? The Chinese. The Chinese are the ones fueling the ICO craze. How do I know? I'm hanging out in a Slack channel full of them. I asked them how did you get into crypto? Verbatim response was that "friend said it easy money". Then he said "China full of money." Full of money indeed.
In fact the majority of ICOs are not even open to Americans.
Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?
#38> So, is this the new revolution in fund raising or another pyramid that is soon to explode?
Everything is a pyramid. The question is just for how long it lasts. I mean there was a pyramid called monarchy that ruled the planet for a few centuries. There's capitalism which will be replaced by something else, maybe 20 years, maybe 500 years from now. Instead of worrying about the pyramid-ness of something it's much smarter to decide whether or not it is currently under- or overvalued and what the trend will be.
And here starts my opinion: I think crypto coins are currently way overvalued. They exist for longer now than most people spend in university. And yet a real market value hasn't been established yet. The one possible true market value, micro transactions, seems to have been overcome by simple small step technological evolution. It was a huge thing around 2010 that nobody could do, but now it's common to pay sub-dollar prices on all kinds of things online.
Also opinion: The reason why people are willing to spend so much money on ICOs is that they hope the bitcoin dream will repeat itself. And as is often the case: if the dream is strong enough, it seems to get fulfilled, because so many people pour their money and energy into this hope. But I don't see what there is besides the hope.
Many people will be disappointed when they find out there wasn't much besides their own self-illusions.
Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?
#39Previously, we had a filter screening new altcoins (expletive deleted) in that you had to know enough about bitcoin to at least fork the repo, build it and make some modest changes to create a new namespace. We could see whether those coins are worth anything by looking to see if there was a novel PoW or other network changes, premine, etc. Now, Counterparty and much moreso Ethereum have created an opportunity for an…
Exactly my thoughts. This is pure gambling. Lots of people will end up losing money while a small amount of people will make millions from these scams.
True, though it's probably best to go further:
Any money into any cyptocoin is pure gambling. Don't put any money in you can't afford to lose. If anyone is saying the word "investment" while talking about a cryptocoin, smile and nod while slowly receding in the other direction.
As a gambling vehicle, cryptocoins are one of the finest ever created. But people should at least admit to themselves that it's not investing.
That's a little bit of a No True Scotsman, but there's a grain of truth to it. Yes, abstractly cryptocoins are going to create a lot of value for the world. But that value is abstract, at least for now. It's different from the sort of value that a startup creates: at least a startup is trying to affect the world in a tangible way that can usually be explained in a couple of sentences.
EDIT: I think it's possible to invest in cryptocoin, but you have to be willing to put money in and then not touch the coins for years. What bugs me about ICOs is that it's pandering solely to a get-rich-quick mindset. That's nearly the definition of any "initial X offering."
Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?
#40Usually this kind of blatant negativity would be down voted to oblivion but for some reason HN has a special place in it's heart for crypyocurrency haters.
HN doesn't need to be a place where we can "teach the controversy" about stealing people's money. Imagine Amazon raised money by selling people BezoBucks, but promised "BezoBucks are totally safe because their value is tracked through an incorruptible distributed ledger". I think you would probably not be ok with this. I see no difference.