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What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?

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Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?

#131

Post by jo909 »

bhouston wrote: post #100
blhack wrote: post #87

I can't believe there is no mention of tezos here ( https://www.tezos.com/ ). Which currently has raised $123,317,760.00 in bitcoins and $68,709,765.86 in ethereum. Almost $200,000,000 raised for something that doesn't even exist yet, all so that the founders can create it. It's basically $200,000,000 into a kickstarter. What the absolute frell is going on there I have no idea.

Where is this 200M coming from? Just random people on the internet? I guess some of this is from Etherum and Bitcoin early investors who have been their holdings appreciate? The numbers are staggering given that I think institutional and professional investors are not in this market?

I feel like thinking about it as "200M USD" is not helpful when talking about the source of that "money". I'm sure the amount of "fresh" USD that where recently exchanged to a crypto-currency only to participate in this ICO is absurdly small. This is a very very small amount of current total bitcoin market cap when expressed in USD.

What might illustrate this is the famous pizza that was purchased with bitcoin in 2010, which would have been valued 23M USD today.

So this is only 10 Pizzas that were not bought with bitcoin in 2010.

Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?

#132

Post by kang »

lrvick wrote: post #98
blhack wrote: post #87

I can't believe there is no mention of tezos here ( https://www.tezos.com/ ). Which currently has raised $123,317,760.00 in bitcoins and $68,709,765.86 in ethereum. Almost $200,000,000 raised for something that doesn't even exist yet, all so that the founders can create it. It's basically $200,000,000 into a kickstarter. What the absolute frell is going on there I have no idea.

Tezos has a working testnet available to anyone on request and a functional (albeit early) platform. They also took extra time and delayed their ICO to get proper accountability systems in place via good legal standing for the Tezos Foundation. Tezos asks a vital question. Can cryptocurrency governance be decentralized? Can we do better than the anarchy of management for Bitcoin and Ethereum with chain splits being t…

Yes, they really took time to fake so. I encourage engineers to try and build a decentralised app on it.

Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?

#134

Post by ac29 »

colecut wrote: post #116
richardknop wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fees are quite high for that card. And you are not paying with BTC. If it's a debit card then you have to have fiat in a bank account. I guess they exchange BTC to USD when you top up your shift card.

Can you please elaborate on what fees are high? I paid $10 for the card. $0.00 annual fee $0.00 Domestic transactions BTC is converted to fiat at the time of purchase, also with no fee, no need to "top up" the shift card..

>BTC is converted to fiat at the time of purchase, also with no fee

Shift appears to use Coinbase for its BTC->Fiat needs. Coinbase charges exchange fees [0]. Or am I not understanding how the card works?

[0]https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/210959...

Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?

#135

Post by beefield »

logfromblammo wrote: post #106
ufo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A stock is an ownership share in a real (money-making) company. Criptocoins, on the other hand, have questionable intrinsic value.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who told you that a company had to make money to issue stock?

the original question was

> How is investing in the stock market not a gamble?

The companies that make stock market in aggregate make money.

Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?

#136

Post by hudon »

cslarson wrote: post #125
wyldfire wrote: post #21

Previously, 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…

Back in the day there was a website where you could fill in a few details and it would create a bitcoin clone including downloadable source. What value do bitcoin alts offer? Hardly anything. Your position is just absurd to say that Ethereum and what is buildable on top of it are valueless. This comment, at the top of a hn thread is a great example of slashdoting of the hn community. It's both weird and educational t…

Your comment is just one big ad hominem so I'm going to guess what your position is: tokens on the blockchain are great to bootstrap users. (correct me if I'm wrong)

Given my assumption, can you explain why I can't do this:

1- Have a great idea for a decentralized marketplace app (think OpenBazaar)

2- Store 21 million BazaarCoin in a MySQL database and give these coins some purpose in my app (eg. used to buy stuff)

3- Setup APIs so people can easily trade them (use public-key crypto to track ownership)

4- Make all my code open source and also provide read-only APIs so anyone anywhere can quickly audit the database of coins.

5- Have various exchanges setup USD/BazaarCoin trading pairs

6- Explain all this in a white paper and organize an initial-bazaarcoin-offering to "bootstrap the network"

Where does the blockchain fit in to add value?

Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?

#137

Post by hoofish »

wyldfire wrote: post #21

Previously, 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…

Not necessarily true at all. ICOs can offer revenue pegged tokens against company future revenue - which is then used to buy back the tokens from the investors.

Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?

#138

Post by hoofish »

ufo wrote: post #92
sumoboy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is investing in the stock market not a gamble? Potentially reduced risk with alot more rules and regulations it's not any different IMO.

A stock is an ownership share in a real (money-making) company. Criptocoins, on the other hand, have questionable intrinsic value.

not true if the token is an asset pegged token on future revenue.

Re: What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?

#140

Post by nostrademons »

ufo wrote: post #92
sumoboy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is investing in the stock market not a gamble? Potentially reduced risk with alot more rules and regulations it's not any different IMO.

A stock is an ownership share in a real (money-making) company. Criptocoins, on the other hand, have questionable intrinsic value.

To be fair, regular currency (USD, Euro, etc.) also has zero intrinsic value, and economists like it that way. Currencies that have intrinsic value (gold, copper pennies, cigarettes) tend to get taken out of circulation as they're used for that value, which makes the money supply freeze up when the value of the currency starts rising and people start hoarding it for price appreciation.
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