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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?

#161

Post by Animats »

Mastercoin, mentioned in the article, is now down to 85th place on Coin Market Cap.

Despite all this smart contract stuff, few of these "ICO coins" give the holders any authority over anything. It's not like 51% of the coin holders can fire management.

Ethereum now has half the market cap of Bitcoin, despite the total failure of the DAO, the one big application of the smart contract technology. See "Use Cases Of Ethereum In Different Sectors 2016".[1] It's been six months; what's actually working?

* Branche.io - payday loans. Got as far as the initial token offering 6 months ago. Then, nothing. Did they take the money and run?

* Iconomi.net - "digital asset management platform" - site says "Coming in 2017".

* Augur.net - prediction/gambling platform. Not yet operating for real, but there's a play-money beta.

* RexMLS.com - distributed real estate listing service. Was supposed to have test listings live in April 2017. Didn't happen.

* truststamp.net - distributed identity system to detect fake social accounts. "Connect your Social Networks. The more accounts you connect, the higher your potential Trust Score! Your account information is not stored and your privacy is protected." Not working yet. If it did work, spammers could defeat it by creating interlinked fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook, etc., which some already do.

* chainy.info - store misc. info such as URL shortening bindings on the Etherium blockchain. This seems to work, but isn't used much. If it caught on like tinyurl, the Ethereum blockchain would choke on the traffic.

* uport.me - "self sovereign identity". Still at "sign up for alpha".

* dynamisapp.com - supplementary unemployment insurance that checks LinkedIn to see if you're employed. Not working. Last blog update January 2016.

* ico.inchain.io - insurance against cyber hacks. Site not responding.

* ujomusic.com - some kind of music platform. Not working yet.

* peertracks.com - distributed music royalty system. Not working yet.

* singulardtv.com - distributed video payment system. 5000 Twitter followers! Not working yet.

* beyond-the-void.net - game with Ethereum contracts for in-game currency. Beta version downloadable. At least it's running.

* firstblood.io - e-sports where you can put up money on your play. Alpha available, no beta yet.

* etherplay.io - "Play games and win tokens" - "Coming Soon".

* akasha.world - distributed social network. There's a downloadable alpha.

* vdice.io - online gambling. Like Satoshi Dice, but for Etherium. "Coming soon".

* slock.it - the guys with the DAO and the IoT door lock. That didn't end well.

* electricchain.org - buy and sell solar power over the Ethereum block chain. Lots of PR. May actually be working on a tiny scale.

* lo3energy.com - another energy trading system. Lots of PR, no operating installations.

So that's what people are actually doing with Ethereum. Not all that much. Even the online gambling startups aren't fully operational.

[1] https://www.ethnews.com/use-cases-of-ethereum-in-different-s...

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

#162

Post by caretStick »

sumoboy wrote: post #86
richardknop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I could classify gambling according to average win/loss. Gambling has an average win/loss of house-always-wins while stocks usually result in gains for their owners. The average rate is important because it tells us that a gambler is hoping to beat the odds, a foolish move that only pays off for some, while an investor is merely riding the odds, a wise move that demonstrates understanding and acceptance of the universe.

In ICO, we should believe that it is easier to create currency than to make it successful, and that there will be a power law distribution of the adoption rates, and that it is therefore gambling unless the average outcome is still so much larger for the set of coins one chooses that the incremental cost of their losses by adopting more coins is less than the gains of that one coin that out-performs others. It's like 500 startups, but it won't harass you.

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

#163

Post by coolbearcjs »

Animats wrote: post #161

Mastercoin, mentioned in the article, is now down to 85th place on Coin Market Cap. Despite all this smart contract stuff, few of these "ICO coins" give the holders any authority over anything. It's not like 51% of the coin holders can fire management. Ethereum now has half the market cap of Bitcoin, despite the total failure of the DAO, the one big application of the smart contract technology. See "Use Cases Of Ethe…

Vdice is doing very well and has done over 50,000 bets...As one of the people that worked on this project I would appreciate you taking Vdice off this list or at least being more honest about the project's success

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

#164

Post by petertodd »

drcode wrote: post #105
fny wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ethereum founders do: they've managed to turn themselves into a certification/approval stamp of sorts. I've seen them slapped on as advisors for umpteen of these ICOs. If I were them, I'd create a regulatory company and take a cut for "Ethereum-approved ICOs."

Vitalik has conceded this was a mistake and has stated he will no longer have any formal role in outside ethereum businesses. He also stated that he was not paid for any of these advisory positions he held.

I've personally seen the price sheets for what he's billed out per hour, and sat through advisory work meetings with him. While it's possibly he wasn't officially paid for those specific ICO advisory positions, he certainly was getting paid for advisory work.

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

#165

Post by kang »

nicksdjohnson wrote: post #151
kang wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>happens to have Sorry but ethereum has no use case, nor is technically ethereum's architecture makes distributed computation possible or even is decentralised. There is not one single dapp that is decentralised and working.

> There is not one single dapp that is decentralised and working. Sure there is. ENS, for one example. Plenty of gambling apps for another (I don't find them particularly _compelling_, but they are there and they do work)

ENS is a great example of a centralised system plus its only about eth based names, no application other than just a method by to collect money by the platform for offering services that are only about the platform and work in the platform.

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

#166

Post by clarky07 »

simias wrote: post #157
elif wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a lottery is an absolutely horrible metaphor abuse. If you put $2 into buying a powerball ticket, you have a ~1:290 million chance at becoming a millionaire and a ~1:50 chance at breaking even. If you put $2 into bitcoin at any point in history and held for 2 years, you have a 0% chance at becoming a millionaire and a 100% chance at breaking even. If you left $2 sitting in your wallet for 2 years, you lost $0.05-0.10…

>If you put $2 into bitcoin at any point in history and held for 2 years, you have a 0% chance at becoming a millionaire and a 100% chance at breaking even. That does not compute. What do you mean here exactly? Clearly if you invest $2 in BTC and the value of bitcoins increases 500,000% you're a millionaire. Conversely if it crashes and becomes worthless you've lost everything. But more generally I wasn't arguing sta…

I believe he is referring to the past. The history so far is such that there haven't been many losing 2 year stretches. So far, it also hasn't gone up 500,000% in two years either. So, not nearly as risky as a lottery, and not quite the same upside either.

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

#167

Post by zby »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #39
richardknop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Between gambling and investing there is speculating.

I believe there are ways to have an edge in cryptocoin speculating - it is unfair to say that it is all gambling. I cannot say I am very good in this game, there are people at the chats who are way less nervous and emotional and who must have made fortunes, but I have quit my programming job and now live from it.

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

#168

Post by nicksdjohnson »

kang wrote: post #165
nicksdjohnson wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is not one single dapp that is decentralised and working. Sure there is. ENS, for one example. Plenty of gambling apps for another (I don't find them particularly _compelling_, but they are there and they do work)

ENS is a great example of a centralised system plus its only about eth based names, no application other than just a method by to collect money by the platform for offering services that are only about the platform and work in the platform.

What's centralised about ENS?

Also, it can be used to resolve any resource you want - although you're shifting the goalposts, since that wasn't originally a requirement.

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

#169

Post by zby »

simias wrote: post #126
elif wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If anyone is saying the word "investment" while talking about a cryptocoin, smile and nod while slowly receding in the other direction. >EDIT: I think it's possible to invest in cryptocoin smiles about 1000% gains and walks away

It's like encouraging people to play the lottery because you won the big prize once. It's an very risky investment and I think it's incredibly irresponsible to encourage people to dump money in it if they don't understand fully what it's about. The "to the moon" memes aren't funny anymore when gullible people start buying bitcoins with money they can't afford to lose. Bitcoins will have to overcome massive challenges…

I can imagine a future where bitcoin plays a role similar to what gold does now. This would not require much scaling - it would be about few, but high value transactions. But yeah - more probably it will be replaced by something else that would have less costs (i.e. POS, https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194 ), and/or scale. This is the gamble in cryptos investing now - it is conceivable that in the long run some crypto will be worth much - but you don't know which one. Maybe Etherium, which showed it can change rapidly, will do this, but most probably this will be something new. Maybe EOS or Tezos - but they are too much hype machines - this does not fit good development.

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

#170

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #161

Mastercoin, mentioned in the article, is now down to 85th place on Coin Market Cap. Despite all this smart contract stuff, few of these "ICO coins" give the holders any authority over anything. It's not like 51% of the coin holders can fire management. Ethereum now has half the market cap of Bitcoin, despite the total failure of the DAO, the one big application of the smart contract technology. See "Use Cases Of Ethe…

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