Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 215 posts

Re: Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows

#101

Post by ojr »

phkahler wrote: post #62
alistproducer2 wrote: post #55

I was involved with one of the bigger ICO right at the beginning of the ICO craze. I had pretty regular conversations with the project founder and was in talks to become the dev evangelist. The project had raised ~$5 million in ETH (this is when ETH was trading around $80). Despite the fact that this project had raised a crazy amount of money the whole project was being conceptualized and coded by a single 23 old guy…

If you're launching one of these, you don't really need investment. You just make sure you own the first batch of currency and get rich if it takes off. If you need investment then you don't really believe in your own stuff do you? Ponzi Ponzi Ponzi.

its all speculation, speculation, speculation, just like the US stock market just less regulated, speculators get a bad rep but do more good than harm in an economy

Re: Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows

#102

Post by corysama »

joosters wrote: post #92
TACIXAT wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heads up. Bitcoin is likely to be forever deflationary until it fails. There are no capital controls to increase the supply which means as people lose their wallets it becomes more and more constrained. I agree that it's a trash fire that will never be adopted as a regular currency, but its value could go up for a very long time like any collectible.

The number of bitcoins recently doubled as it forked. The 'scarcity' of digital currency is a myth.

There have been hundreds of forks that went nowhere because no one cared about them. Litecoin did well. Dogecoin was so absurd it surprisingly didn't die on the vine. Bitcoin Cash was a high-visibility fork that was expected to fizzle out. It still is, but it's being propped up by some number of factors.

The point is that cryptos' values are based on widespread long term confidence. That is something that can be replicated. But, it's not as easy as hitting [fork this repo] on GitHub. At least 900 fizzled forks have demonstrated that.

Re: Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows

#103

Post by cgmg »

ajross wrote: post #49
rib3ye wrote: post #37

The problem is projects like these: http://bitqyck.me/ A classic hard-sell 80s pump and dump scam reborn in the ETH era. Bitqyck came to my attention through a family friend with very limited understanding of cryptocurrency, but just enough financial literacy to be in an investment group being fed these scams by people they trust as technical leadership. I imagine, ultimately, these people will demand protection from…

The problem is the whole idea of cryptocurrency as a growth investment. The symptom is a bunch of copycat scams trying to freeload on the broader market. Without the bull market of the early '90's, Belfort would have had no one to sell to. Same deal here. The root cause is the insanity happening in bitcoin (and now Ethereal, I guess). Mark my words: this will all come crashing down. I can't tell you when or why, but…

When you say "this" will all come crashing down and "this" is not sustainable, what exactly are you referring to?

Re: Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows

#104

Post by dmix »

flimflamfloozle wrote: post #100
duxup wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That guy on TV keeps telling me how awesome owning gold is... it is so awesome he wants to sell me his...

That guy on TV is a broker. He doesn't want to hold any gold. He wants to sell and buy at the same time and make money off of the spread.

Not sure if the answer is obvious here but I don't know much about finance, does 'spread' here mean the difference in the asset price from purchase/sale time (whether by market change or artificial markup) or the brokering fees involved? or both?

Re: Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows

#105

Post by cgmg »

phkahler wrote: post #64
jimmykennedy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also weird to assume that it'll "drag the "legitimate" crypto currencies down". It's much more likely that the legit ones will be a "safety" asset and only gain in credibility with large investors.

It's funny to me that you view any of the crypto currencies as legitimate.

Why is that funny to you? What do you mean by "legitimate"?

Re: Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows

#106

Post by JSONwebtoken »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #55

I was involved with one of the bigger ICO right at the beginning of the ICO craze. I had pretty regular conversations with the project founder and was in talks to become the dev evangelist. The project had raised ~$5 million in ETH (this is when ETH was trading around $80). Despite the fact that this project had raised a crazy amount of money the whole project was being conceptualized and coded by a single 23 old guy…

I don't know the degree of complexity or technical ambition of the project you were a part of, but it's not unusual for a 23 year old guy to write most of the Ethereum app. In fact, that's probably the reason why most ICOs are a scam, there's an insanely low barrier to building a proof of concept. The boilerplate is like 15 lines.

When it's so easy that any 20 year old backend dev can issue a token, you should already know that no ETH-based app should be worth more than the same business model applied to a fiat currency.

Re: Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows

#107

Post by dmix »

cgmg wrote: post #103
ajross wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the whole idea of cryptocurrency as a growth investment. The symptom is a bunch of copycat scams trying to freeload on the broader market. Without the bull market of the early '90's, Belfort would have had no one to sell to. Same deal here. The root cause is the insanity happening in bitcoin (and now Ethereal, I guess). Mark my words: this will all come crashing down. I can't tell you when or why, but…

When you say "this" will all come crashing down and "this" is not sustainable, what exactly are you referring to?

Probably ICO's as a stable 'investment' vehicle in it's current form, as the market will eventually correct itself to match the real underlying value.

That doesn't mean there isn't a ton of real value being generated here or that it doesn't have the potential to be at the scale it is now. It just might be too much, far too soon.

Building companies and innovating is hard, flooding capital to it will boost the value generated but you can't simply manufacture it artificially by throwing money at it unless there is real talent and business models underneath.

Just look at that Circle startup that raised a record seed round based on a nice sounding team and a half-baked idea. Too much money can actually hurt some companies chances.

Re: Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows

#108

Post by sgspace »

ajross wrote: post #49
rib3ye wrote: post #37

The problem is projects like these: http://bitqyck.me/ A classic hard-sell 80s pump and dump scam reborn in the ETH era. Bitqyck came to my attention through a family friend with very limited understanding of cryptocurrency, but just enough financial literacy to be in an investment group being fed these scams by people they trust as technical leadership. I imagine, ultimately, these people will demand protection from…

The problem is the whole idea of cryptocurrency as a growth investment. The symptom is a bunch of copycat scams trying to freeload on the broader market. Without the bull market of the early '90's, Belfort would have had no one to sell to. Same deal here. The root cause is the insanity happening in bitcoin (and now Ethereal, I guess). Mark my words: this will all come crashing down. I can't tell you when or why, but…

You sound like the other thousands of posts I've read over the past 8 years. You're either correct or missing out on something massive.

Re: Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows

#109

Post by ovulator »

walrus1066 wrote: post #15
vanattab wrote: post #3

I am thinking a short position in bitcoin is in my near future. I am not saying bitcoin is doomed to fail but I am pretty confident this shit coin crazy is going to hit the fan sooner or later and it's going to drag the "legitimate" crypto currencies down.

Beware that: “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” (John Maynard Keynes) Especially relevant to short selling

Shorting has got to be the dumbest way to invest. With a normal investment there is a ceiling to how much you can lose (the amount you invested) but there is no ceiling to how much you can gain.

The complete opposite is true for shorting, not a bet I would make on any certainty level.

Re: Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows

#110

Post by blhack »

To put it into perspective, the tezos ICO recently raised a little more than $200,000,000 worth of BTC and ETH.

Here's their twitter: https://twitter.com/tez0s?lang=en

Here's their subreddit: https://reddit.com/r/tezos

Here's their website: https://tezos.com

It doesn't look like they have really updated anybody on what they're doing with $200,000,000 since their ICO closed.

Post reply on HN