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Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

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Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#151

Post by saosebastiao »

drieddust wrote: post #22
sschueller wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And making the rich richer. No way to invest unless you have money or you are in the inner circle. Code has also not been released. So much for open source.

Crypto currency are the new tulip bulbs[1]. Only some are going to make money. Current buyers are relying on greater fools to take these off their hands. A crash is eminent so hold tight and wait for it. You will have plenty of opportunity. History will repeat itself as new fools arrive on the scene[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_market_crashes_a...

I feel like it is a lot less like Tulip mania and a lot more like the dotcom boom/crash. I say that in the sense that there is significant utility in some cryptocurrency concepts, but not all of them...however there is widespread overheating due to speculation.

That is also to imply that some may emerge after a crash in the same way that Amazon, Google, eBay/Paypal, etc., emerged and thrived after the crash.

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#152

Post by durgiston »

moe wrote: post #19

This is probably a money laundry/tax evasion operation. I don't believe these "big name Silicon Valley investors" just flush such amounts of money down a toilet without a hidden agenda.

While crime is certainly a possibility, rich people just have so much money and they don't have that many options for where to put it. This is part of the reason why the housing crash happened; some new investment vehicle was created, and people with way too much money ate it up. And now with interest rates so low, the demand for high yield investments continues to grow.

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#153

Post by Taek »

DanBlake wrote: post #128
runeks wrote: post #124

Can anyone tell me how they arrived at the $186m figure? Are they just multiplying the last traded price by total supply, and forgetting about market depth/slippage? I mean, if I sell a plastic cup to someone for 10 cents, and then go produce 100 million of these plastic cups, do I have $10m in plastic cups? Or could it be that I’m unable to find 100 million buyers each willing to pay 10 cents for a cup, even though…

They literally sold 186m worth. As in, Filecoin literally has 186 million in the bank. Its insanity

They also have no obligation to deliver a product. If they fail to deliver a product after 5 years, they must return all of the money to the original investors.

They could theoretically just earn interest on $186 million for 5 years and then return the money and say "oops, we missed our target". The terms of the SAFT allow it.

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#154

Post by Lon7 »

I have a (not very well supported) prediction that Filecoin will be the first ICO company to incur the wrath of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Last month the SEC released a report [0] that said in many cases these ICO tokens can be classified as securities, and therefor going forward, could be subject to all the same laws and regulations. These are not laws you want to be breaking. This Filecoin ICO has been highly publicized, and importantly, came after the SEC's report.

It doesn't matter if it all only exists on a blockchain. When the SEC decides to make an example of one of these companies it will be a bloodbath.

Matt Levine has been covering this topic recently. [1]

[0] https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2017-131

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-26/tokens-va...

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#155

Post by saimiam »

Taek wrote: post #126
sktrdie wrote: post #77

What's important to note about ICOs is not necessarily whether the idea is actually practical and that it will work. What matters right now is whether the idea can stir our intellect and get the crowds excited. This is because behind the idea there's a new token which value is completely driven by the excitement of the crowds (it's pure speculation). If I invest N amount of money in a token which gets people excited,…

I can't tell if you intentionally passed over the point, but this kind of circular investing is not sustainable. If something has value only because people buy it, at some point there are going to be more people taking profit than putting new money in. That's when the price starts to fall. If Bitcoin's price history is anything to go by, when the prices start to fall, they will fall fast and hard. At least in Bitcoin…

I know very little about ICOs other than what I have read on HN and HN comments so take what I'm saying with a pinch of salt.

My understanding is that an ICO is like an IPO minus a century+ of regulation and oversight by the authorities and instead of a share of future earnings, you get a share of a closed economy.

The oversight and rules governing stock offerings is fantastic no doubt but when you describe a Coin as a circular investment scam, I think you are glossing over the possibility that the economy you are buying into could become valuable. An example of this would be Second Life which at one point had a thriving virtual economy in digital goods.

Extrapolating further, ICOs, due to their horizontal, borderless nature, are going to be instrumental in further tying together a global economy. Just like they used to say no two countries on the Dell supply chain would fight wars with each other, I can't imagine a world dominated by ICOs for different slivers of the online economy actually fighting an IRL war.

Probably utopian but I think worrying about ICOs being a ponzi/greater fool get rich scheme overshadows its potentials.

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#157

Post by everheardofc »

bhouston wrote: post #90
pavlov wrote: post #6

I don't get it. Competing with Amazon S3 seems like a very unpromising business idea, blockchain or not.

Comment deleted because it was wrong.

That's incredibly inefficient. S3 has to be reliable and store the data in a redundant way. Filecoin will have to do the same because losing a host happens all the time.

Also S3 is incredibly expensive if you factor in outgoing traffic costs.

Buying 5TB consumer drives for 130€ and throwing them away after one month of usage makes more economic sense than using S3 for filecoin. Heck if you throw those consumer drives away after 12 months the storage cost will still be cheaper than glacier which you can't even use for filecoin.

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#158

Post by notfromhere »

soneca wrote: post #94
sktrdie wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that most of our current economy is gambling (stock markets).

I'd like to read your arguments on that.

Information symmetry between company and investor. buybacks also obscure real stock value (and something around 75% of corporate profits go to maintaining or raising stock price)

Re: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

#160

Post by Taek »

noway421 wrote: post #31

Their Filecoin Token Sale Economics says that 10% of all tokens is allocated to investors. Not sure how much they sold, but even if it's almost all out, does it make it a $1.8bn capitalisation?

The total number of Filecoins that will enter circulation is going to be around 2 billion, and they are selling right now for somewhere between $2 and $5 each. That puts the valuation somewhere between $4 billion and $10 billion.
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