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Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a metaphor. I personally think that "cancer" describes something that is deadly, awful, and spreads. Instead of saying those three things, or maybe more, it conveys the message to me more quickly.
It's a really poor metaphor, though. ICOs are stupid, but really easy to avoid (just don't put money into them). Certainly not "awful" in the way losing a loved one to an early, excruciating death is. They're not deadly and they don't "spread", at least not by any means remotely comparable to how cancer spreads. It's not like the author works with the metaphor, either. The word appears exactly one time on the page, i…
Word choice aside, I agree many ICOs are scams, and in general I think it's not a great idea to give someone very large sums of money up front to build something, with very few strings attached. The immediate global liquidity of tokens is both good and bad. Having access to a lot of funding early on, especially with no accountability, even with most well-intended projects often leads to building the wrong thing, stuff people don't want or need, since there is less pressure to validate the product (for instance via revenue).
I would like to believe self-regulation and peer pressure, once transparency standards are established, will happen. De facto tools for governance and transparency of token projects is something I think is sorely needed, and it's something projects like Aragon - https://aragon.one - are building.
I think ICOs are an interesting way of funding certain types of projects that would not be viable through traditional VC funding - certain types of open source projects for instance. And I think we could see the token concept take off in unexpected places. But I hope the cryptocurrency/token ecosystem will move towards a more sustainable direction that generates real value for people instead of the casino like atmosphere today.
A bit off topic, but why is it a trend these days to use "cancer" for things that have nothing to do with the disease? It sounds a bit insensitive.
Is it insensitive? Probably. It's fitting though, if you see the analogy as "something that will kill the host if not treated".
ICOs are a scam.
Learn the difference.
So an ICO for something like Filecoin, which is monetizing a storage protocol built around IPFS, that's a utility token. There are plenty of legitimate ICO projects out there that have either 1) already shipped 2) have a working beta or 3) are risky but have strong teams. It doesn't take a lot of time to look for them.
I'm not a lawyer, but security tokens and the tokenization of private equities, and everything from startup shares to real estate to gold-backed tokens, these are positive developments. Raising money for business IS hard, and especially so if you're not one of the privileged tech elite in Silicon Valley. Author seems to forget this.
Furthermore, there's other sectors of the economy too. Have you ever tried raising money for a non-tech business? It's not easy. Money isn't exactly abundant in these sectors. Blockchain/token fundraising has the potential to bring more efficient capital markets to underserved industries and underserved jurisdictions (including other countries with different securities regulations).