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

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

fxempire.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 219 posts

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

#51

Post by curiousgal »

erikb wrote: post #42
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…

Ethereum has the right play here though. They go to where the gold rush is and sell the shovels.

I think the exchanges are the ones selling shovels and am certain that they have a horse in that race; e.g. Kraken added support for trading EOS yesterday, started at $1 now it's at $4.16.

With potential ROIs like that (all across the board) I am certain that Wall Street cowboys are all over this market.

But at least we have the SEC to protec..oh we don't.

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

#52

Post by nameisu »

nikolay wrote: post #14

I'm tired of these scams. Worst of all, tech guys are getting involved. We are like chemists going into drug manufacturing or physicists making A-bombs! But, of course, this is not much different than the plethora of iFart apps or brainless startups that steal money from investors, essentially, and then they crash like there's no tomorrow. At some point, HN didn't pay much attention to these, but recently there's a n…

nicely put

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

#53

Post by drdeca »

ckastner wrote: post #43
Anderkent wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, HN can just see when a 'crowdfunding' system is designed to support scammers. For fucks sake, even kickstarter etc is full of scams that never deliver - and they work within a legal system, with clear lines of identity and responsibility, and build things that are much easier to understand ahead of the time. It's obvious that the ICO buyers are half clueless people who can't evaluate the risks, and half folks e…

> But when you have two funding systems, where one is completely open, and the other requires certain guarantees (identity, legal responsibility), the first is always going to be full of scammers. Exactly. It always cracks me up when people tout the completely deregulated nature of cryptocurrencies as a good thing.

> It always cracks me up when people tout the completely deregulated nature of cryptocurrencies as a good thing.

Well, I'll acknowledge that there are real downsides, but I think it might be feasible to (over time) build opt-in layers on top of the existing layers which serve some of the same purposes as some regulations and handle some of those issues.

States are good and important and all, but if we can build something that makes some of the roles of the state unnecessary/redundant, that would be cool I think.

I don't know, maybe this is largely an aesthetic preference?

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

#54

Post by brianshaler »

nikolay wrote: post #14

I'm tired of these scams. Worst of all, tech guys are getting involved. We are like chemists going into drug manufacturing or physicists making A-bombs! But, of course, this is not much different than the plethora of iFart apps or brainless startups that steal money from investors, essentially, and then they crash like there's no tomorrow. At some point, HN didn't pay much attention to these, but recently there's a n…

I'm with you, but it's not necessarily new. HN has always been a blend of STEM and money/hustle.

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

#55

Post by creeble »

richardknop wrote: post #20
fowlerpower wrote: post #18

A lot of people are calling these things Scams. People arent wrong and to a certain degree they do attract the "quick buck" type to them. Keep in mind though that these are also very useful for companies to get the Digitial Currency and block chain into the hands of the masses without some of this money, which large parts of that may be burned, will yield some killer apps. The people doing an ICO do it to raise a bun…

Call me when a single of these projects that raise a ton of money from ICOs actually delivers and becomes a success. So far we have seen a lot of no strings attached cash given away to people with just an idea who would never raise money from real investors. I think it's a ponzi scheme. As far as people selling ICO tokens for 10x price, only a small number of people can logically do that and it relies on influx of ne…

Technically, I don't think you can call it a Ponzi scheme unless you're paying existing ICO owners with new, incoming ICO buyers' money. Coins sort of prevent that?

I think it's technically just fraud: they take your money, convert it into worthless acorns, then when nothing happens, the acorns can't be traded for any value.

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

#56

Post by creeble »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #28
fowlerpower wrote: post #18

A lot of people are calling these things Scams. People arent wrong and to a certain degree they do attract the "quick buck" type to them. Keep in mind though that these are also very useful for companies to get the Digitial Currency and block chain into the hands of the masses without some of this money, which large parts of that may be burned, will yield some killer apps. The people doing an ICO do it to raise a bun…

That's the point isn't it? A company is offering this to raise money but doesn't actually give anything away? Then where is the value coming from? It's all based on herd mentality and trying to buy the first ticket on the free money train. ICOs are pyramid schemes, the sad thing is that there's a bunch of smart, young internet types falling for it.

I don't think they are technically pyramid schemes either, as pyramid schemes require multiple levels.

I think it's just fraud: taking people's money with no intent or ability to return anything.

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

#57

Post by bismark »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #47
wwwv wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worthwhile to note that not a single once of the thousands of "ICO" things that have been launched in the last year have actually done anything of value. They all generate hype, raise money, and then give up and go to work on other things. It happens over and over again with no memory of the past failures, apparently. That said I wouldn't fault you for believing that a lot of the $xM raised in x ICO just turned…

> It's worthwhile to note that not a single once of the thousands of "ICO" things that have been launched in the last year have actually done anything of value. I honestly thought there was like a few of ICOs to date, and that the whole thing is like a month or two old. Does anyone track these things? A continuously updated list would be great!

Here is a list I've come across, I'm not sure how exhaustive it is: https://www.smithandcrown.com/icos/

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

#59

Post by Hermel »

richardknop wrote: post #20
fowlerpower wrote: post #18

A lot of people are calling these things Scams. People arent wrong and to a certain degree they do attract the "quick buck" type to them. Keep in mind though that these are also very useful for companies to get the Digitial Currency and block chain into the hands of the masses without some of this money, which large parts of that may be burned, will yield some killer apps. The people doing an ICO do it to raise a bun…

Call me when a single of these projects that raise a ton of money from ICOs actually delivers and becomes a success. So far we have seen a lot of no strings attached cash given away to people with just an idea who would never raise money from real investors. I think it's a ponzi scheme. As far as people selling ICO tokens for 10x price, only a small number of people can logically do that and it relies on influx of ne…

Ethereum raised 20000 Bitcoin giving away 2000 Ether per Bitcoin. Today, one Ether is worth 0.1 Bitcoin. That's a 200x return. Also, they created the most widely used Blockchain. Does that qualify as "delivered"?

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

#60

Post by dave_sullivan »

erikb wrote: post #38

> So, is this the new revolution in fund raising or another pyramid that is soon to explode? Everything is a pyramid. The question is just for how long it lasts. I mean there was a pyramid called monarchy that ruled the planet for a few centuries. There's capitalism which will be replaced by something else, maybe 20 years, maybe 500 years from now. Instead of worrying about the pyramid-ness of something it's much sma…

> a real market value hasn't been established yet. The one possible true market value, micro transactions, seems to have been overcome by simple small step technological evolution.

A real market value, in the sense that "something is worth what someone will pay for it", has been established. There's just a lot of people scratching their heads about it.

What's the real market value of diamonds? Or gold? In the apocalypse, you can't do anything with either, but I think you'd have a hard time making the case that there's no "true market value" to these goods, even if you find their utility dubious.

Post reply on HN