Bitcoin Forum

We stand at a weird point of time in the history of Blockchain technology and its eventual rise to mainstream adoption. The technology is not a geeks dream anymore and the community is not entirely considered to be outliers. Banks, governments, enterprises and private investors are watching with eyes open on the various projects that emerge from enthusiasts of a revolution that is expected to be decentralized in nature. Amidst the hype and excitement, DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) has managed to raise over 150 million dollars. . The fact that this amount has been raised from individuals around the globe, most of whose identities are not even known shows the potential a decentralized currency has in the context of fund raising. While the legalities, logic and possibilities of what is happening is subject to debate, this post is not about that. It is about how development on the Blockchain has evolved over the years.


When Satoshi Nakamoto released the whitepaper for Bitcoin in 2008, he did not seek a couple million dollars in funding. What he did however, was seek the input, insight and contribution of skilled individuals from around the globe that he believed could contribute to the project. The rise of Bitcoin was not through pointless hype but rather by building upon its utility and community over the years. From the perspective of a consumer — Bitcoin does one job and it does it perfectly well. Remit tokens of value, around the globe, while circumventing global players such as banks, governments and their related agencies. Granted the currency or rather commodity is subject to fluctuations owing to supply and demand, the currency paved way for millions of individuals to connect themselves to an economy they never had access to earlier. Entrepreneurs and freelancers from third world economies could now receive and remit payments while not losing a major chunk of it to third parties who never played a role in adding value to the economic chain. Bitcoin garnered traction, not because it could raise a couple million dollars through an initial coin offering, but rather because it could get its job done right amongst the demographic that used it during the initial days, regardless of whether they were hackers, money launderers, gamblers or wikileaks.


Skip through to the era of alt-coins and you have a community of developers sprouting from around the globe demanding thousands of Bitcoin in “investments” or rather, donations for the purpose of building blockchain based solutions. The fact that a large chunk of these developers remain largely anonymous and are often not accountable in regards to how the funds are spent leads to disastrous situations in regards to corporate governance and transparency. Ethereum — which was once one of the largest crowd-fund amongst decentralized communities, was crippled for a while due to fund shortages and mismanagement of its funds. Similarly, Bitshares — a community that decided to have its tokens given to developers on the basis of voting and democracy found itself crippled owing to politics and investors not understanding how to actually build a profitable enterprise.


Waves, Lisk and IOTA have together raised over 5 million dollars in the last few months. Each of these currencies solve unique problems and definitely contribute drastically to how the world approaches a more decentralized era. Odds are, the teams behind them are fairly credible too. However what’s concerning me as an individual is the amount of hype that’s going on behind these coins and the culture of pointless ICO’s around a number of concepts that add little or no value to the ecosystem. The sheer amount of dead ICO’s and projects that have fizzled out would easily run into the tens of millions of dollars. There used to be a time when this wasn’t the nature of decentralized currency. When core utility and a community around the product mattered more than the funds raised. When the end goal was disruption rather than a short term hike in price. It almost feels like in trying to disrupt conventional systems of banking, we have the community itself falling down to greed and short term obsession towards a pump.


This obsession towards ICO’s and investment gimmicks can possibly do more harm than good because in a lot of these cases the capital is dumb capital and does not pave way for the innovators (if any) behind the coin to actually have the opportunity to work on the coin and the product behind it. Unlike venture capitalists who take risks posts conducting due diligences, Bitcointalk is strife with individuals who don’t have a clue in regards to what’s’ going on. Seasoned investors in the game would easily play the pump and dump game while an individual that is new to the ecosystem would play along, eventually losing out what’s his or hers. While the free market does give each individual the freedom to do whatever he prefers to do with his money and investors are bound to lose their money if they don’t do their due diligences, I personally believe all this obsession with ICO’s could partly be the reason why no alt currency has neither attained the scale nor the user base Bitcoin has in all these years.


Revolutions are not to be monetized. Or, in the few cases they were , they did not really end with the masses being on the side not being screwed over. (eg : Rothschilds and the battle of Waterloo). While private investments and interests in Blockchain technology is rather welcome and much needed, the pump and dump game looks like a new iteration of penny stocks for individuals to sit on their computers all day long and earn money for spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). I am a strong believer in decentralized crowdfunding and what it can do for the people. What am against however (and this post in its entirety is about) -is the pointless hype that goes on behind some of these projects. Its time the community called the bullshit once and for all. A lot of the “enthusiasts” behind the new ICO’s do so with the intent of liquidating at a higher profit margin within a matter of months, if not weeks and thereby increasing their capital. If such, is the nature of capitalism within our attempts to create a revolution on the blockchain, may god bless our souls. Or much rather, may the banks come do it through their “permissioned” ledgers, because I fail to see the differency any longer. Both .. are fuelled by speculation, greed and a deep control on the monetary policies



Tl:Dr : Such ICO, MUCH WOW!!

F*** ICOs! Long live ICOs! Glad that we have projects that heavily push innovation forward

To the hidden communist in you: top notch software development requires funding. We all need money to live.

Hey,

Go back to quoting Jobs out of place and not understanding what true innovation is.
To the hidden peasant in you - you neither understand capitalism nor venture capitalism

GTFO

P.s - waiting for your "friends" to come along.

This is an excellent contribution to the community. I look forward to your posts in the future, you have my attention. As you have so eloquently stated this, I have no need to revisit , I agree with this part and parcel. I will add, in traditional finance, the IPO phase is usually only approached after a business has had sufficient growth to stand on its own, with a mature brand, and capital is needed for expansion, not development as we see with the current rash of ICO offerings. Essentially,I'm saying there is usually a proven product on the shelf, not just an idea. Investment at the concept stage is usually only reserved for big VC, as only they can tolerate the risk associated with early stage adoption. Especially in the technology sector.

You get a cookie. I had not thought I would give out more than one today.  ;D

Never mind the shills. They are genuine sometimes, they simply don't have the perspective that comes from questioning your own motivations.

Thank you for taking the time to pen this for us.

damn right OP.

any project with a commercial approach in here doesn't get my money. Yes I missed out on a lot of profits, so what. it's time to change some fundamental issues in this world and people want fucking Lamboz?

I like having money just as much as the next guy but sometimes it's really hard not to be disappointed with what is going on in this space.

Human nature, I guess.

EDIT: I forgot... thank you for the excellent post :)

thank you very much for sharing this. i hope that everyone that is waiting right now - to be able to transfer their lisk to an exchange - has the time to read this. but i don't think that they will leave the thread before it reaches 1000 pages.

TL;DR version anyone?

Communism

This is good, because a world with the money cannot be perfect.

The Libertarian dream has evolved into a Capitalist nightmare. The banks used to fear cryptocurrencies. Not any more. They just need to get some popcorn and watch us destroy ourselves chasing their fiat cash.

The bankers must be laughing themselves to sleep every night.

Down with ICOs.  I'm with you.  We're all with you.  No more support for these scum - these projects exist only to extract capital from the crypto-community, instead of injecting that capital into fair/clean launch projects. 

Eastern Europeans figured out that creating decentralized currencies is not actually profitable for the coin creator because in a real decentralized currency, the coin issuer doesn't actually have control over who gets the block rewards at all.  Due to this fact, Eastern Europeans started creating centralized, permissioned ledger IPOs in order to try and scam people for personal gain.  (exhibit:  Come from Beyond & Vitalik)

LISK will leave s bad taste in everyone's mouth for quite sometime. What a complete price dump and easy profit taking for the scammers.

crowdsale, ico or ipo or whatever theyre called is the new innovation actually.   ;D you're left behind.

Thank you so much for the cookie. It made my day. I'll be following up with a new post on how capitalism should work in the decentralized era and why IPO's can be "possibly" good. This will be to give a better picture of the possibilities. The sheer lack of regulation and accountability clearly leads to disastrous situations. This is the wild wild west all over again.



Thanks for pointing out the Lambo example! People see this as a get rich quick scheme instead of what it actually can be!


IPO's have been around for centuries. If you think that's innovation, you really do belong to a different period of time in history.
The difference now is - Bitcoin (which was the real innovation) has allowed scammers to sit and garner funds in "IPO's" from remote investors who are often duped into buying into such coins. Greed and a lack of foresight is getting the best of us.


I am not pushing for communism or anything of that nature. The fact that the likes of come-from-beyond and his shills decide that every thread is about them, speaks amply about what I've been talking of. If you believe in what you are building, what I wrote should not make you feel insecure.
Have a good day!

So roach, why do you think Nick Szabo of all people is so on board with Ethereum?  He seems like the type to just launch his own clean fork of Ethereum vs. commit his talents to something so tainted.

Oh, these racist vibes, I like them, they indicate the author want to offend me but have no ideas how to do it. Keep posting them.

Roach and thinking? Haha, his mouth is connected to his anus completely bypassing the brain.

Nothing I personally posted had anything against you (directly) - only against the state of crowd-funding in the ecosystem.

This is what people want. ICO after ICO after ICO. Most people are here to try to make a quick buck. They know ICOs are scams and they do not care. Better to make peace with it.

I am completely at peace with it. Just stating, if a revolution is what we're expecting, none of what we're seeing in the ecosystem right now is going to bring it on. Revolutions are a product of the people partaking in them. In most of these cases, they are solely dreams and hopes being sold to a greedy few who then dump it on some others.

OK - so the same conversation - number 1001.

All ICO's are NOT scams, though some may be. (ps I have not bought into any yet, but not because I thought they were scams... I just like reading the white-papers.)

Let's take an example.

HOW could you distribute a coin that does not have a mining structure that supports it ?

HOW could the IOTA tokens have been distributed without an ICO in a sybil attack proof way ? (I know we talked about this yesterday americanpegasus.. but I would like an answer.. ;-) , when IOTA has no concept of 'mining' per se ?

? Thanx.

Hello,

On the offset I'd like to state that I am not against any of the coins doing an ICO here. If a community intends to distribute itself on basis of capital invested and come through on it, I believe they have all rights to do so. Individuals have their right to speculate and play with the supply and demand of the industry to make a profit too. None of this is what I have written against.

My key points of concern in the article are

1. Lack of regulations and accountability within the ecosystem
2. The hype that goes on around technology that hasn't been established
3  Tricking innocent investors into buying tokens that are worthless.

If anything decentralized forms of fund raising are a powerful tool to raise capital, empower entrepreneurs and give everyone a chance to benefit from the rapid rise of a start-up but under the current circumstances,

1. A startup can redefine the rules of its commitment within the token system (inflation, not coming through on its promises)
2. Owners of the tokens have almost no legal protection in the event of a bust.
3. Tokens are rarely ever backed by something tangible.

Capital markets around the world are rigged in the same fashion and all am stating is, in this cycle of hype and dump, we've lost something that was meant to be very ideological.

As for distribution issues, in case you don't realize- Bitcoin did establish a very smart implementation. Mining aside, it was the early adopters that benefited the most from its early day distribution. Granted we could debate over aspects like holding for long term profit and the mining part - it still showed us that giving a select number of people in the early days incentives to build the ecosystem does work. I will be writing about why ICO's are good and how we could leverage them in one of my coming posts.

P.s - Would you mind sharing all the white papers ? I am trying to make a compilation of all alt-coin white papers right now.

Regards

There are many ways.  I'm not even very smart and the first idea that occured to me is create a well-publicized proof-of-work token and let everyone know that at the end of a 3 month - 1 year period their proof-of-work tokens would be permanently exchangeable for IOTA.  This isn't perfect, but its better than a blatant ICO. 

You're no fool..  ;)


I like this idea, nice and clean, but I think that it is just as unfair as an ICO.

First - the POW is totally useless with regard to your coin's security (let's say IOTA). Just wasted cpu cycles.. If it were used to secure the network that at least would be something.

Then -  doesn't this penalise those who don't have access to a computer 24/7 ?

And finally - Those with faster computers / graphics cards would get more. Again, I see no reason for this being better than just asking for BTC.

..

It certainly 'sounds' fairer but I think you would end up with just as lop-sided a distribution..  Maybe more so as less people would understand it. An ICO is pretty straight forward.

.. BUT - you know what - it may have a future if this removes any legal complications that arise from an ICO.

Not bad for your 'first' idea..
 

I have been saying this for years lol, my squall coin is a non ico/ipo coin, I have funded everything myself, I have no ones money!!

"how will giving money to devs make you rich" is my quote, and I stand by it.

This might sound like a plug, but I am more interested in saving people money, I was a big coin pumper/dumper back in the good old days, only to loose ALOT along with many other people.

It's just not worth it, just my opinion tho, if your good you can cream off a few coins before they disappear, but my coin is two years in and still being traded!. think on that.

Among the scams there is important innovation occurring.  We are witnessing a new way of funding projects and promoting innovation - crowdsourcing.  Crypto is at the front of the decentralization movement which is going to influence technology in the future.

I really don't understand why people think crowd-sourcing is where the "innovation" is. People have been crowd-sourcing and offering shares in potential profit for hundreds of centuries. To put it in perspective, the British Conquest of India was partly "crowd-sourced" in the sense that East India Company had a number of private investors. You could say wars were also crowd-sourced in the sense that bonds issued to fund these wars in the 17th century were bought by private investors. None of this is what's "innovative"

The primary innovation in the ecosystem was what Satoshi offered when he made a system that allowed all of us to remove the barriers set by conventional banking and fiat system . A lot of these "investments" are being made because you have an anonymous system of value transfer that happens digitally. Granted a lot of the new coins (especially IOTA ) are solving drastically new problems, what am trying to talk of is the pointless hype around them.

The world is full of noise and cycles. This was no different when the first Italian city states develop the foundations of modern commerce, Europeans started colonising the new World, the Industrial revolution in England brought forth the steam engine and capitalist production, Railroads, Electricity, the Internet, etc. It is best to focus on specific things one knows how to improve and run with it, rather than worrying about all the things one can not fix. Capital on the blockchain is a pretty interesting and valuable mechanism, just still very raw.

Pretty much summed up what I think of things.
The brightest minds in the world are yet to tap on the industry in a major way. Fintech's smartest people are yet to enter and disrupt.
What we have right now are a lot of scum like beings utilizing a technology built with the highest of ideals to trick and steal.
Additionally all the bad news keeps people wary about even working in the sector.
Things are changing slowly though.

Top notch software development requires funding
^^^
Did anyone actually answer this, or are you all just enjoying a one-sided circle-jerk?
How do great new projects get funded if the innovators are not allowed to be paid?

You are upsetting me  :'(

It is a better way of mining though ease of access is higher.

Hey

I apologize for not responding to this earlier. Skipped my mind (although I don't see where it is posted).

Yes, innovators need to be paid for the work they do and in that sense, ICO's are indeed a powerful medium of capital mobility.
However,

1. How do you validate these "innovators" ?
2. How do you ensure they continue working post fund-raising (multi-sigs are a possibility, but its rarely used)
3. On what pay-scale are they going to be rewarded ? (Real start-up CEO's avoid salaries to hold company share / liquidate shares for personal expenses )
4. How is their work going to be tracked ? (Yes, Github is one of the possibilities)
5. How are their quality standards tracked ?


Perhaps a better way to put this thread across would have been " ICO's need fixing"
In their current form, they have a lot of flaws and that is perfectly fine. We started at barter and now we are at decentralized global currency.
Systems and financial models evolve over time. However, it is important we detect their flaws, acknowledge them and work towards fixing it.

Thank you for your interest in the thread.

Thanks for your quality response:
1. How do you validate these "innovators" ?
In a free market, investors in profitable companies get rewarded and "suckers" lose their money.

2 - 5) Are we talking about "real-world" companies, 'token-based' crypto 2.0-crap, or truly nasty copy/paste coins?
Seriously, this "Brave New World" needs a way to reward quality founders without automatically calling them a scam... 
That is my only point, thanks.

1. In a free market, doesn't the capitalist also have the right to verify the validity of the human resource he's investing into.
I see your POV though - basically, those who invest into the right people and go the extra length of seeing who's worth it get rewarded.

2. I concur with your point there. I think I need to explain why ICO's can be a force for good. I'll follow up this post with a new thread in a bit from now that talks about the good of ICO's

Do you realize that history is FULL of quality free code ?
Requires payment ? Nope.. wrong.

Want an example ?
Google "Rockbox Firmware" and check out some of the contributed content that is CC'd

Need a million dollars to make OPEN SOURCE FREE CODE ON GITHUB ?
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
AHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA

Now i turn to your other point..

Innovation ? Uhh where ?
Do you know what innovation means ?

Show me one single innovation over Bitcoin.
You can't
I have said this 100 times and no one ever has.

I do enjoy a one-sided circle-jerk  ;D  8)

innovation.. ahahah that was funny !

Scenario 1):
A user can go to Bitcointalk and download the Litecoin wallet and run it.. getting coins.

Scenario 2):
A user can go to their local bank branch and withdraw $100 then stand there wondering how to get it onto Poloniex to buy some ICO tokens then have to figure out how to get Bitcoin then figure out that there *ARE* exchanges and that they *NEED* to sign up at one and hand over their picture-id (as requested) in order to transfer Bitcoin over there so they can then play the markets with greedy wolves and deceitful hyped / spammy dishonest chatbox users where they can then buy ICO scheme tokens.

Only question after scenario 2 is WHY would the public want to do that and then WHAT would they even do with them once they withdraw them from Poloniex and get their picture ID info back

Can i ask.. why are you lying ? Financial agenda ?

PS:
Nice account name  :D

I've been following you for a while. Very ideological posts :)
I've written a counter-argument in regards to why ICO's could be good in another thread. Please do take a look.
I do not intend to bash upon any economic system but solely point out the good and the bad that is on-going in the community at the moment.

Also, is this the rockbox you were talking of ?
http://www.rockbox.org

I'll check it out.. and yea that was the site.

We ALL know there is a LOT of code out there that is built up into HUGE systems.. for free.
If you can't *afford* to code then leave it to someone who can.

I have written plenty last couple decades and never charged a cent or taken donations
Except in 1 scenario..
I was working on an optimized Quark Coin miner
And i charged users a min donation fee of what ever coins where on Cryptsy to get it.
But we're talking a conversion of what ever shit-coins valued at $10 per person basically.
Not 250k or a million $$$

Why ?
I still have my PM's from Mullick saying i was banned from posting links to my miner (for a day or two)
on the Cryptsy chat-box.. apparently someone told them i was posting a miner with a virus.
All miners get flagged by VirusTotal etc though LOL

I was posting new build versions freely on Cryptsy chat and one guy came back and flipped out
all pissed off because he installed the miner on a pile of servers (a botnet of some type)
He got mad because i broke the code so it was not mining properly..
Which caused a bunch of us to loose mining earnings for about a day or so.
I told him that is why i did not want to post any links anywhere..
BECAUSE IT WAS A BETA TEST !
As i said Nooooon stop.

I also told them all i kept getting bitched at when i mentioned it briefly or my main tester guy
gave me feedback on chat briefly.. sometimes i made the miner worse and others a bit better.
It was more about some experimentation than anything.

SO..
When i got the link ban and that botnet guy was mad at me etc
I said well fuck this i will tack on some code i wrote..

I went and coded in a protection system so you needed a Serial / key to run it (with beta options available)
Or.. with no key it would run as the stable version i made which worked great with all features like colors in console etc
So.. i was charging for the entry to be a beta tester mainly. (to enable extra experimental mode)
It would still run great with out paying a cent !
Yet i was swiftly told here on the forum i was running a cheating miner and charging money for it LOL
When another guy was doing that here and his did not run with out paying at all !
(his was GPU and mine was CPU)

I tried to stress i had a dedicated buddy doing testing for me and providing feedback
and he was the only one doing that.. everyone else just wanted more coins
and gave me no feedback on it (which was the whole entire point i was sharing my work)

My tester guy had a few CPU's i did not have to help test with etc
So my charging money for code once in all of my time in crypto was
simply my way of keeping the user count down so i did not get flooded with request etc.
And to hopefully get testers that would give me feedback.
Which caused issues with testing results from more users.
Then i had guys sending me piles of emails saying they were all getting different results etc
When they would not follow the directions i gave them to record a proper benchmark.
(I had coded in a variety of benchmark modes & options)

I also should point out i had spent a lot of time telling noobs what a miner is and how to use it..
When all i wanted to do was write fucking code !
Once i let the cat of the bag it snow balled into a pain in the ass.
Eventually in time interest waned on all our parts and we all moved on..
/The End

I am probably the only guy who ever did that  :o

I was surprised that no cracker did not load it in OllyDBG patch 1 jump and share it publicly..
Would have been easy.. i could have cracked it in under 60 seconds guaranteed  :D

PS:
@OP
I think you are a lot like Shelby ;)
Coincidentally the same long comments and "Ideological" views on ICO's etc

super good post! big wall of text, but i read through it and it was worth it :D

In terms of a pure rational analysis there is no theft or fraud. Alice sends money to Bob, because she believes she will get something in return. So these are just risk factors. ICO's are an early, simple form of capital investment structures for blockchains. Instead of paying for all developing costs upfront, a project can raise funds (secured via escrow hopefully) and then recoup these with the float of a currency. Potentially there are other ways to pay for developer costs. Its a much better model than what Bitcoin has at the moment (sponsoring through the backdoor).

Well at best maybe you have stupid scams probably where the devs fooled themselves as well  ;D

I mean it is really doubtful whether any startup should do funding this way. it is extremely risky for your continuity even if you have good intentions. if you want something for everyone then make it open, that shouldnt need a corp. and even if you do that you might find funds you need in different ways

It is really interesting to see differential perspectives on ICO's. Some think there is no scam involved as these are risk factors involved as with any investment. Some think these are outright scams as most scams could be avoided. I come somewhere in between.

I am looking to compile information on the rise of alt's and their history in general some time in the future. It would be great to record how a parallel financial revolution occurred to Bitcoin and gave birth to coins like Ethereum. Wonder if people would even buy a book on  that.

This is about Digital Currencies.
You all choose not to see the correct path / train of thought.
Simply because you want to profit off of them.

ICO's are a great way for the dev etc to snag a huge shitload of coins for themselves.
When they should not get any !

People we are not talking about paying a contract coder to create a software program for you.
We are talking about launching a currency ..and the launch fairness *is* the entire point !

It can not be a currency if the dev holds his hand out and says
i need $250,000.00 usd to create your new decentralized digital CURRENCY.

I have like 20 super long points why ICO's are BAD and i am always thinking of new ones.
But i don't think you guys care.
Think ?
I KNOW you don't !

Go out and research Pyramid / Ponzi schemes.. then come here.

No legit dev should have his hand out "crowd funding"
If you do not have the means to be coding the worlds internet currency
then you should NOT be doing it period .

Do not create a problem on purpose to sell me the solution.
We need a currency ? #6,000+ ?
Solution ? Your money invested into it ?

Has any ICO ever produced a viable currency that innovates over Bitcoin ?
NO ..not even close !
ALL OF THEM have been a pointless cash grab (not a currency) ICO scheme.

I think it hinges on how the starting coins came about.
The US Federal Reserve for example simply fabricates them on demand. (out of thin air)
They are not asking the public to pay them some other already dominating currency
to buy another newer currency.. that ACT alone makes them scammy !
AND no you can not try and wiggle around that.. it is how SCAMS WORK !

WHY ARE WE HERE ?
We all came here years ago to support BITCOIN.
Why ?
For the concept of an open source decentralized digital currency.
This needs to replace the FIAT money not be an add-on scheme to FIAT.
If we NEED fiat to buy say ETH tokens then it can NOT be a currency no matter how hard you try.

A digital currency has to REPLACE FIAT !
It can not if you NEED Fiat to get the damn ICO tokens  :D
..use your brain people.
And if you are not making a currency then it's just a straight up Pyramid Scheme !

..dig deep people.
I want to see us all peer deep into this stuff and reach down for answers.
We got off track guys !
We came to support a decentralized open source digital currency
and what is the hottest "coin" in town ?

A "coin" that is..
- Centralized.
- Launched closed-source sometimes.
- Not a currency at all.
- Has no innovative / purpose
- A gimmick that is unused.
- Incomplete half-cooked concepts with bits of code / vaporware idea's
- ACTUALLY used for nothing but profit.

People we have failed the point in EVERY aspect possible.
100% Failure.
Bitcoin still reigns King and this will not be changing unless a real coin comes out to rival it.

And what do we see ?
ANOTHER coin.. 6,000 ANN topics here & climbing.
And we have another coin posted with what excuse now ?
It is STILL another coin.. #6,000
So you better have a good excuse.. what is it ?
Oh really ?
Did it already rival Bitcoin or will it ever ?
No, no and no.

Stop ignoring the context & reality of what ACTUALLY is happening here !
Trying to be idealistic about a method of scamming the ICO is a joke !
..don't even bother.  ::)

Did Satoshi say hey give me 1 million dollars
and i will post a project scheme idea that is partially complete ?
BlockNET did with their ICO..
So what do you do when Satoshi decides hey ..know what ?
Fuck it you all already paid me so..screw it.. i am sick or broke my hand or hackers or was raped by a sasquatch or unicorns stole my shoes or BUGZ.. or dem IRC flalws attackin' ma coldz storage'z...  ::)

Hey my ass is itchy.. sorry guys fuck you thanks for the MILLION dollars.
And yeah i know the hosting bill expired and the site is offline.
..i must have forgot to pay it.. as had happened not long with BlockNET 1 yr after the ICO

Know why i bring up the scammy train wreck called BlockNET so much ?
Because i kept saying THIS is the beginning if we don't stop this shit here and now
then it will only get worse.. and since ?
The ICO shit has exploded out of proportion as I PREDICTED !
Not only is launching an ICO scammy but they could not even add 1 innovation to Bitcoin with them !

I WAS HERE WHEN THE FIRST ONE LAUNCHED
and i recall how this whole forum flamed them to death 100%
..you all turned scammy asshole on me.

When i hear the word crowd-sale or crowd-funding or angel-investing or ICO or IPO or ITO
i want to fucking puke !
You people make me sick !

I have buried every ICO-term you all come up with so keep making up new ones.
I will make sure Earth know that no matter how many times they change names
it will always be known as...................... S C A M

This is not the stock exchange fuck your terminology and your white papers.
Using stock market jargon is grooming the crowd here into treating this as penny stocks for crypto.
But this is not the stock exchange so fuck you are scammy bullshit.

No ICO will ever get past me with out FUD unless i see people regularly getting
jail time for "insider trading".. until then you are all on my shitlist !

..and the launch fairness *is* the entire point !

You can try to say (regarding the Bitcoin launch) "it was fair", but very few people knew about it.
Was the end result fair?
"Satoshi" (if still alive) has 500,000+ or ~1,000,000 BTC's, is it a display of fairness for one person to have so many?

Other than this kind of magical existence of bitcoin, part of the problem is just that. I doubt many believe that either. Why does it have to to replace fiat? What does that accomplish? Do you really believe it is living up to what it promised? I mean I wish all the best for it and its supporters, that it may go on forever and so on, because there is no direct evidence of it being something evil itself (regardless events in its eco-system). But it is just beliefs and all that just as well. You believe it can structure society in the way fiat does, being one single currency?

mmmkay, calling the ambulance.

Conspiracies aside, part of the reason why there has been a push for replacing fiat is the lack of trust in government bodies. Due example being nation states like Zimbabwe that fuelled inflation and took local economies down to nothing. A more recent example would be brexit where'in the people did make a choice but I don't see why public opinion should affect the value of a local currency. If you really notice, the lack of diligence by nation states in taking their financial decisions have played a major role in pumping Bitcoin. There is an almost direct corelation between Bitcoin price and monetary devaluation.

This article comes back to be in relevance in light of Zcash ? :)

POW all the way ...fair launch protocol no nijna scam mines.

How to make it happen though?

I would respectfully disagree with you here in this example. The dutch east india traing company was a MASSIVE innovation, at the time, as it was the first example of capital formation. It was, at the time, and is to this day, one of the single most innovative legal structures, aside from the "trust" in legal history. Moreover, it was not "crowdsourced" in the sense that we know it, as it was only made avaliable to the aristocracy in part as a revolt to the monarch who was not always able or did not allow for the funding of expeditions. It was more akin to a "private Placement" the innovation of crowdfunding, as we know it today; is not the idea, but the methods in which it is done, the technology we have as the enabler. Which is where I agree with you. The difference from today, is anyone who has an interest no matter if you're rich, poor, smart or stupid, can participate.

If I understand you correctly, you seem to want to link the prevailing and good things from our investment regulatory system and apply them to ICOs but in the spirit of decentralization and crypto? I agree with you if thats the case, the question is what should we as a collective hold, and what should we shed to provide a working framework for issuers, and for investors so that our community can thrive?

I think a productive way to look at this might be to come up with a "Manifesto" for appcoins, ICOs etc, a loose, guiding framework that people can reference and be held accountable to so that a culture can be defined and governd around what we collective believe are the proper ways to issue and invest in ICOs. lets not overlook that on the other side as an issuer, there are nefarious things that investors do to screw with valuations and the success of platforms. I would sumbit that the DAO profiteer probably had it in for the whole Ethereum ecosystem, but thats a topic for another discussion.

I would say that respect to you for raising all this as a topic as it is necessary part of the eveolution of the community. I just hope we can sort it out before some bureacrat does and then it sucks for everyone.

I love how you are able to look through and see what I am getting at but how will you enforce such a manifesto ?
Through code  ? What if the code is broken ? (eg: DAO )
It'll have to be a mix of of tech  / regulatory procedures in order to ensure the best interest of everyone involved.

You should always think before putting money in any ICO first you need to make sure if the funds are really from real investors and not the team behind the project and make sure to know for what you are investing your money.

I agree that 80% of ICOs are pure scam.

Have you lost a lot in these ICO's,finding profitable investment it's like looking a needle in a haystack,you have to exercise due diligence,so many ICO you are lost in a sea of ico.

I don't invest in ICO's personally.
Only help some of these projects though.

I don't think anyone cares if funds raised in a crowd sale or in an ICO are really from the crowd?
We can't have a currency and offer it to people before printing them(mining).

If a company is going to pay dividends to investors then it has nothing to do with crypto and being decentralized.
And if they tell you otherwise then better to stay away from them because no company would open source and operate in a decentralized environment could actually earn money.

Wrong.
Bitcoin went from a token worth nothing to 1350 working in that very environment.
Albeit, not a company in the conventional sense.

Don't get me wrong but it's the truth, if you have a money maker idea and you go open source then everyone start to clone your idea, so in order to be able to make money you need to be closed source and I think all the companies have their own secrets why is that? because it's a money maker idea.
If a developer team comes out and says otherwise then you should check their money making idea to see if it is possible and if you can't have access to it then it's not open source and being decentralized means nothing.

Also bitcoin didn't offer any tokens to crowd sale.

decentralized is the wave of the future

what FUD sticks said in less words

F*** ICO's.

https://bitcointalk.org/useravatars/avatar_138471.png

I think open source vs closed source is a discussion in itself :)

Wow this is so true, in the beginning the banks laugh at us, they ridiculed us, and they accepted us and some even succumbed to us. But wait, I think they'll be laughing again

Friendly bump. I feel this could be of relevance seeing where the industry is headed at the moment.

The banker just playing with us. You can see all of the news that has released by the banker to make the traders feeling panic and sell all of their portfolio in the lost area. SEC is one of them in my opinion. because US is not the world. So take your conclusion about that.

I have only made REAL money with 2 ICO's so far. WAVES and CVC (Civic). Some of the other ICO's I have invested in have not yet returned any profits. But I am still holding and seeing where they go.

I think the time when making easy money on ICO's is slowly coming to an end.

People who investing in ICO do not read this kind of threads, and if you want to change something the you must talk with people as neutral, else people will be neglect all negativity said against ICO.
Many people had good luck this year, and greed is what makes this situation worse. No regulations or prohibitions will change people's bad habits, we have bunch of examples.
Maybe best solution for this would be consensus about what an ICO must look like and what must provide as guarantee for investors.

theres nothing wrong with doing an ICO.. theres just a ton of scam ICOs now because its easy money.  there will probably be some diamonds in the rough.. but ya, a lot of scams.

SEC practically greenlighted ICOs.. all u gotta do is block US people, US residents use VPN.  exchanges can't list some ICOs, so now decentralized exchanges will be in higher demand..  :D

It's stupid on the part of investors that they move from investing and making profit from one ICO and investing the returns into another ICO, eventually getting scammed by the 'n'th ICO. If every ICO really intended on raising millions of dollars for software development, we would've been in world full of cryptos and the government would have to stop issuing fiat as you would have one crypto for milk, another for vegetables etc.

this is why the dev from WBB (DLS) who runs 1ex.trade started things off as one of the only legit fair mined coins in late 2014 and has since done well as a project and in price.  i suggest ppl get away from bullshit ICO's and get with something that HAS a major real world product about to launch!  8)

On a different and positive viewpoint, it's a good thing we have ICOs. These ICOs are doing a great job in promoting cryptocurrency. There will never be a buzz for bitcoin, ethereum, etc if not for these ICOs. We need to embrace change and these cryptocurrencies can change our world for the better. I can tell these crptocurrencies can fight corruption and can improve the quality of education. If we can make a way to educate the students about the real function of cryptocurrencies through ICOs, I'm sure the world will be a better place for them.

The International MultiModal Logistics Application (IMMLA) has came up with a genius idea of conducting pre-ICO to build a decentralized system for cargo transportation. The team behind the project makes use of Ethereum to fight additional and hidden fees in shipping business. Details here goo.gl/qeK3mQ (http://goo.gl/qeK3mQ)

I'm hopeful more people will realize the real value of IMMLA-ICO before the shipping industry becomes a haven of corruption. Now is the time for a change. It's time to use the magic of cryptocurrency!

ICO is a short term adrenaline, once the adrenaline ends it's not gonna look good. And this will reflect unfashionably on coins too.