Bitcoin Forum

What exactly is ICO? Can anyone develop ICO? What are the requirements for joining ICOs?

ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering and is the release of a new coin. This is usually done in exchange for another coin (such as Bitcoin or Ethereum). Anybody can develop a new coin (in order to have an ICO), but you'll need a good idea and a lot of coding knowledge to get it done.

It's more than just making a new coin. It's crowd funding of projects. You get an idea of a good project, you do an ICO, sell tokens and thus get funding for your idea.

There are no requirements for joining. You have different ways to join ICOs, you can just invest in them (as said before, usually in BTC or ETH), you can be part of signature campaigns, FB campaigns, twitter campaigns, newsletter... and you usually earn some stakes with doing that. But things are different with every coin, so you need to check this for any coin you think is worth your time and/or money.
Edited.

ICO is a acronym of Initial Coin offering ; means the developers of a coin asking some fund to the community and investor to fund their project by ICO.

If you done making some innovative coin you can ask some fundings with the community byand ICO.

The big requirements in ICO is money if you dont have a money you cant participate in ICO but you can participate on their bounties campaign and you will be rewarded.

you said :the developers of a coin asking some fund to the community and investor to fund their project by ICO. but i was wondering if its not a kind of scam? what about if this developer give up on his project?

Of course! I am not saying that every ICO or crowdsale out there is a scam or is going to fail, but there are too many and there is always a risk of losing money in this kind of investment. It's up to you to take that risk. I personally have lost money in at least 2 cases (developers just took the money and disappeared). Read & learn, ask & search before participating / investing your money.

for your information, these are some ico case studies:

TheDAO   raised 12.07M ETH
Ethereum   raised  31,531 BTC
Waves   raised  29,635 BTC
Augur    raised 22,036 BTC
Lisk    raised 15,128 BTC

Their some ICO is scam and their some ICO is legit so be careful in investing in ICO you must do some research about the developers and the team itself.

I didn't not heard yet that some developers give up on his project but their are some developers disappeared after they release their coin in the exchanges.

i think ICO was already explained above.
To check which icoes are ongoing i share some resources:
https://tokenmarket.net/ico-calendar
https://www.smithandcrown.com/icos/
http://www.icocountdown.com/

enjoi :-)

I want to add a lot of ICOs fail and go nowhere. Keep this in mind you have a great chance of losing your investment. There is a lot to watch out for.

Does the ICO have a marketing person? Do they have a website that looks good? Are they running ad campaigns all over social media and here? Why is their coin useful? Is their coin useful enough that people will use it?

Many many other things to add. Try joining an ICO ad campaign if you dont want to risk investing your own btc.

Its basically pyramid scheme. People, who call it share holding dont know what they are talking about - which is worrying since vast majority of alts, that emerged over the years were shitcoins and get rich quick schemes to begin with.

You offer ICOs to intial backers and insighters, they hold for several weeks following the launch, allowing the price of shitcoin to skyrocket in short term. The founder and insighters then sell their shares crashing the shitcoin and leaving now worthless casino tokens to played fools and bag holders.

Its been done for nearly decade now and will be done again in future, people never seem to learn.

That doesn't sound good but i still believe you. I don't know anything about ICO, but what you have write scared me and reminds me on the first "cloudmining" SCAM a long time ago.  ;D

ICOs are like IPOs, but for new cryptocurrencies.

Anyone can develop a new coin, so anyone can do an ICO.
To join an ICO, you just have to invest in it. Usually investments are made in Bitcoin, but sometimes you can even pay with dollars or other fiat currencies.

An ICO is a recently emerged concept of crowdfunding projects in the cryptocurrency and Blockchain industries.

 ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering. It’s an event, sometimes referred to as ‘crowdsale’, when a company releases its own cryptocurrency with a purpose of funding. It usually releases a certain number of crypto-tokens and then sells those tokens to its intended audience, most commonly in exchange for Bitcoins, but it can be fiat money as well.
 There are many possible benefits to taking part in an ICO. The obvious one is: you are helping the company launch its product. There is also an opportunity to make a profit selling ICO tokens after you’ve purchased them.

Instead of giving you only some definitions I believe that is more helpful giving you a couple of good links like as here (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/initial-coin-offering-ico.asp) and here (https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/guides/how-does-an-ico-work/). At sure is a good way to do some profit but in many cases you will loose your money. Watch a short video here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2Gf_PHk530) from Andreas Antonopoulos.

I advise everyone to read this:

Dear SEC: ICOs & ‘Tokens’ are killing innovation

https://medium.com/@derosetech_10334/dear-sec-icos-tokens-are-killing-innovation-2f8d287f88c3

ICO projects look like MLM companies.
Are there successful ICO projects? Have you become ICO campaigns that make you money?

well, they are always successful for the ones who organize them, sometimes you can double up in a short period of time, sometimes you lose

iso means initial coin offering
An initial coin offering is a means of crowdfunding the release of a new cryptocurrency. Generally, tokens for the new cryptocurrency are sold to raise money for technical development before the cryptocurrency is released.

How profitable is to invest in ICO? It all seems like gambling, because it depends on what kind of team developers they have, it is as similar to trading you could well profit from but you can also lose money, and for this already exist exchange office and can be accessed at any moment

In short terms ICOs are profitable, like 2x or 3x but in long terms it's risky; 'the coin' can go to even 10x or you can lose your profit or even most of your money.

It is a risky investment but far from gambling... You can research a lot of things about this coin (team behind it, structure of ICO, their goals, where will you be able to buy that coins, what are they going to be used for...and many more). So if you know what to look for and how things will influence on price you can know the future of coin pretty good.
If you see ICO and don't do any research at all and invest in it - then it can be considered as gambling, yes.

Abbreviation has already been explained above but this is where individuals or companies raise funds for projects through crowdsales

YES but not every project turns out successful

This is the easiest part all you need is to have funds, bitcoin or eth usually to be an investor of a project