Bitcoin Forum

What are your thoughts about having a compulsory insurance when someone wants to do some ICO so that investors are safe and the participants are also safe? So if ever they want to scam people, people are secured.

Just as a general context, ICOs have turned out to be a scam or a failure for the most:
The above data is not recent, but covers many of the post-hype ICO results.

Insurances play a game of odds. When you insure your house, they stipulate the price based on the chances of each potential element covered by the insurance going wrong, and basically bet against them from happening. The insurance company bets on the fact that a known small percentage of all those insured will incur in some sort of casualty, and therefore, sets the premium price based on those low percentages. Propensity models are created in addition that take into account similar to you type people’s index of incidents, and conform the structure behind the premium price to establish.

Now, even if we omit the fact that ICO tokens are not really tangible assets, whose market values could sway like a madman on a roller-coaster if it ever becomes a market asset with any real value, an insurance company has no way to play the odds game on an ICO with numbers like those shown above. The premium would need to be ridiculous, in the range of your investment at least.

it would be very difficult to do, look at the amount of money the ICOs are raising and look at the amount of scam that exists. The insurer would have to repay the money the investors lost and for this to work the ICO creators should pay the insurer, but the creators of the ICOs raise funds from the investors. I do not see how the idea of an insurer for ICOs would work

Why should we help the already greedy insurance industry to get more profits, if we can simply regulate the ICO industry ourselves? We already see an increase in IEOs <Initial Exchange Offerings> and those projects are mostly fully regulated, because exchanges enforce KYC/AML regulations.

So if the people behind these ICOs are properly identified by these regulations, then scams are less likely to occur. We will also see more scammers going to jail and this will discourage scammers to launch scam ICOs/IEOs.  :P

Actually, that's a good thing but the problem is, no one in the crypto space would want to go and do that. They can just give back the payments if ever the IEO/ICO fails. That's their job. However, what if the project is not legit? Would they be willing to pay that large amounts just to scam people? Insurance is a big thing. And it also means different perspective for the investors and the managers.

that is pretty good. I really support this. We need an organization to sell insurance for this to avoid the fraud of bad guys.
Our crypto market really needs insurance, a decentralized market has a lot of scammers and we are very easy to make a mistake.
I used to invest in the Bitnautic project of Scams and Ingot coins. I'm really angry and still waiting for a solution.

Ever heard the lines “buy at your own risk” or “trade at your own risk”? Well in the world of investment there is no such thing as "compulsory insurance” because we are already warned before buying. Them being an investment vehicle doesn't assure you that their price will be going up they don't dictate where it will go. For scams or fake projects in the other hand the closest thing we can ever get for “insurance” is them being punished by law and a lot of people are already put in justice with this kinds of frauds in the industry.

It is a good idea, but who will be the authority to handle those? You mean the project themselves will find a compulsory insurance to handle such thing? I doubt that they will go on that route. Again it boils down to decentralisation, with no third party in between. Perhaps a good regulatory framework is needed, or change the business model of ICO, just saying.

There is no such thing as a "safe investment". If any insurance company were to take such a risk, the premium they would charge would make this option absolutely uninteresting.

What they could do is put down some kind of collateral (a property, shares of a reputable company, etc.) as a guarantee that they won't be scamming anyone.

Firstly, who will be the enforcer of this "compulsory insurance"? The SEC? Or some other regulatory body? The thing is that, even if you have an enforcer, you can't expect every single initial offering to be registered with them, let alone comply with their rules.

Secondly, why would an initial offering bother to try to raise funds, if they are already able to afford an insurance bill that will probably cost a lot, if they are insuring every single investor that is projected to invest?

And lastly, who will be the insurer? Why would anyone be willing to insure such a risky event, especially when it comes to someone over the internet that you have had no previous knowledge about? Nobody wants to take on the risk, and the verification process will simply be way too hard.

It's simply unfeasible overall.

This can't be achieved, as an user stated, the market is unregulated then who'll be the one to make everything planned and executed. The suggestion from Op is really a good one, but in reality a hard task to get it implemented. The funds can be secured on some escrow who is a trusted person or a team into the same service. If the project gets to be a scam, the funds can be released to the investors.

No company will ever initiate this kind of insurance business because it is hard to tell if an certain ICO is a legit or not except if the insurance fees are big then maybe they will engage to this kind of business as they will double their effort to ensure that the project is not a scam. We do not know also if we are ready to pay for our insurance expensive cost as we certainly do not know the future of every ICO if they will be a success or not.

implementing insurance in the Iico project will not be as easy as one might imagine, for example in the real world there are several insurance services that use it for personal benefits that can even deceive customers. Most blockchain project investors do not know the true background of the real team, which is the main problem why fraud continues to occur in the ICO scope.

I think we already have seen the insurance from the exchanges which launch IEO because not all exchanges will launch the project. The exchanges itself needs to be selective to launch the project because it will be related to the exchanges reputations. If the exchanges could launch the good projects, it will give the exchanges a good name, and I think that will attract more member to join with them.

And that is why ICO are totally dead right now, while IEO is thriving at the sideline. It is administered by a crypto exchanges, mostly reputable ones. And maybe we can call this a insurance per se, because reputable exchanges won't simply accepts or willing to conduct a IEO in their platform if the project itself is somewhat shady.

And as other have said, who will be in-charge of all of this? There are no single authoritative body that oversee all incoming ICO's, so I don't think this is feasible.

Insurance is a serious and legal business backed by the laws of a land to guarantee safety of people's property and investment. Therefore, it is nice for that to happen but it is not yet time because crypto has to be classified as a secured area of investment. So an insurance running can't allow for scam. No point therefore to say that the issue of scam can arise.

Due to the heightened risk of ICOs ending up as scams and just money grabs, I don't think insurance companies would even dare enter this market full of shitholes and scammers knowing that they're always betting against the wrong side of the coin. Also, even with the amount of regulations imposed for ICOs, I don't think people will view it differently ever again, knowing that only a few percent of those ICOs actually turned out to be legitimate. We know how insurance companies operate, and of course they wouldn't enter a market wherein they wouldn't gain shit.

true, no company would want to insure one's investment. It is like bearing the loss of one's investment, moreover many projects fail, of course if there is indeed a company it will bear a huge burden.
It is better if you are not ready to invest, do not invest, if you invest, you must definitely bear all the risks, because the decision is in yourself.

I think this is very much needed in the world of crypto investment, many investors are afraid to invest in the ICO because they are afraid of being deceived by the projects they follow, if there is insurance that can guarantee the security of investing in the ICO maybe more investors will invest in in crypto.But to create the HL I think there must be strong regulation first from the government.

This is definitely a good idea since ICOs have a very bad image as of now. If this would happen, we would need a third party to hold the insurance fund either its a company, or an escrow. With this, the chances of an ICO to be a scam would be limitted.

Any solution that prevents scams is welcomed as long as it's viable .

One of my favorite suggestions on how to prevent scams is to slowly release ICO funds in phases to developers and watching them spend the fund transparently.  Once the developers deviate from the Roadmap/whitepaper and standard without sound reasons, the funds are immediately frozen by the community until the developers give satisfactory reasons for the deviation.

So if the case is like this, you could say there is no insurance. All of that includes risk. ICO, Trading any funds related to crypto is definitely at risk because our goal is to get profit.

it would be good. but i think this kind of things wont work in crypto ecosystem. because any kind of insurance and guarantee won't work properly considering the importance of anonymouty here.

Why do you think we need Crypto Insurance when we have an easy option?
Crypto Insurance will create additional cost. With level of risk involved, no sane insurance company will charge less than 20% of the raised amount as insurance premium. Hence it would unnecessary impact project negatively. Rather than Crypto Insurance, a trusted escrow service is 100% better option. Reputed companies like Binance or Coinbase (don't bash me over this) can escrow all funds raise in ICO and release funds to team after allocation is complete.

Most ICOs are securities and security regulations should apply when starting an ICO.  No hot water needs to be invented, since all is already set.  Of course that as it was in past few years, the one that gave money to the ICO organizers were totally without any rights and security.

Plenty of financial markets self insure with pooled funds or governments back it such as bank deposits.

No conventional insurance company would touch it with a barge pole unless they had full control of the process.

They should be using an escrow that releases or returns the funds on evidence of results. NEM has a venture fund that works just like this. Of course no ICO operation will do that as they 'need' $10 million in ETH to maintain their one page website.

It is good but the investors and exchanges needs to take action for it.

I see many people panicking on invest over the ICO and henceforth all people turns to invest on the IEO market on any exchanges. I ma not sure policypal kind of team can be helpful for this idea as my belief.

Insurance on investing with cryptocurrency is very low to happen for now because of volatile price and of course because of so many scam projects. If there’s a regulations that requires new projects to get an insurance so investors have the assurance then I think it will work, but for now no one wants to do that kind of project maybe because of the risk.

But who will implement and force this kind of regulation? anyway the market for ICO is already doing bad and it's going down.

Insurance and Crypto don't really go together, insurance companies insure that you are compensated for an accident or something that is out of your league, and with crypto and ICo you are investing in your own will even though you know the risk, and what happens when the ICo fails or the ones responsible for the project decide to take the money and leave, what are they gonna do they can't purse them because crypto is not regulated, in this market there are only the rules of the wild goes.

I think that is not remotely possible because if a person who is creating the ICO no longer wants to work on it than they have the right to do so. Coins are almost always decentralized and if even the creator of that coin doesn't want something yet the people and miners do then people will pick the new fork and the miners will too which means owner will have nothing to say. Did we asked satoshi nakamoto when we moved to segwit and now lightning network? No.

It means when a coin is out its everyone not just the creators thing, if a creator doesn't want to continue working on it then they can decide not to, it belongs to people now and not the owner. The owner offers you a coin and you pay for it but the rest is just up to gods to decide what will happen or won't happen.

no wonder I don't see projects related to insurance that is getting into the market. i have seen one just last year but its now gone already. it sticks in my mind because it was intended for Asians like me. the project's name is SURETY. an ERC token i believe made by the team from singapore. i was watching their video on youtube for awhile i didn't really quite understood what they were telling on it but they claim to be doing great. IDEX i think listed them.

IEO now is the best choice for them who wanna invest their money for some project. But at the same time we just can expect it will gain profit. Even some IEO is just gain under 100% ROI. Depends on what kind of project, whitepaper, partnership and their real goal.

What are the criteria of this insurance?

If this would give good protection to investors then I will always agree with it, the scam rate is very high in ICO, investors and bounty participants are both scam, so it's nice to see some initiative to have an insurance on a certain crowd sale.

But the problem with ICO's is that to start they already want people to invest since you know , they are collecting enough money as to kick start their project , insurance will not only demotivate some of them but might be problematic.
And when we talk about scamming people , it cannot protect from every scam because unfortunately insurance amount cannot cover everyone being added daily , if it would the company itself won't be able to function .

I think complete documentation and compulsory submitting the ID is something that should be made mandatory, not even submission but checking too , when we know who is holding this up we can actually sue them if they try and do something.

It would be difficult to determine the price of the coins or maintain the price of the coins, so the purpose of insurance for an ico just not fall in the scope.


No one will give any insurance for ICO because most of them are scam from the beginning. No insurance company will take such risk. Even i think IEO are also not reliable. They are however better then ICO because they list on exchanges at least.

Big question, who will implement and what are the capabilities of assuring the investors that they can do this work without any problem, investment will be much better if you have this some assurance that will work with your money, then still it will continue be a question whether this will succeed.

Actually, there are crypto insurance ICO already that I have seen. But they failed to reach the soft cap and others turn into scam ICOs. Until now, there is no legitimate cryptocurrency that talks about insurance. The only popular kind of ICOs most of are joining, no other than exchanges platform. That is why until now, there is no crypto insurance project.

It might be good idea and can be minimize scam ICO's but insurance on ICO have to regulated and as far i know ICO's similar such as investments tools which is the regulation will depend on the act of particular government and unfortunately if all of about crypto or related it until now rare to see the governments really serious to concern about consumers protection although many investors has been losing their money

If something exists like insurance for investments on the initial coin offering then everyone will go for because 90 percentage of the time people who are investing on the initial coin offerings are getting nothing, but it that even possible?

Pfft. Insurance business are making profits out of the impossible.
Let us say life insurance.
Out of 100 that will register with them and will pay a lot of money every year. How much are the chances one of those is going to die in a year or 5.
That is why they are booming. They know the math.

Now with crypto??? There is too much risk of money being scammed or a project to fail.
So the answer will always be a no to them.

You are your own insurance. Insure the quality and the management of the ICO. To keep yourself safe.

The idea looks good but for the implementation is a big question if these ICO makers will follow the regulating agency.

Locally, they can be followed if that ICO is on a country that's forcing such but how about those offshore ICO?

A great idea but to be conducted by whom, by insurance company? Which insurance company would agree that you sure a product that is not fully recognized or regulated by government. The risk of cryptocurrency is far too much for any legalized government insurance company to ever accept to sure any cryptocurrency holder.

Anyway, it would not be a bad idea of you start it first, since crypto users has been left to their fate to regulate the industry, I think someone with so much money who is a cryptocurrency believer can volunteer to run the services, look at SEC, many cried several time for regulation of ICOs, but when they failed to do so, what happened? Binance came up with the self-regulatory idea of IEO which has been fully been of help in gradually eliminating the issue of scam, maybe Binance could also try to conduct this, but they would prefer to so that on their IEO products and still not ICO.

I think there should be like a separate funds that goes into insurance which would make sense and the ICO companies would be allowed to pick how much of it goes there. Think about it this way, they are doing it via ETH lets suppose, so you have a company asking for 10 million dollars and if they are %100 funded they will receive it and investors will receive the new coin, so far everything is exactly the same.

But, think about what if they put 3 million aside as insurance and anything above 10 million also goes for insurance as well. That way if a company asking for 10 million but got 15 million instead will be capable of putting 8 million in insurance and 7 million into operations. Worst case scenario if the coin falls 20% it would be at break even, anything under that and insurance will be used to buy the coins back and burnt, that way that coin could never worth less than 20% under the ICO price.

Aint going to work.
Some ICO are new and they want to keep on using the money rhat is being offered for the project to have a good head start.
I mean, that is why they are doing it right?

Although it could also be done if a company is already in set. They might just need the money to avoid getting bankrupt or for a back up plan but they do really have the money to upgrade their service.

Users have known well about the reality of crypto market. It is truly hard to implement such a insurance on an unregulated Market. To show themselves trustworthy they can have some reserve fund in separate wallet and can be showed to the investors or can be kept hold with an escrow. This will add value to the project, but a crytpo insurance is simply impossible.

I'm thinking of the premium itself, I'm sure insurance company will charge us a high premium since ICO is a high risk investment.

I don't think it will succeed and the current market state, insurance business will grow when the market will be regulated.

if that can happen there will be no ICO scam and more investors will invest. but will there be insurance for investors? and who guarantees it? and how does the ICO run if investors are in insurance right?

A proper regulation and monitoring of these projects who collects insane amount of money will reduce these scam projects who start their projects and then a couple of years later inform their investors that their experiment was a failure and not compensating the investors while these people who started the project made insane amounts of money and it will stop and right now we are not seeing those projects and with regulations these sort of experimental projects will end.

Then thats insurance agency will bankrupt, because they will bear all the investment costs that you spend, because many ico become a scam. I'm sure there won't be an agency that will guarantee you safe in ICO investment, if you want to be safe then don't invest, basically all investments have risks, so face it dude

You are talking in a general scale, the topic here is about ICO and insurance was suggested to minimize the investors getting scam, although they get scam but with insurance their money is safe, however, the big question is, will this kind of business feasible in the market now?

I agree, investing always come with risks, the question is if you are willing to accept the consequences of your actions despite the risks that you take, if someone is not willing to lose their money investing in icos then they should just not invest and instead invest in something really safe like gold or government bonds, but if you put your money in this market then you accept the good with the bad, and that means accepting something like the current growth we are experiencing but it also means to accept crashes like the one we saw at the end of 2017.

I'll provide some comment on escrowing funds or locking of funds, as a form of  ICO assurance. It's not insurance I know, but the same concept of protecting funds.

I know of at least 3 ICOs in 2017 that used some form of insurance, engaging escrows to manage raised funds. I followed 1 very closely (all 3 failed, although all 3 denied they failed). All 3 refunded whatever amounts left they had in escrow, and the one I followed eventually returned about 35% (or thereabouts I can't bother to dig it up).

In theory, excellent idea. Funds were disbursed according to roadmap milestones... but no one among the investors expected that the escrows were the ones to determine conditions for disbursements. Independent audits of expenditure (and heck, audits of the product and code!) were naively expected, but project owners were in bilateral agreements with escrows (sometimes even unilateral).

It was still a loss, and a disappointment, partially because it wasn't just money that was invested but all the unnecessary headache of arbitration and completely different expectations from investors (of the escrows and owners).

But it wasn't an entire loss. Lessons could be learned from such fundraises I still feel it was a good starting model.

Legalization is easy as a certain insurer can just apply for the business license to operate, it's the potential of the business is the one that I think not feasible at this time.

It would be really great to have insurance when it comes to investing, i believe it would minimize the lose and especially scam. The truth is i do think it will be impossible and there will be no insurance company that are dare enough to provide such services.

It seems to me that certain guarantees for the participants of the process should always be not only with respect to investors, but also with respect to participants in the Bounty company.  The fact is that investors always have fixed actions with respect to a particular project, and for participants in the Bounty company there is always deception or violation of the terms of the deal.  It seems to me that everything should happen According to each letter of the agreement.  but how to insure the participating persons in a project?  I think that maybe in some respects, IEO gives certain guarantees.

I don`t think so! I applied several times in insurance company and I think they are enough to help my family in case I died. Therefore, cryptocurrency for me is not for insurance but by investment. We invest because we want to ensure our future.
its good to see that there is already crypto insurance that might help people to be secured.

insurance is very important because disaster or disaster will always come suddenly through insurance we can get back something damaged or lost due to the disaster even to our assets even if you insure it,
but the stage of metabolizing with crytpo or blockchain I think insurance companies prioritize asset mechanisms and premiums for participants.

It can never be feasible man because no business would ever want to take such risk called cryptocurrency insurance, if op was to have money for investment, would he too ever think of establishing this.

I know we have very great experts who are very good in managing projects and seeing it to success, and I am still wondering how they are able to come up with the idea of cryptocurrency loan in a decentralized technology, running it perfectly well and yet I have never seen anyone complain of defaulters, if they can run cryptocurrency loan easily, someone might just be out there who would want to risk it too, and this may be a great idea, but to me, I don’t think the risk will be worth taking for anyone that wishes to set up a company.

I don't think compulsory insurance is a good thing, and that ICO-related insurances can be popular (too much scam, decreasing popularity. Who'd be issuing them?). However, I think that crypto insurances for individuals can become a thing, and be a very profitable business. I am pretty sure that many would be interested in paying a small monthly fee for knowing that in case they get scammed, they'll be compensated by their insurance company. And since most of the people don't get scammed, after all, the companies will have good revenue.

Cryptocurrency insurance, it might sound good because people are guaranteed to invest, although later there are intentions that want to cheat them so there are already those who suffer losses, but this is very difficult to realize because not everyone agrees on the existence of this cryptocurrency, so it is difficult to insure this

The question is,there would be any insurance company would accept such thing? They know the rate of scams

and fraud on crypto space is pretty high,this isn't just like on life insurances or car insurances which we know the rate
of such accidents isn't really that rampant which isn't equivalent here on this market.So this is a lit idea about crypto insurances.