Bitcoin Forum

In my studies, I've come to understand that ICO and IPO are very similar, as they are fundraising strategies for startups.

Here are the areas of differences.

1. ICO are mostly for crypto and Blockchain backed new startups, who need funds to build their businesses, while IPO are for companies that have track performance, that want to raise funds  to scale operations.

2. ICO is like crowd funding, which has less regulation, but IPO are heavily regulated.

Here is what I want us to discuss.

Since ICO investment is very risky as it depends the new startup whitepaper and the token, how did we know Ethereum would become successful through it ICO?

If Ethereum is to start afresh and do an ICO, why will you invest?

It's simple they create their whitepaper and posted it many people see how good the Ethereum's whitepaper is and look their ANN thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=428589.0 well some of the ICO's we can see have a very poor whitepaper and most of their ideas are useless.

I have another thought about the whitepaper as a parameter to determine the prospects of a project.

what if a good copywriter is employed to craft a whitepaper for a bad project. it may mislead investors. I believe there should other ways to determine the authenticity of a project by investors.

As long as there is no security for your investment it's always risky for the side of investors even its ICO or IPO the results can be the same.

For ethereum yes they are offering something to crypto world that other coins can't solve so if they start again their ICO I will surely invest in them.

Once a time ICOs were most popular, and a few good projects succeed in their goals. But lately, ICOs are just coming with worst and repeat ideas and scamming peoples. Doesn't matter they writing a good whitepaper, if their intention isn't good then we can't do anything. ICO/IPO time is over almost, seems there is a trend of DeFi and I believe it will end up very soon. So it's very risky to invest in crypto lately and better to avoid investing in that. At least I am not gonna invest there.

they know ETH will be a success because they are the first smartcontract platform as far as i know. but this project was full of fud too, it was a struggle before it emerges. ICO today is very much abused by developers. they even show real faces, get known locally but still scam investors, no one bother to sue them that is why the scammers spawn boldly. you dont even have to dox because their profile is public.

if they are to start again, yes people will still invest which is why scammers offer the same thing over and over.

Great question.
No product, no real company behind it but a bunch of people trying to make something with just whitepaper and maybe a cheap website.
It's high risk and I think that had been discussed here so many times during the hype of ICO's.
They say, high risk = high profits, and most of them are cheap tokens that make it easier for investors to buy a few.
Little did we know they are already making millions.

The deciding point is whether the team will continue it or just walk away with the money.
That's another topic.

as i've seen from before some newly released project were mostly a good one if the Ethereum will have it's ICO  when it was started i'll definitely investing to it. but if we are now looking at the announcements section we can see that most of the projects are trash.

Sadly i wasn't involved in the crypto space back then when ETH launched.
If we look back now it might seem to be a no-brainer for us that we would have invested in the ETH ICO back then but of course it wasn't sure at all that Ethereum would become such a massive success.
But ETH was very interesting back then even for a someone with not much IT knowledge, with all those new and unique features that Ethereum offered back then with Smart Contracts the possibility to easily create own tokens and so on.

the ICO from ethereum become one from many successful ICO in this industry mate, because ethereum bring new ideas and features at that time
and the dev known as a smart guy in blockchain tech, thats why a lot of people believe if Ethereum will be huge
of course if ethereum or other promissing project born and do an ICO i will drop my money

As we remember the ICO glory days way back in 2017, tons of money were screwed from investors. And a lot of us at some point invested in one or more ICO projects back then. I got burned also but not big money. That's right, the project I invested had their team members published but it didn't stop them from abandoning the project. And they just got away with the btcs they collected. It was hard to go after them especially if you were just a small time investor, not worth chasing them. But for those big investors, they can sue those project but will take years if they will ever be successful in recovering funds. That was my first lesson when it comes to ICO. Even if the project seems to be promising with known team members, it doesn't mean that your money is safe with them. Better wait for them to hit in exchanges, if you truly believe that they can meet their objectives. Otherwise, don't risk your hard-earned money.

No. Most of the investments and projects that are starting out are having a hard time in the earliest stage. I will doubt how it will grow and how it can thrive in the future. Just like a normal investor that's assuring himself before investing money in any project that I see. No one knows that ETH will be successful as it is today so take into account that "IF" of the OPs question and situation. I saw it too at the low price but just ignored it until I've seen it grown, that's only the time that made me interested.

Since ethereum based on the decentralization and it will never do any IPO for sure. to launch IPO and the company must be centralized and create a various report just like a financial report, the future prospect of company and etc. Ethereum was a protocol that builds for the community and it will never become a company that sells nothing but wanna did an ipo like XRP.

I won't speculate it as it will never happen

It depends on their purpose, project value, and future plans, I need to research first their plans, if it is really have a potential for short and good  term, it should be possible to implement as well because if not why do we need to invest in their Ico if we can by ethereum in different exchanges rather than to their IPO or ICO, always do your own research in everything, for you not to regret many things, there's a limitation in everything.

What failures has the Ethereum token experienced? try to mention some of the 1000 failures, maybe it can be a good discussion for everyone here, including I also want to know more about it.

If Ethereum would conduct its ICO right now, I am afraid it will not earn as high approval, support, and funds it would have received if done on the very year it was launched. The ICO space is already polluted right now. It is now almost equated with scam. That was not the time when Ethereum was launched. It was a time when projects were purely made with vision and skills and dedication. Projects were made with a development team that has knowledge on what they are doing. Now, projects lack innovation and ingenuity. They are copies of other projects. They don't even release practically working products.

This will enter the Dummy investors,those who will invest but the truth is they are part of the team so people may believe that there are supporters and lured them to invest also,but this cheating is old style and i know investors now are brighter and cannot be fooled by just reaching a Hardcap because we had already saw many So called "Successful ICO" but in the end?scammer.

If we talk about the past, I miss not to invest in ethereum early. So this time, if ethereum wants to do ICO, I think I will invest in ethereum, but first, I will look at the price. If the price is not too high or still at a low price, I will invest it in the project, but if the price directly jumps to the high price, I will not invest. But if I think that the ICO will be a success, maybe I will try to invest with a small amount of money.

But we know that the ICO era already ends, and replace with IEO, and now, the DeFi trend already boom. So I don't think that ethereum will start ICO, but maybe it will be another type of project.

ICOs and IPOs are both fundraising events but the returns and risks of the two are completely different. If a potential project is launched and uses an ICO to raise funds, then there is definitely a good chance we can make a lot of money once it's officially listed on big exchanges. Besides, an IPO only helps projects that have passed the Hype stage of development continue and it is certain that the profits will be much less than the tokens of the ICO being strongly pumped.
To invest in a successful ICO, we need to see the excitement of the community before it gets listed on the Big exchange. The crowd's fomo mentality has always made ICO projects more successful than ever: D

Are you really sure what you would do if that really happened? Basically Ethereum when it was an ICO, they were also a startup that didn't have high trust. All start-ups start with something like that, and it is only natural that knowledge of new projects is minimal. Did you catch Vitalik Buterin when ETH coins were publicly sold? Hell no

Investing in an ICO is like a gamble on the level of creativity of the project team and developer, we don't know the project will become big or will be destroyed by the project itself. We only speculate and assume, because the majority of start-ups in the crypto ecosystem are without a market test, they are just supposing and written in a whitepaper.

Just like you already mentioned, both are fundraising strategies and I think both comes with their own risk, since investing is involved, hence i believe that before starting with any, one need to understand the risks involved. In the crypto space, unique ideas matters which is why, most projects do not struggle or find it hard to meet their hard cap during their fundraising while others struggles a lot in some case might be left with only soft cap or slightly higher. So this adequately shows that, unique idea is very important and that is what Ethereum offered to the crypto space, hence many projects which are huge today were given the opportunity to start on an already developed blockchain instead of starting from the scratch. Therefore, with this few points and many others about Ethereum, if the team are to start another fundraising now, I don't think it will last long, and yes I will invest.

I will invest on ICO ethereum when know ho reaching up price right now, but I think now only etehreum almost coin at the first time launching become good project and have potential price for the future with higher price, just one year after many ICO success we got many project failed with delay listing, lower price than ICO after listing and we got many scammer of ICO project without have time for listing until right now. But now many investor of ICO move to IEO project and many of them invest with launchpad ICO coin listed on Binance, now have many failed project not only IEO, ICO because we can't trust with investor.

Very interesting question, to be honest I wasn't familiar with the crypto world at that time so I don't know how progress they made when they first launched their ICO. Maybe if at that time there was hype that caught our attention then we would definitely read their whitepaper and would discover something new that would bring about big changes in the crypto world which of course we should not miss the opportunity to join them.

Ethereum is a name now! So people would invest in a famous name! But years ago when I started with crypto back in 2014 trusted forum members and many others were talking how big scam eth is! Now you don't have many people claiming that! It's like something that happens to every project, people are distrustful at first! When you think about it bitcoin was not accepted by everyone too, even now you have people who don't believe in btc!
DYOR, it's ok to see what other people have to say, it's alright to skip investing in some project because some red flags, but there's no flawless project, there are good ideas that needs to be realized, problems to be solved, developing and updating never stops, and if you think that the project is worth taking the risk, that team is dedicated you should try it if you believe in it!

joining Ethereum ICO is very risky, I never joined it,
it's just that I bought IEO on a big exchange like Binance,
lastly I just bought IEO from Cartesi and thank goodness I got 2x from there.

IPO has very strict regulations and only companies with good quality can conduct IPO. different when compared to the ICO which even with the project Team anonymously they are still accepted. And what if ethereum starts from scratch and does an ICO, will I invest?

my answer is yes, even if there is currently no official market for ethereum i will still invest. Just by reading their whitepaper, everyone will be interested in what the ethereum team is going to launch. We will go back to the first year that ethereum was released, there is no ICO term, no project created using SmartContrac, no project fraud, crypto exchanges are not like today, crypto has not even been seen as a threat to the financial system. and at that time many people supported the ethereum project, even though they did not know what would happen to the project in the future, or the real use for the ethereum platform, the project might fail during development, but they still supported it. So back to today, we already know the picture that is going to happen given the interest from mainstream companies to blockchain. and it is too difficult to create a private blockchain network. ethereum is like a gold project that I can't afford to miss. And that's the reason I invested if ethereum was just released today and an ICO wasn't there before.

I do not know why would Ethereum look for an IPO or ICO at this point of time because they are already up and running with huge revenues and multiple sources of income. Even if they want to raise funds that will not be a problem for such a huge project, they can raise millions if they ask for that through some official announcement.

Off-course mate, there are good perfect copywriters in the industry, more reasons why some good looking projects from their whitepapers look beautiful but in real world just another garbage. There's no way we can actually figure out these good copywriters from the system but investors should be more careful about the projects they choose to invest. Thousands of misleading projects around from inception, the only way out is to research properly about a project before put funds into it.   

Obviously yes, if ethereum launches a new funding round in form of ipo or ico and the prices are set below market price then everyone will rush to buy eth and im sure the hard cap will hit within minutes.

Can you imagine it that Eth start ico it will never happen once again .We need to focus on upcoming top project which has a strong base and idea of business that will help the project rise rapidly .I always research myself the latest project and invest on it wisely .

maybe he meant the failure of most of the tokens generated from the ethereum platform. although not all of them but the fact that there are thousands of erc20 tokens in the cryptourrency space is useless and new coins sometimes have a hard time staying in the market for long.

Difficulty staying for a long time in the exchange because there is no demand,
that's the risk of new projects, not necessarily all new projects are good, many don't survive and die,
especially in the crypto currency world it's very hard, the project must really have strong fundamentals and good development.

I always underestimate against something new, definitely no I guess. I mean, I will not spend my money to investing in ethereum when it was just started. Yeah, at that time it was just several altcoins like XRP and litecoin, I may focus to store my money in bitcoin and I would collect as much as possible.

Indeed, ICO investment is really risky, you never know who take/collect your money, it is really different from IPO that was managed by someone/some parties so as your money at least will save because you can meet the people who manage your nmoney.

But, investing always a risk, as you may know, the term of high risk, high gain and low risk, low gain, you can pick one of them. Can you imagine, how profit that will get by ethereum investors because they only need one year to gain a lot of profit because at 2017 ethereum price was touched $1400.

That line in your comment look vague and ambiguous. What exactly is etheruem offering that gives it a preferential advantage over other coins?
The more specific we are, the less confuse we become.

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I believe investment in the crypto space should now be determine by how innovative is a project. Here is one thing that is sure, we cant avoid investment, especially if that is your career path.

But, investment with caution always pays.

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

^ I am very detailed with emerging projects, first of course I will read in detail what their concepts are in the Whitepaper. and at that time Ethereum was the first project to introduce smart contracts so this is definitely my reason to invest in Eth if it just started.

At the end of the day it is a risk that people are taking and they are free to take any risk they want. Nobody could guarantee a return from something like this, we all know that it is highly unlikely that when you join a new ICO and they are brand new and show nothing but few web pages and some whitepaper, that is it so you know that you are getting at the bare bottom.

However if you trust them, you could make a big profit, if you do not trust them, you may end up losing a lot of money. For example, there is this token that I am looking at these days, they are giving a decent amount of return right now and if I end up joining, with both investment and also airdrops and bounties and everything included, I could actually 6x my money according to what they assume price will be. But they are saying what it will be, they can't guarantee it, so I haven't joined yet.

It's not about how you trust the project but in the project development . Even how you trust it if they will failed to make it or develop the project it will crash and   then you will lose your money because many other investors that also trust the project will sell their tokens at loss.

And that's what most of the sales happening right now they are only good at the start but they don't really know what they are going to build and how they can do it that's why more of them is a failure.

Ethereum has made many improvements, proven product development in the market and certainly is nothing but a reliable team in managing the ethereum project. Regarding the price, I think Ethereum still has a great opportunity to continue to grow and develop in the future. So, this is the main reason I trust the Ethereum project.

Over the years that have passed since the launch of ethereum, it has already proven how trustworthy it is and how people treat it. An excellent team that continues to develop successfully will not let him fade away.

Let's say i'm already knowing Ethereum will become Major Cryptocurrency and i can Jump Back Time to 2014 Basically i will, but if didn't know anything on that year like today basically Depends on some condition, It's Simple logic with current ICO market but more likely on that year scammy ICO hasn't been that much like today. The answer is possible but maybe I'm just curious and won't invest too much ($1- $10)

Ethereum has several innovations that have not been found in previous projects. If you examine the year Ethereum started, there weren't many whales back then. Those who invest in ethereum are well-versed in ethereum's technicalities and future potential.
Today too many projects are without brilliant innovation but get a pretty high start-up price because they are supported by non-technical whales and only take a moment's profit, then they leave after making the dump.

And so do i, i would probably invest in ethereum if i already know it but suddenly i didn't know ethereum way back then. But as soon as the ethereum become a good altcoins i didn't hesitate to invest in it. Now, ethereum has a good market standing and no doubt that amongst all of the altcoins ethereum will become a dominating altcoin and second to the bitcoin. That's why ethereum will become known by its own project team behind it than knowing by its past.

Their technology and their transparency, these two things will convince everyone to join them.
Maybe at first it will be difficult for us to believe because what they offer is completely new and we will doubt them, but because they are very transparent and intensively conduct AMA in various social media then there is no reason for us to reject their idea.

If Ethereum come up with an Initial Public Offering IPO after passing heavy rules and regulations from government institutions and regulators I think that can boost trust and build the project as a brand with real world mass adoption and global acceptance. So it can be big event but personally i think it is not really required at the moment as there are other important developments that should be the priority.

if it's now i'm not really quite sure hypothetically this is what happens it all started with ethereum itself.
ethereum > tokens > projects > scam projects

so if the ethereum is non existing before then no scam happened and so i will invest to ethereum now even if its in ICO. it's a little bit complicated to explain and i got really confused on myself too.

No single aspect of a coin should be the main focus of your due diligence, you should try to investigate every single aspect of the coin not only the whitepaper, because as we know scammers are very talented and they know very well how to fake several characteristics of a good coin and among those the whitepaper is probably the easiest one to fake, either because as you say they hire someone that is talented at writing whitepapers or just because they plagiarize the whitepaper of a more successful project.

Investing on Ethereum if it will try to start an ICO will be a risky move, I guess. But knowing Ethereum for a long time, I came to love this coin, and I will risk for this coin. There are lots of ICOs that are now scams, and I am sure that if Ethereum will be an ICO again, it will be successful.

I agree here with you. If the team of the scam project hires a very good copywriter, he can create the perfect whitelist. On the contrary, even if you see that the whitelist is “rare” but you really trust the project, you can invest in it and get profit later.

You will invest in Ethereum's ICO if it were launched today because Ethereum has already made a name. It is the most solid among thousands of altcoins. It has been occupying the spot next only to Bitcoin. But the question is, supposed you haven't known Ethereum yet or there was no Ethereum yet and then it just came out right now, would you still risk your money to it?

I doubt Ethereum would be successful if it were to hold an ICO right now. With the current reputation of the ICO market there will hardly be a project that will gather a big amount from investors. The investors are already fed up with scams and crap crypto projects.

Talking about Ethereum, I think people saw the idea they had and they loved it. Ethereum was the first smart contract, and I believe they did a really good job in presenting their idea in the right way and also their whitepaper. And moreover I don’t think most of the investors that invested in Ethereum were expecting it go this far, some of them would have seen it as a normal project, and fortunately this is where it is today and the early investors have been able to benefit from it.

Investments are risks, and you can’t tell for sure where it will be heading to in the future, so you just take the risk and with the amount of money you can afford to do with.

Absolutely, even though Bitcoin is the one that starts all this, I dare to say Ethereum is the one that makes the cryptocurrency world is actually running. Their idea of decentralized smart-contract attract and enable people around the world to easily joining the crypto community. For me, the things that make me truly believe and understand the concept of financial decentralization is Ethereum.

The appeal of ethereum is smart contracts and decentralization and mining coins. Nobody expected ethereum's price to hit $ 1000 a while back when the ICO price was no more than $ 1. Maybe this is what makes investors interested in investing in new projects even though it can be called speculation

IPO needs a lot of requirements and it's not all of people will able to join in IPo. The only accredited investors who will be able to join in the IPO. I should remind you if ICO has been giving the more opportunity for the small investors to participated in the crowdfunding. that's why ICO has been getting a very big successful compared with IPO in crypto.

I think everyone is willing to join in ethereum ico when it can be a real story

Ethereum is not going to launch an ICO why would they, they just infuse new token or put their token in the market and people are going to buy because of their status and what they've achieved in the industry, everything that Ethereum will do will become a success, even if they are going to shift from proof of work to proof of stake, but I doubt if they are going to do a crowdfunding at this point in time.

That means there have been lack of innovation in the crypto space. If we have projects that truely stands out, they will achieve huge success in their ICO. I believe Defi are such outstanding projects.

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The status of ethereum currently makes doing crowdfunding or ICO very inappropriate. i think what they need to do next is the actual Initial Public offering, where investors have stakes in the projects or any start-ups under them.

They may also consider unbundling of their products.

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

the future challenges for ethereum are still enormous. there will be many updates and innovative steps from the developer to attract the market. we look forward to how ethereum will implement their reforms wisely to all the communities that support them.

At this time ICOs are no longer needed in some investment companies because of the many distrust of investors, making ICO sink in several discussions, most people talk about IEOs or DeFi Projects which are more promising than ICOs, then if there is a project that stands out developing ICO then their project is really consistent to develop it, but will people be interested in the ICO Project, of course not, because it is very difficult to give confidence to the public in ICO, which has a high risk of losing big money ..

I have no reason to learn about ICO anymore since they aren't reigning again, out very few projects still use ICO to raise fund for their new projects, IEO just makes things more easier nowadays, the success is on the exchange itself since all top exchanges have insane users and investors, I don't worry myself with ICO again

I agree with you that investment is a risk but risk can be minimized in such a way that it will be beneficial.
risk can be measured in probability.

1. If the probability of success is 0.9 and that of failure is 0.1, it is advisable to take such risk
2. If the probablity of failure is 0.9 and success is 0.1, then it is advisable not to take the risk.

What makes the difference is the investor's due diligence before investing.

That's right and if one knew ETH was going to be as big a success as it became then surely everyone would have invested but we are all talking about this in hindsight and it is impossible to see the future so right now if an ICO is going on even better than ETH we would never know it until it is completed and the token starts taking price jumps.

I believe there are so many scam ICOs now in market that it is impossible for an average investor to see the future of the token because I myself have seen some amazing projects been started but transformed into nothing but scam later on, I don't see it changing in the foreseeable future either.

The game is over when ETH became one of the most important platforms for smart contracts.

The downside is that scammers now take advantage of this great platform to commit scams.

You need to know that there will always be risks in these new technologies ...

If indeed ETHEREUM does an ICO again, which is clear, I will certainly develop in it because,
ETH has clearly survived from year to year that I have participated in, and ETH prices continue
to increase from year to year even though there has been a gradual decline after 2018.

If the question is why we are investing, then the answer is obvious, everyone wants to make money. As for Ethereum, I see no reason to doubt this cryptocurrency, at least at the moment. Should I go to ICO on Ethereum? I think it's worth it if this ICO looks good and attractive. Why should we abandon this? I see that thanks to crypto projects on Ethereum, the crypto industry is developing and showing new results. Isn't that what we all want?

Ethereum has a good platform so it would definitely catch the interest of many investors. But in my case, who doesn't invest that much to ICOs, I'd probably not. ICO projects left an imression to us that it will just be good for short term only. I am into long term project investments. But to think it has lived s far as it is today, impressions are not certain. There are projects still worth investing for long term. Ethereum therefore is a good example of not generalising ICO projects.

As far as I know, Eth is the biggest platform that provides general use of smart contracts, and as we see they are dominating the entire altcoin market with their market cap. Scammers are just scammers, Even you have a very good system scammer will find a loophole to your system to commit their motives. It's not a downside if you are well knowledge  :P

they might be similar but not the same IPO are not being run by faceless people. Most of the ICO are being run by people you do not know their identity which make it hard for investors to make contributions. In 2017, people invest more on ICO without even know some of the team behind the project because the thought of getting scammed is not so rampant but long after, ICO are being hijacked by criminals. Also, in the past, we have seen project with not properly developed whitepaper raising alot of money and end up delivering well but today ICO Scammers will go as far as getting a well planned and neatly written whitepaper. If Ethereum is to launch an ICO again today, I am very confidence that alot of people will invest because they know who is behind the project irrespective of novelty of the project. At least if the project is not successful, they can get back their money

The DeFi market has already cooled down and people are now not willing to invest in DeFi projects because most of them are again turning out to be a bi-product of the ICO and just made to scam as much money as possible with no real product.

The large market cap is because they have a product that is actually usable and smart contracts was first introduced by ethereum which are now being used by every other token and coin. I agree one would not miss such an ICO now days but it is even harder to find such coins now because when ETH came, I am sure a lot of guys must have skipped investing considering the project too good to be true.