Bitcoin Forum

the icos are getting more outrageous by the day. people are handing over millions for one shitty webpage filled with empty promises with a crappy voiceover.

at some point someone somewhere is gonna get heavy in a legal sense and the party will be over.

what happens to bitcoin in these circumstances? do people come rolling back or leave crypto for good?

and i know what some people will say, they can't be regulated, well, they probably already are but no one running them has bothered to check.

I think it's bad news for crypto in general, and either the crypto community comes up with a way to self regulate, e.g. some kind of technology peer review and ponzi alert system/society  or governments will pile in and try and regulate, which although in principle is impossible, they can certainly make things more difficult for people trying to destroy their oligarchies in a reasonable, civilized manner ;) 

As it is we can't even have a reasonable conversation about how to scale bitcoin, so I suspect the ICOs will froth completely out of control until there is some horrendous meltdown :/

I guess all the newcomers who are clamoring for these stupid ICOs will need to learn a lesson the hard way.

Once they get scammed badly and lose all their money, they'll either do one of two things:

1) Walk away from crypto forever, head on over to r/buttcoin and join the ranks of those that got burned to disparage crypto until their dying days

2) Realize that they should have just bought Bitcoin and HODL for years like all the vets were telling them

All it takes is one domino to fall for all the others to go down. Just like Torque above me said, once we get a large enough scam ICO they'll all realise ICOs are essentially scams and they'll stop being as popular. For the moment they're just places for guys to get rich quick, not exactly too sustainable. Big reason why I hardly ever diversify anymore and just HODL.

Nothing.
Why would anything happen to bitcoin over startup cryptocurrencies selling icos. Has nothing to do with bitcoin!

A shitty scam ICO with a bunch of big investors losing large amounts of money could be negative news for cryptocurrency in general if it ever did happen. Ethereum also heavily depends on both pumping investors and ICOs to keep it's price up, which in turn also influences the price of Bitcoin. Everything's connected.

This is not the first time ICO's that are more likely scams pop around. They have always been around, but now we are in a bubble, just like in 2013-2014.

If Bitcoin could survive Gox, it can survive a few scam ICOs.

But of course not all ICOs are scams, there are good opportunities for those who can do the right choices

^^ this

remember not so long ago pre-mining altcoins was so popular? everyone was creating an altcoin with a huge pre-mine. then websites like coinmarketcap started adding a * on their names and then a ** on those with significant pre-mine, and people were handing over millions by then too.
today if you tell someone that coin is a pre-mine they will stay away.

the same will happen to ICOs soon. and i don't think it has any effect on bitcoin in any way. altcoins have always been the stupid gambling market to risk and make more bitcoin or risk and lose a lot.

I assume they go back into bitcoin and I agree at some point the ICO party has to end or at least become more reasonable. But the problem is not only the ICO party its also the fact that almost every worthless coin is being pumped constantly, at some point the vast majority of these coins need to die.

It's just an extension of the altcoin trend in the end people will be wiped but some of them may survive and do something
The rest are just crapcoins but the market is pumping across the field so it's a new version of the pump and dump for the new money.

The SEC hammer could affect Bitcoin negatively in the medium term but nothing can really take away Bitcoin's main attribute that is giving it more value year by year. It is a decentralized, peer to peer, censorship resistant value transfer protocol. It is here to stay.

There is no way that any of it will completely fade away.  As long as there are people that hand out money, there will be people there taking it. All of those self-proclaimed "protectors" on the forum actually ruined their ability to protect anyone by attacking too many new projects without cause or evidence.  That has made the way for a new scammers to move in and hit hard, until the new people learn and then there will be more new people.

Most the people investing in the ICOs are already BTC users. In other words they aren't new to the crypto space. The new users are only beginning to learn about BTC and other established alts. Once the ICO thing blows over (if it ever does) then the scenario will revert to what it was like before the ICOs. I don't there'd be any change on the BTC front.

Well btc is now 10x more worth in fiat then 1 1/2 years ago.
If you just look at the numbers of btc i dont thing much changed.

First of all we need to realize that ICOs have raised $200 million dollars in 2017 which is a lot for unlicensed security.
ICOs should either be fully regulated by SEC or should disappear. How found raising with no investor protection is so popular?
ICO tokens have one purpose - to be actively traded on exchanges, and seldom withdrawn for use (if ever).

Don't need regulators the market can fix itself. Free markets man. Eventually people will be burned by the dodgy ICOs and the house of cards will crash down. People that get burned investing in shit without due diligence deserve their losses.

Agreed completely. If people don't do their own due diligence then it's their fault.

Crowdsales can go both ways. Most out there are there to only benefit the creator of the token but there are some that are worth a buy. For example for those people who invested in the lisk or Ethereum ICO they were rewarded with pretty good results.

I don't think that the SEC will do anything to stop this. Volume is way too low for them to care on a grand scale. You don't see ICOs raising even 100 million dollars. But if they were to shut the whole ICO thing down it'll actually benefit bitcoin price in my opinion as more of these shitcoins gets killed off and more people invest in btc instead of alts.

it doesn't matter if regulators are needed. they're gonna turn up at some point anyway to justify their salaries and signal to people who the daddy is.

In the long run it will be beneficial for bitcoins. The more icos flop, and people burn their fingers, the more they will be inclined towards bitcoin. Though it may create a bad reputation as a whole for the entire crypto world of currencies, but people will be wise enough to recognize the one which is already established.

ICOs are booming now a days. I do see almost weekly some new project hits new high levels with their ICO in opening day itself. Not sure how long it may sustain.

Yes to an extent but what I think will happen is during the next big crash and subsequent bear market 95% or more altcoins will die and the few good ones along with bitcoin will slowly recover and thrive the following years just as it has the last few.

Already happened it's why Altcoins still have a bad rap for old-timers, once we consider a coin to have utility it gets a higher rating. Either way pump and dump coins have been and will be created in the future people will still use crypto unless they went into a MLM ponzi coin or something that isn't really a cryptocurrency.

It will steadily feed the sharks and they will keep coming ICO's or whatever it take and that is not a bad thing.  It keeps the money moving and money moving creates money, more so in Bitcoin than in FIAT.

I think when we get to that point the market cap of all the cryptos is going to decrease dramatically, we are in a bubble of speculation, most are investing in those projects because they think there is always going to be someone willing  to buy for an higher price when that no longer holds true the market is going to crash but we will be able to go back to a more healthy growth.

I don't see how this is a problem for bitcoin. How many people do you think have lost money investing in a crowdfund start up. That doesn't affect the dollar does it? If something happens it's the problem of the 'newbie' investors they'll found out the hard way eventually. One ICO scandal and this will be over and we will have forgotten it within a year.

though ethereum trades in dollars, won, euros etc, much of the volume is still in bitcoin.

if it all collapses then it might also inspire a run on bitcoin.

i agree that bitcoin is immune in terms of damage to its rep, but not necessarily the price.

 

First of all i agree with you completely, because ICOs are indeed a problem right now. People are playing it as if they ar egambling because most of the projects are only there for the money. I guess pople like investing in it because instead of having to monitor IPOs on the actual stock market, they are able to have access to 10 projects that are launching everyday and the market cap is significantly lower.

If ICOs were banned then the logical alternative for people will be to invest in bitcoin, so long term wise it's going to be good for bitcoin as liquidity gets freed up from shitcoins that hires people on fiver to make the video/audio voiceover and actually gets into bitcoin, a legit investment.

I like the sound of regulated ICOs to be honest, but that would mean again the government is going to be controlling what goes on and off the market. Though having a regulated ICO economy is going to mean that good ICOs will get approved and bad ICOs will get weeded out, meaning a much healthier ecosystym for altcoins, and imo this will positively impact bitcoin as well.

The best thing that can happen though is that people can just stop investing in junk ICOs. Instead, focus on those who have a decent roadmap and a responsive team. That beats all regulation as crappy icos gets driven out of the market.

I'm pretty sure that there is already an open letter to the SEC from some guy on bitcointalk, right? I'm pretty sure that it is accessible on Twitter, and the contents of it basically say that ICOs are bad, you guys should regulate it, etc.

I think that ICOs are basically a game for people to play right now. Everyone knows that the tokens they are getting are probably not going to worth anything practically, nobody is going to use the dapps because nobody is going to develop any in the first place. It's pure speculation. But a lot of money is going to ICOs through bitcoin, which means that if ICOs were banned completely then bitcoin is probably going to suffer to some degree as well.

Your question is confusing. Scam ICO's have been going on since the beginning of bitcoin and will inevitably get more common with bitcoin price rises. It is also not controlled by one person, but many people fraudulently taking peoples money - each should individually prosecuted and will if the evidence is there. I don't think they have any impact on bitcoin, even people who get burnt might eventually try to invest in cryptocurrencies again.

The first real big ICO was Ethereum itself! And since this platform has enabled the erc20 token stuff things are going crazy.
This is Ethereum's only use case right now. 99% Scams on top of a scam. There are already ICOs investing in other ICOs. I mean how much more ridiculous can it get? This is insane! When this thing pops nobody knows what's going to happen.
And for sure this could have an impact on Bitcoin as well, at least for a short term period of time.

To be frank the price of bitcoin wont get affected even if the ICO thing gets a good hammering and i am expecting that to happen in due time ,but i am pretty much sure all the tokens and ETH will get affected without a doubt as the current rally of ETH is simply because there are more ICO's coming up on a daily basis which uses their platform ,so lets speculate what all tokens goes down rather than talking about bitcoin. :)

ETH never get affected because of it. It always gonna remain altcoin at all the moment. If any ICO becomes a major coin in future like bitcoin. Definitely that will affect the bitcoin much in usage wise. If satoshi ready to own the copyrights for blockchain technology then it may get stopped.

ICO is not that bad also as if it's successful then we can surely expect it to be listed on high trading exchanges like bittrex. Talking of scams there is a very less chance that a ico raising more than a million dollars scams people and of that does happen we can see a bit drop in price but market crashing like during the bitfinex had would surely not happen.

It all depends upon what the vision and plans of the developers are,most of the ICO that are coming up just does not have that much of a great idea to accumulate this much of dollars through the ICO and yet they are able to collect millions within a short period of time,now the trend is every ICO is getting huge returns and there might be a time when the trend reverses,who knows,until then i do not mind investing in these ICOs.