Bitcoin Forum

When there is an ICO, can the company running the ICO take and use the funds once the soft cap is reached or do they need to wait to the ICO is over?

As far as i know they could use the funds they have raised anytime they want so that is the risk of joining these ICOs,but morelikely if they get a softcap there would be a public sale,ICOs has a lot of factors to be considered like product,the team,roadmap,whitepaper,partmership etc. so you need do deep research each things you need to know so you can achieve success.

It depends to them I think, maybe they need to finish the crowdsale before spnding it to the projects so they can allocate the funds from different parts of the projects they reached.

Yes they can, softcap designed so they capable of working the project with that money. And hard cap is money for some other thing or improve the project so the result will be better, cause the budget much more bigger.

What do you mean by take and use the fund? for the actual project or to their personal interest? I think those funds that invested to ICO companies are in the hands of the people running the project and they have total control of it specially when part of their rules are not included a certain assurance on how these funds will proceeds.

No I was asking if they get to use the softcap, do they use some of that to promote their token to reach the hard cap.  Like using some softcap funds for advertising to really push the hard cap

Not really,if the softcap was raised faster than their targeted date they would try to reach the hardcap,it is really depends on the campaign treasurer if they will use the funds for their personal use,but morelikely they dont pay people using the raised money to advertise them,bounties are doing that they will pay people with their tokens.

If they are using some of the softcap, maybe because they want to become  successful  for the good of everybody

It is unlikely that the company will use the funds received until SoftCap is reached because if they do not collect It, they will be obliged to return the invested funds to investors. This statement is more applicable to projects receiving funds on a smart contract.

Yes they can since" a soft cap is the amount received  which corresponds to the success of the crowdsale "  they can freely do it .
 As far as I know, most ICOs don't reach the hard cap , so they only have to rely on soft cap collected amount

If you mean "take and use" to meet own needs, isn't that how fraudulent ICOs work sometimes? If the fund-raising operatives aren't regulated by any financial authorities, like SEC, for instance, whoever is running the company and has access to the funds is free to steal. If you mean if the team is able to start developing a project before raising a hard cap - depends on a project, but mostly, yes, once the soft cap is reached the company can start working on the emission.

well they can basically do whatever they like. As an investor in this scene we have no control whatsoever what they do with the funds once we send them. That's why 90% of ICO's are just pure rubbish that never eventuate into anything at all.

I think that the owner can instantly use any funds invested in their ICO because the purpose of doing an ICO is to gather funds to develop, improve, advertise, and pay expenses for the project before launching it. When ICO hits it's soft cap the owner has an option to use the funds for the projects improvement and other purposes.

it is highly dependent on the policies they make because their influence is crucial to how the next action will be in determining the ICO they will develop or discontinue. I do not think it's a normal problem because it involves a fairly risky financial expense. This is certainly not an easy thing without a careful consideration.

You never know if they'll take the money and run. I guess that's why most ICOs are scammy. It's really hard to find a good one.

They actually can,  but they won't. They set some price for their token during the ico and any changes are bad for their reputation.

They can. They will use the funds for development, which will allow them to further attract more investors

If the crowdsale was success and reached the softcap,they can do anything they want to the money they have raised,they can use it to develop the project or they can runaway and never comeback,but morelikely these ICOs if reached the hardcap they have more chance to achieve success in their project.But we wont know how will they spent the money that they have raised,its their money not ours.

Softcap projects achieved their target easily without bug promotion. If the team financial strength is more, some may use the signature and other bounty promotion options.
If you are part of any project and want your project to be managed by the perfect hand and get quality as you expected. Atriz would be the right person here in the forum.

That is, they can receive money and immediately spend it to attract new investors? Is it possible?

In my opinion, but I'm not sure, they can use the money collected.   ???
Still, they collect them to develop the project and they have need from them.

They can do whatever they want only in one case - if they dont have escrow. If the ICO you want to invest in dont have escrow - your money can be spent right after you send it. And it can be spent not on development at all.

If ICO uses escrow or smart contract which contains money to the end of ICO than they can`t. In other cases yes, of course.

As far as I understand, the funds that the company collects during ICO they are needed to achieve some goals. If those facilities that they need to launch their platform are already extracted by the company, then it can terminate the ICO in a timely manner.

Of course it is part of the development,advertising team would be use some of the funds raised by the ICO,but mostly these ICOs are using their tokens to reward the bounty hunters for promoting their ICO to the socialmedia,blogs and websites,also here in bitcointalk.But why would you want to know if these people would use the money for their advertising?

I'm not sure, but it seems to me that all ICOS should wait for hard cap to reach. They can't finish ico when reaching the soft cap.

They don't need to wait for the ICO to be over. It is actually their decision whether they will use it or not because they need funds to pay for campaigns and development. But a good ICO usually have an initial fund so they don't have to use the funds that is coming from ICO until the sale is over.

I recently witnessed how the project team used the tools of a soft cap. At the same time, they continued to collect the funds of ICO and further

I have never met such a campaign that will take and give up money like this, because if the company is quite well-known and the project is popular, then only time is needed to reach  hard cap

I think it depends on the initial commitment of the project. some have rules if not reach softcap then there is a refund there is also the opposite. and if most if it is softcap then the team can pick up and which have been shipped.

The real thing is that nobody knows about these icos companys, they might have the full permission to access and use the funds collected in the first steps of the ico process, well you should ask a lawyer maybe or a CEO of an ico and you might get a good answer about this whole process.

Its probably the used that softcap amount to pay their operational expenses.
It's normal I think, the need you pay the team or the promotional tools.

Depends on how the ICO is structured. Been even seeing projects opt out of an ICO. I know Polymath did that and instead airdropped 10 million POLY tokens, which was great because now they're all worth $250-$300 for 250 tokens people received. https://polymath.network/

In general, this is possible and occurs mainly when the timing of the project is small enough and the company decides not to wait and work with soft cp, but this happens really rarely

Basically the campaigns do not stop on soft caps, because they want to go to hard cap when it's more than enough money to do their project

Yes they can. If they collect soft cap it means they already have enough money to continue with project.
You are wrong if you think that they should wait until ICO reach hard cap. Imagine ICO running a year without reaching hard cap, tokens can't go to exchange, investors pissed and so on.

Great answer (you got my sarcasm?) but the question was "can they use funds after the softcap or have to wait till the hardcap?"
And the correct answer is: they can do whatever they want with the funds that already raised.

I have not seen this, but I think that this is possible because softcap is the minimum necessary sum of money, so the project can be implemented only with softcap

I think that everything depends on what is written in the smart contract that is created for the ICO, as far as I know that they can not just take and take money, although what prevents them from doing this, if there is no smart contract for this. I think it's possible.

I think its obviously when the company is not paying in BTC on their bounties like Signature campaigns. They don't have reserved funds which means some of them had the intention of abandoning the project if they even reached the softcap they'll scam some few investors with that. That's only the risk in investing on some ICO's some of them are just so ambitious.

It depends. Most ICOs are dependent of the funds they get on sales, most ICOs aren't developing their products and projects unless the investment funding would reach their expectations. There are soft and hard capitals in every ICOs so that money are going to fund to the people who involved, materials and all resources that are important for the product or project developments.
That's why ICOs needs funding and that fund can only get through ICO sales.

It is depend on the developer and the team, once you invest your money they have the full control of it.
Even they get some money from it they have the rights, if you asked them they will answer in a positive way.
you will never caught anyone on ICO unless ICO ended :D just be careful!

The thing is a company running ICO can take all the money they collected and buy villas in Bahamas and never do nothing they've announced  ;D You can never guess what ICO is a scam with 100% and what they will do with money after the soft cap is collected

Of course they can use money at any time, for any need. This is one of the main problems in today's ICOs. Many now are developing various proposals to control the money of investors. But so far this has not been realized yet. However, society is in great need of it.