Cashless society already exists. Have you guys not heard of apple pay or samsung pay? The only issue is it hasnt been adopted by everyone because of the costs associated with doing so. As technology moves forward, the technology floor is going to raise... Which will lead to higher spread adoption of cashless payment methods.

Does it have to be a big company that does it? What if a small company that is looking to do something like this on a whole another level already exists?

You guys should look into Kimera.ai. They are an Artificial General Intelligence company... but their economic model for how people will get paid (through their devices) is exactly what this thread is talking about.

Thats a hard question... Are you looking for a token sale or something that is listed in an exchange? Technically - i dont think listed cryptocurrencies qualify as ICO's anymore.

Couple of things you should look for before investing:
- Solid business model that is capable of hitting ROI goals in the next 6-12 months.
- Solid Team
- Working product (whatever they are doing is more than just an idea)
- Social Media + Online presence is on point.
- They are doing something unique in terms of communicating with investors (ICOs that dont do this, arent looking out for their investors).

My favorite at the moment? Kimera.ai

Why?
They are working on Artificial General Intelligence, which is some pretty cool stuff. They meet all the requirements above. They also have a youtube documentary / web series that talks about everything they are doing... Hard to scam people, when everyone knows who they are.

 

I think there is a ton of profit to be made in terms of Token Sales. The issue is getting through all the noise to find ICOs that have a real business model, solid team and the social media capacity to raise awareness about their product.

3 years ago there was this joke in Silicon Valley that startups could add AI to anything and raise huge amounts of investment capital. Most ICO's are doing something similar - adding "decentralization" , "blockchain" or "cryptocurrency for XYZ industry" and raising money through Token Sales. 

Assuming you have done all that research, i would say real profit happens in Private / Pre-sale. The discounts can be soo massive, that you can potentially get a 4x- 5x return on your investment. The only thing is that you need to remember to sell all your tokens the second the ICO gets listed on a public exchange.... Otherwise have fun waiting for the coin value to go back up.

P.s. It sucks being in the US. We keep getting screened for KYC and not allowed to invest.

Hmmm, very interesting to see everybody's definition of ICO's and Bounties. Thought I would add my definition of both as well:

Initial Coin Offerings is just another form of raising investment capital to start or scale a new business model that uses cryptocurrency, decentralization or blockchain. Usually coins are given at a huge discount at the start of an ICO to incentivize investors to invest. For those who know what initial public offerings, its very similar to those - except ICOs usually don't give ownership to token holders.

Bounties are crowd-sourced marketing efforts that involve a series of people to do a certain set of tasks. ICO's dedicate at least 1% of the total amount of tokens they are selling to "reward" people who help them achieve tasks.
 

Just getting into the whole bounty thing.

One of the biggest things i wonder about is on the bounty manager side: How do they manage to keep track of everyone that reports back? 

  imagine having to go through 1000 reports per day.