The best way to explain ICO to critics & potential investors

[stompix]

If you need to explain to someone, probably, those guys should not be putting money into ICOs as it is the equivalent of gambling.

BTW, if people are taking money and all they have is a pretty site and a 'whitepaper', it's a scam.

I don't agree with you. An investment is an investment, nothing more, nothing less.
If someone has money and is looking at investment options, ICO might be a good option. There was a time we didn't know about Bitcoin and couldn't invest, but if someone came and explained it to us we might. We should explain it to people and let them decide for themselves.

Fortunately there was no ICO for bitcoin and nobody could have "invested" in it.
Probably this is the main reason bitcoin is a success and all the alts are just crawling behind feeding on the remains.

Also the "whitepaper" means 0.
Nobody cares about 10 pages of fancy words. This no longer the time when visacoin would attract 100 btc of investment just for a cool name.

[webtricks]

Despite legitimacy with a white paper and all necessary documents, what is the easiest way to explain the benefits of ICOs to someone?

Who said toppings on ice-cream induce people to buy it. It is flavor that matters.
There are hundreds of ICOs flooding through forum every month. Liberty to launch one own coins in internet world enthusiast everyone to go for his/her own. This also leads to creation of some shitty and nuisance coins. This is the main reason why critics and potential investors doubt each and every project which is justified too. After all someone giving out his money to unknowns over internet.
However, if your project has flavor to attract investors nothing can stop you. But provided you develop something more than just another ETH coin or so.

[isabella01]

Buying an ICO is just like financing a project to its completion with the hope that the project will be successful and you can get your money back plus some profits or you can stay for good and just leave your coins/tokens sleeping until they become so valuable. But we have to be careful because there are now many ICO scammers.

Absolutely love this answer. This sums everything up in a nutshell. Perfect, thanks a mil !! 

[richardfisk]

Buying an ICO is just like financing a project to its completion with the hope that the project will be successful and you can get your money back plus some profits or you can stay for good and just leave your coins/tokens sleeping until they become so valuable. But we have to be careful because there are now many ICO scammers.

nice to hear about your opinion because it is totally awesome. As veteran members, we can easily determine which ICO is scam so do not worry about that

[pedrog]

Meanwhile this article came out, I advise everyone reading it, at least you know what you're in for when 'investing' in an ICO.

Dear SEC: ICOs & ‘Tokens’ are killing innovation

https://medium.com/@derosetech_10334/dear-sec-icos-tokens-are-killing-innovation-2f8d287f88c3

[aventus]

I would probably say the benefits are that you can economically incentivise people to behave in a certain way, which previously was not really possible. You can align incentives and create fair or some sort of desired behaviour in a system with tokens. And ICOs are good because if a token has a real purpose in a given system (e.g. it represents reputation, or it helps people achieve consensus over something in a stake-weighted way), companies can raise money without giving away equity but rather giving away "equity" in their product. And therefore, if you believe the product's demand will grow (e.g. Ethereum), the coin value goes up. Also, its completely liquid unlike equity, so if you're unhappy you can just resell it.