3 kinds of ICOs — Protect yourself

[viramarket]

Thanks for the detailed description of the current situation.I think that the market is overheated and worthy projects will no longer

[dobrescu.mihnea]

Hi jlp. You have a great insight on ICOs.  I know i'm being bias since I'm part of the bounty but I think project related to e-sports such as Eloplay has a good shot in being successful in the future. What can you say about it

In regards to Eloplay, I think gaming and gambling are two excellent applications for cryptocurrency. After transfer of value (currency) and store of value applications, gaming and gambling are very good fits. Cryptocurrencies enable several things to be done that could not be done previously:

For Gaming:

• Win real value that can be withdrawn from the game or gaming ecosystem, instead of winning just digital goods that are locked in.
  
• Winning real value elevates the fun and excitement of the games and competitions.
  
• In essence, crypto currency enables gaming to provide gambling. Gaming (with crypto currency) is an euphemism for gambling. One will argue that gaming has skill whereas gambling does not. This is not true. Lotteries and slots do not involve skill, but many gambling games, such as Black Jack or Poker, involve skill. Financial betting involves skill.

For Gambling:

• Governments around the world are the biggest operators of gambling. Most governments run big lotteries. Several run huge casinos. But, they block competition, such as online gambling, to maximize their own revenue. Many of them do not have specific laws that outlaw online gambling. If they do, they rarely enforce them because it’s difficult, as they themselves are gambling operators. To block online gambling, they ban credit card companies and banks from sending money to and from gambling sites. Cryptocurrencies can solve this business problem for gambling operators. Cryptocurrencies can unshackle and liberate gambling and let anyone to play from anywhere in the world.
• Gambling sites are known to cheat or steal from their customers. If the bets are handled by smart contracts, this business problem can be solved.

Therefore, Eloplay is in a great space. They have a product, which is great news, though I didn’t try it. That proves that they can build.

However, they have lots of competition. There have been many eSports or Gaming ICOs, such as Firstblood, Unikoingold, GameCredits, etc. There are more, but I forgot their names. I’m not saying that this industry cannot support many competitors. I just don’t know how many.

Elopay is from that large country east of Europe, which has no extradition agreements with much of the world. This increases the risk for you, because if they defraud you, your government cannot help you.

Hey jlp, your input into ICO's and your insights regarding to the potential of gaming and gambling are great. I was wondering however, what do you think about Crypto 'hedge funds' ICO's such as Crypto20? Do you think there's any potential there? Apparently they have a tangible platform and tangible results, and overall they seem promising. What's your take on them? Thanks in advance.

[trecore4]

Cool. I enjoyed reading your thread post because it is very very informative. I did not know much about the nodes which you spoke here, that was added knowledge to me. Don’t know when does these so called innovative people will actually think in innovative way to run the successful ICO programs. If things goes on like this then it could be worst in the future.

This is why many countries are stepping forward to legalise the ICO with licenses and try to protect the national economy. Also there is no need of knowing much about ICO which is fake because that we will known just by looking at the crap whitepaper they always publish.

[MetaVerde]

I think David Mondrus' idea to store research results on the blockchain, for immutability, is brilliant.

https://trive.news/ doesn't fit into the categories mentioned, except loosely as a game, but then again, we are unique in our approach.

Thank-you for the excellent OP.
This is certainly an exciting new space.
I kind of like the "wild west" feel.

Don't buy any snakeoil there, Pilgrim.
Walk away from the scam-coin and nobody gets hurt.

:-D

[jlp]

what do you think about KMD (Komodo Platform) ?I have been following them closely. They have Decentralzied Exchange - Barterdex project that's really close to Easy to use GUI.
More info about it https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1338970.msg23274990#msg23274990

In regards to SuperNet’s BarterDex, I don't see any information about an ICO or their team. Are they running an ICO?

I think there are severe problems with centralized exchanges: risk of funds getting stolen; extremely bogged down. It took many days before the exchange will confirm to me that it received my fiat wire transfer. During this long wait, I was wondering if they are stealing my money. There is a HUGE need for decentralized exchanges. I sincerely wish someone will create a good one. Whoever can, will be hugely successful.

The question is: Who will be able to do this? There have been a number of ICO projects trying to do this, but unfortunately I forgot their names. Is BarterDex superior to the others? I don’t know because I cannot compare them. But SuperNet should have provided a comparison to its competitors, but they didn’t. Most ICOs do not, which implies that they are trying to hide the competition from you.

They have a prototype/product, so that is impressive. However, I’m not sure I like the the Liquidity Multiplier. It only gives an illusion of liquidity, because if you enter 3 orders for the same funds and 2 are cancelled when one of them is filled, then is this fake liquidity. This means that I can put in a buy order of 1 BTC, a 2nd buy order of 1 BTC, a 3rd buy order of 1 BTC and never worry that my 2nd and 3rd orders will get filled. If these buy orders are visible to the other parties, then I can create the impression that there is a lot of demand for BTC, when there isn’t. Does this mean I can manipulate the market?

They have a prototype, which is good news. However, according to their video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XovwcWnZ9vM), you need to install and run full daemons of Bitcoin and Komodo. The guy runs bitcoind with no pruning parameter, so I assume that he is running Bitcoin’s full node. There are problems with this:

• It is a hassle to run a command line interface. The guy even says that you need advanced skills and “it’ll take quite a while” to learn from scratch.
  
• It takes multiple days to download Bitcoin’s full node. Also, most users will not have a spare 120 GB of disk space for the blockchain.
  
• It would be crazy to be running the full node of every coin that you want to convert. Ethereum’s blockchain is 200 GB. Who is going to run that?

Later on in the video, he confirms that you need to “sync”, which means download, the blockchain of any coin that you want to exchange with. I do not see how the average user will be able to do this. Even if you are experienced in running full nodes, it is a major hassle to do this and you likely will not have enough disk space to download Bitcoin’s blockchain, let alone blockchains from multiple coins.

This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf371VQRh0M) confirmed that you need to run the full nodes.

But this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb7An2CGBQw) says that it can work with Electrum servers to avoid the need to download the blockchain. As far as I know, Electrum only serves the Bitcoin blockchain, not others.

Their white paper gets very technical and hard to understand. It would be good if they included more diagrams to help explain. I still do not understand how they can provide lots of liquidity. Let’s say you put in a buy order of 1 BTC. Let’s say there isn’t a single sell order of BTC. What will BarterDex do? Will BarterDex step in, like a market maker, and sell 1 BTC? Without understanding how their technology works, you will be taking a risk by assuming that it will work.

Their documentations says:

Adding a coin to the BarterDEX is as simple as writing one line of code if your coin is a Bitcoin compatible.

**Non-Bitcoin compatibles can be integrated to the BarterDex. However, the further away the coin is from a btc fork, the more developer work hours it will take to integrate.**

This means that BarterDex will only work with a small number of coins.

[barbierir]

In regards to SuperNet’s BarterDex, I don't see any information about an ICO or their team. Are they running an ICO?

There was SuperNet Ico in 2014 that funded the initial development and Komodo Ico last year (because Komodo replaced Bitcoindark)

Is BarterDex superior to the others? I don’t know because I cannot compare them.

BarterDex is by far the leader in this stuff, the closest thing is Blocknet

They have a prototype/product, so that is impressive. However, I’m not sure I like the the Liquidity Multiplier. It only gives an illusion of liquidity...

I think you will like it, LM helps the small traders because you have more options to catch a dip

However, according to their video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XovwcWnZ9vM), you need to install and run full daemons of Bitcoin and Komodo.

No need to download full blockchains, since the time the video was made Electrum mode was tested and added. Now you can choose either full mode or Electrum. Also the video is using a simple ugly gui with command line, this is not the version meant for release. The pretty gui won't require any command line use!

I still do not understand how they can provide lots of liquidity.

Any advanced user can act as liquidity provider by interfacing with centralized exchanges with their api

BarterDex will only work with a small number of coins.

BarterDex already works with Bitcoin, Litecoin, Stratis, Vertcoin, Dogecoin, Dash, PIVX, Zcash, Komodo and many other minor ones (beside Komodo assetchains and fiat pegs). Not bad for a first release! Making a coin compatible with BarterDex is not too hard if their devs are willing to make the work for it. I believe that once it gets some recognition more coin developers will be willing to make the effort! There will be bounties too. One thing is sure: coins that don't support atomic swaps are going to suffer a lot of friction in the near future.

Look at a short summary of all the features here: https://twitter.com/Komodo_Italy/status/920589969198108672

[InvisibilityFP]

nice thread. keep up brother

[jlp]

Hi jlp. You have a great insight on ICOs.  I know i'm being bias since I'm part of the bounty but I think project related to e-sports such as Eloplay has a good shot in being successful in the future. What can you say about it

In regards to Eloplay, I think gaming and gambling are two excellent applications for cryptocurrency. After transfer of value (currency) and store of value applications, gaming and gambling are very good fits. Cryptocurrencies enable several things to be done that could not be done previously:

For Gaming:

• Win real value that can be withdrawn from the game or gaming ecosystem, instead of winning just digital goods that are locked in.
  
• Winning real value elevates the fun and excitement of the games and competitions.
  
• In essence, crypto currency enables gaming to provide gambling. Gaming (with crypto currency) is an euphemism for gambling. One will argue that gaming has skill whereas gambling does not. This is not true. Lotteries and slots do not involve skill, but many gambling games, such as Black Jack or Poker, involve skill. Financial betting involves skill.

For Gambling:

• Governments around the world are the biggest operators of gambling. Most governments run big lotteries. Several run huge casinos. But, they block competition, such as online gambling, to maximize their own revenue. Many of them do not have specific laws that outlaw online gambling. If they do, they rarely enforce them because it’s difficult, as they themselves are gambling operators. To block online gambling, they ban credit card companies and banks from sending money to and from gambling sites. Cryptocurrencies can solve this business problem for gambling operators. Cryptocurrencies can unshackle and liberate gambling and let anyone to play from anywhere in the world.
• Gambling sites are known to cheat or steal from their customers. If the bets are handled by smart contracts, this business problem can be solved.

Therefore, Eloplay is in a great space. They have a product, which is great news, though I didn’t try it. That proves that they can build.

However, they have lots of competition. There have been many eSports or Gaming ICOs, such as Firstblood, Unikoingold, GameCredits, etc. There are more, but I forgot their names. I’m not saying that this industry cannot support many competitors. I just don’t know how many.

Elopay is from that large country east of Europe, which has no extradition agreements with much of the world. This increases the risk for you, because if they defraud you, your government cannot help you.

Hey jlp, your input into ICO's and your insights regarding to the potential of gaming and gambling are great. I was wondering however, what do you think about Crypto 'hedge funds' ICO's such as Crypto20? Do you think there's any potential there? Apparently they have a tangible platform and tangible results, and overall they seem promising. What's your take on them? Thanks in advance.

In regards to Crypto20, I think there is a need for an index fund of cryptocurrencies. However, the risk with crypto investment funds is that they centralize money and therefore create “honey pots” (term from Andreas Antonopoulos) for hackers and thieves. A thief stole $50 million from DAO. Hackers (and possibly employees) stole from many exchanges.

The other risk with Crypto20 is that they are obviously and blatantly selling a security. If and when regulators come after ICOs for selling securities, they will go after the ones that were most obvious. If they do, then both the project team and token holders will suffer.

How do we know that the Crypto20 tokens truly have ownership of the underlying assets (top 20 cryptocurrencies)? Is there a Crypto20 smart contract where we can call one of its GETTER functions to see the balances of the 20 cryptocurrencies that the smart contract is holding? I did not see this in the white paper. Even if we can verify that the smart contract is holding the 20 cryptocurrencies, how do we know that the Crypto20 tokens own the assets that the smart contract holds? But the smart contract does not hold the 20 cryptocurrencies. According to the white paper, these will be held in cold storage.

If the majority of the Crypto20 token holders want to claim the assets (20 cryptocurrencies), can they? Can they go to a judge and prove that they legally own the assets in Crypto20’s cold storage? I could not find answers to these questions.

Tether has the same principles. It is supposed to be backed by and track the US dollar. Each Tether is supposed to equal one US dollar in value. There are talks that they do not have enough US dollars and they have not been able to prove that they do. Let’s say there are 1 million Tether tokens, but they only have 100,000 US dollars to back it up. What do you if you are a token holder? Take a flight to the team’s country and try to hunt them down?

When you give your ETH to Crypto20, they are supposed to take that and buy the equivalent amounts of Bitcoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, NEM, Dash, etc. How do you know that they have? You cannot have access to their cold storage. How do you know that they haven’t skimmed off 50% of the ETH and put it into their personal wallets?

These are the risks of every type of crypto investment fund. There are many of them now. Some of them might be honest and legitimate. Some of them will not be. The risk is that it is hard to be sure that you are investing in the honest one, unless they provide all of the answers to questions like mine. If there is a way to know for sure that they cannot screw you, then these types of investment funds can provide a lot of value.

[dobrescu.mihnea]

Hi jlp. You have a great insight on ICOs.  I know i'm being bias since I'm part of the bounty but I think project related to e-sports such as Eloplay has a good shot in being successful in the future. What can you say about it

In regards to Eloplay, I think gaming and gambling are two excellent applications for cryptocurrency. After transfer of value (currency) and store of value applications, gaming and gambling are very good fits. Cryptocurrencies enable several things to be done that could not be done previously:

For Gaming:

• Win real value that can be withdrawn from the game or gaming ecosystem, instead of winning just digital goods that are locked in.
  
• Winning real value elevates the fun and excitement of the games and competitions.
  
• In essence, crypto currency enables gaming to provide gambling. Gaming (with crypto currency) is an euphemism for gambling. One will argue that gaming has skill whereas gambling does not. This is not true. Lotteries and slots do not involve skill, but many gambling games, such as Black Jack or Poker, involve skill. Financial betting involves skill.

For Gambling:

• Governments around the world are the biggest operators of gambling. Most governments run big lotteries. Several run huge casinos. But, they block competition, such as online gambling, to maximize their own revenue. Many of them do not have specific laws that outlaw online gambling. If they do, they rarely enforce them because it’s difficult, as they themselves are gambling operators. To block online gambling, they ban credit card companies and banks from sending money to and from gambling sites. Cryptocurrencies can solve this business problem for gambling operators. Cryptocurrencies can unshackle and liberate gambling and let anyone to play from anywhere in the world.
• Gambling sites are known to cheat or steal from their customers. If the bets are handled by smart contracts, this business problem can be solved.

Therefore, Eloplay is in a great space. They have a product, which is great news, though I didn’t try it. That proves that they can build.

However, they have lots of competition. There have been many eSports or Gaming ICOs, such as Firstblood, Unikoingold, GameCredits, etc. There are more, but I forgot their names. I’m not saying that this industry cannot support many competitors. I just don’t know how many.

Elopay is from that large country east of Europe, which has no extradition agreements with much of the world. This increases the risk for you, because if they defraud you, your government cannot help you.

Hey jlp, your input into ICO's and your insights regarding to the potential of gaming and gambling are great. I was wondering however, what do you think about Crypto 'hedge funds' ICO's such as Crypto20? Do you think there's any potential there? Apparently they have a tangible platform and tangible results, and overall they seem promising. What's your take on them? Thanks in advance.

In regards to Crypto20, I think there is a need for an index fund of cryptocurrencies. However, the risk with crypto investment funds is that they centralize money and therefore create “honey pots” (term from Andreas Antonopoulos) for hackers and thieves. A thief stole $50 million from DAO. Hackers (and possibly employees) stole from many exchanges.

The other risk with Crypto20 is that they are obviously and blatantly selling a security. If and when regulators come after ICOs for selling securities, they will go after the ones that were most obvious. If they do, then both the project team and token holders will suffer.

How do we know that the Crypto20 tokens truly have ownership of the underlying assets (top 20 cryptocurrencies)? Is there a Crypto20 smart contract where we can call one of its GETTER functions to see the balances of the 20 cryptocurrencies that the smart contract is holding? I did not see this in the white paper. Even if we can verify that the smart contract is holding the 20 cryptocurrencies, how do we know that the Crypto20 tokens own the assets that the smart contract holds? But the smart contract does not hold the 20 cryptocurrencies. According to the white paper, these will be held in cold storage.

If the majority of the Crypto20 token holders want to claim the assets (20 cryptocurrencies), can they? Can they go to a judge and prove that they legally own the assets in Crypto20’s cold storage? I could not find answers to these questions.

Tether has the same principles. It is supposed to be backed by and track the US dollar. Each Tether is supposed to equal one US dollar in value. There are talks that they do not have enough US dollars and they have not been able to prove that they do. Let’s say there are 1 million Tether tokens, but they only have 100,000 US dollars to back it up. What do you if you are a token holder? Take a flight to the team’s country and try to hunt them down?

When you give your ETH to Crypto20, they are supposed to take that and buy the equivalent amounts of Bitcoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, NEM, Dash, etc. How do you know that they have? You cannot have access to their cold storage. How do you know that they haven’t skimmed off 50% of the ETH and put it into their personal wallets?

These are the risks of every type of crypto investment fund. There are many of them now. Some of them might be honest and legitimate. Some of them will not be. The risk is that it is hard to be sure that you are investing in the honest one, unless they provide all of the answers to questions like mine. If there is a way to know for sure that they cannot screw you, then these types of investment funds can provide a lot of value.

I see, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. if we had the assurance that those funds were completely honest or legitimate, they would have great potential in the future, unless the whole crypto ecosystem would crash. Anyway, I was also wondering, what's your take on Blockchain ICOs like Universa, who claim they will be superior to Bitcoin and other platforms in many aspects? Obviously, Universa doesn't have any prototype it seems, but solely from the perspective of potential and adoption rate, could they work? Another type of ICO I was wondering about with regards to your view on it would be digital advertising ICOs like Papyrus for example. Considering social media and digital advertising are growing exponentially in this age, do you think Altcoins would have any potential to penetrate this space?

[mmm01]

It was an informative article, thank you. Can I ask what you think of Guts by taking advantage of your experience in this area? I appreciate your opinion, thank you

[cicnos]

2)  CRAP

Everyone is desperate to host an ICO to make money. Therefore, they are throwing anything and everything onto the blockchain, including the kitchen sink. They may not be intentionally trying to scam, but they think that they have a good enough idea for an ICO. But these will fail because the blockchain will not solve anything for them. Examples include ICOs that want to put 3D data (which would equate to hundreds of Terabytes of data) or 153 exabytes of medical data on a blockchain. This shows that they are clueless about the blockchain and have never run Bitcoin’s full node. Bitcoin’s blockchain is 120 GB and Ethereum’s blockhain is 200 GB and they are both having scaling problems.

Even though crypto veterans and fans would like it to be, the blockchain is NOT the panacea to every problem in the world.

ICOs are also throwing any kind of business problem that they can make up, into the ICO. If they cannot make up the business problem, they will exaggerate about it. They will fail because the business problem doesn’t really exist, isn’t significant enough, cannot be solved by a blockchain or they do not really have the solution, though they try to make it sound like they do with lots of technical jargon.

Swarm Fund cites this business problem:

“You need large amounts of money to buy real estate and your money is tied down for an indefinite amount of time.”

This is a lie and not a business problem. You can buy one share of a REIT, and there are thousands of REITs to choose from, and you can sell it one minute later. If they start off their pitch with a lie, what else are they lying about?

I have to disagree regarding Swarm fund. REITs definitely have their place as an investment to consider, but Swam takes this concept many levels deeper. Swarm is about much more than real estate, it is fully decentralized, members vote on the direction of the platform via a stake weighted liquid democracy system (already developed) with the first vote scheduled for a week after the ICO. It would be foolish to dismiss any ICO based on one aspect you disagree with or misunderstood. Not to mention that the whole idea of Swarm is to function as an agnostic platform where anyone can bring an investment opportunity to it and tokenize it. Just like Ethereum created an ecosystem for applications to be run on top of it, Swarm is doing the same but for any and every investment opportunity out there. I will definitely be investing on their ICO and using their platform, which by the way, already has a beta version out. Like any investment of course you have to do your due diligence but to call them liars is a bit  of a stretch.

[Betrayhumanity]

Thanks for this summary: very useful.

[ValoremFoundation]

Very nice article. The ICO bubble is going to burst just like the dotcom stock bubble of millennium.

Very true. This is a great article to slow the uninformed investor and allow real projects to come forward.

[Huan Pres]

Kyber brags that one of its benefits is that it doesn’t hold the users’ tokens. Therefore, the tokens won’t get hacked or stolen. They are implying that if they hold tokens, the tokens can get hacked or stolen.

Then they say that they guarantee high liquidity by “holding reserves of all tokens in the network” that users may want. They would need to hold TONS of tokens to guarantee high liquidity. By holding tokens, these tokens can get hacked or stolen, according to Kyber.

Their business model is completely flawed.

In regards to CombiCoin, their pitch is that you reduce risk by diversifying. However, they increase risk for you because they have your money and you have to believe that it’s backed by other coins. Tether is doing this already, except they back up Tether with USD.  There is already talk that Tether is not backing up their coin with sufficient USD. You’ll never know for sure that CombiCoin’s TRIA is backed up by sufficient coins. Instead, if you went out and bought the other coins on your own, you’ll never need to believe anyone’s claims.

Agreed on Swarm and Combicoin.
But, with Kyber it is a different story. As far as i understood, they don't hold tokens. They have reserve managers (anyone with specified credentials can be one) and Reserve Contributors (could be you or me). The reserve contributors hold the tokens and supply the Reserve Managers. These Reserve Managers trade on the Kyber Network Platform and are paying a fee in KNC to Kyber, which will get burned.
So, if my understanding is right, Kyber told the truth. They don't hold the tokens and they can provide the liquidity.

If it's flawed why Vitalik claims to advise the project, I'm not a Kyberians but really believe in every Vitalik project also based on they said  remaining 95% of the fees will be burned, and my believe is knc going to hits Bittrex soon, so would be fine for a short term. 

[jlp]

I have to disagree regarding Swarm fund. REITs definitely have their place as an investment to consider, but Swam takes this concept many levels deeper. Swarm is about much more than real estate, it is fully decentralized, members vote on the direction of the platform via a stake weighted liquid democracy system (already developed) with the first vote scheduled for a week after the ICO. It would be foolish to dismiss any ICO based on one aspect you disagree with or misunderstood. Not to mention that the whole idea of Swarm is to function as an agnostic platform where anyone can bring an investment opportunity to it and tokenize it. Just like Ethereum created an ecosystem for applications to be run on top of it, Swarm is doing the same but for any and every investment opportunity out there. I will definitely be investing on their ICO and using their platform, which by the way, already has a beta version out. Like any investment of course you have to do your due diligence but to call them liars is a bit  of a stretch.

You didn’t disagree with what I wrote about Swarm Fund. I wrote that they lied when they said:

“You need large amounts of money to buy real estate and your money is tied down for an indefinite amount of time.”

I have the same questions about Swarm Fund, or any fund, as I do for Crypto20. See my posting above about Crypto20. How can they prove that the tokens legally own the real estate? Ownership of real estate is recorded by municipalities. They record the name of the owner. I assume that municipalities will record Swarm Fund as the owner? If so, then what are the legal documents that will prove that my ERC20 token entitles me to part ownership of the real estate that has Swarm Fund’s name recorded as owner?

How do we confirm that Swarm Fund is going to take all of the ETH that I give them to buy real estate? How do we confirm that they won’t skim off 10%, 20% or 50% of the ETH and put it into their personal wallets?

I’m not saying that investment funds (into any asset) does not have value. There have been many investment funds throughout history that have provided a lot of value. There have been many investment funds throughout history that have been scams. How do we confirm that Swarm fund will be the former and not the latter?

[ValoremFoundation]

I have to disagree regarding Swarm fund. REITs definitely have their place as an investment to consider, but Swam takes this concept many levels deeper. Swarm is about much more than real estate, it is fully decentralized, members vote on the direction of the platform via a stake weighted liquid democracy system (already developed) with the first vote scheduled for a week after the ICO. It would be foolish to dismiss any ICO based on one aspect you disagree with or misunderstood. Not to mention that the whole idea of Swarm is to function as an agnostic platform where anyone can bring an investment opportunity to it and tokenize it. Just like Ethereum created an ecosystem for applications to be run on top of it, Swarm is doing the same but for any and every investment opportunity out there. I will definitely be investing on their ICO and using their platform, which by the way, already has a beta version out. Like any investment of course you have to do your due diligence but to call them liars is a bit  of a stretch.

You didn’t disagree with what I wrote about Swarm Fund. I wrote that they lied when they said:

“You need large amounts of money to buy real estate and your money is tied down for an indefinite amount of time.”

I have the same questions about Swarm Fund, or any fund, as I do for Crypto20. See my posting above about Crypto20. How can they prove that the tokens legally own the real estate? Ownership of real estate is recorded by municipalities. They record the name of the owner. I assume that municipalities will record Swarm Fund as the owner? If so, then what are the legal documents that will prove that my ERC20 token entitles me to part ownership of the real estate that has Swarm Fund’s name recorded as owner?

How do we confirm that Swarm Fund is going to take all of the ETH that I give them to buy real estate? How do we confirm that they won’t skim off 10%, 20% or 50% of the ETH and put it into their personal wallets?

I’m not saying that investment funds (into any asset) does not have value. There have been many investment funds throughout history that have provided a lot of value. There have been many investment funds throughout history that have been scams. How do we confirm that Swarm fund will be the former and not the latter?

Deed must list the wallet address, like a property description. That's the only way.

[jlp]

Deed must list the wallet address, like a property description. That's the only way.

Really? Will municipalities accept a wallet address? Highly unlikely.

Which countries does Swarm Fund plan to operate in? Can they prove that each of these countries will accept a crypto wallet address on a land title deed? Highly unlikely.

Let's say that these municipalities will, which is a stretch, how does Swarm Fund prove that my ERC20 token owns a percentage of the assets that their wallet owns?

[ValoremFoundation]

Deed must list the wallet address, like a property description. That's the only way.

Really? Will municipalities accept a wallet address? Highly unlikely.

Which countries does Swarm Fund plan to operate in? Can they prove that each of these countries will accept a crypto wallet address on a land title deed? Highly unlikely.

Let's say that these municipalities will, which is a stretch, how does Swarm Fund prove that my ERC20 token owns a percentage of the assets that their wallet owns?

I'm not saying it's likely or that it's going to happen realistically, but I know that if you need to write the deed, things can be added in there. Although I agree the likelihood of anyone knowing exactly how to even get started would be a stretch. But not impossible.

Forgot to add the other part of you question. They can only prove that the wallet owns the property. Not the token themselves. Just like anything else on the deed it says "Value exchanged for deed" tokens are simply a medium of exchange. Again, not likely, but not impossible.

[mr_uk_btc]

Deed must list the wallet address, like a property description. That's the only way.

Really? Will municipalities accept a wallet address? Highly unlikely.

Which countries does Swarm Fund plan to operate in? Can they prove that each of these countries will accept a crypto wallet address on a land title deed? Highly unlikely.

Let's say that these municipalities will, which is a stretch, how does Swarm Fund prove that my ERC20 token owns a percentage of the assets that their wallet owns?

I think the OP and you are both genuinely misunderstanding the Swarm Fund model. Also the OP's initial quote of Swarm Fund is clearly being used out of context...

Perhaps you should reread their offering.... but in short....

Swarm Fund are providing a platform for existing funds, such as the existing US-based Real Estate fund they are launching with, to gain access to new sources of capital from the crypto markets. Property title deeds are not held by Swarm or the users of the platform, they are held by the third-party RE fund. The investors sourced via Swarm will be issued asset-backed tokens that represent the dollar-value that they invested into that fund initially. As the Real Estate fund gains in performance the asset-backed tokens increase in value and may be exchanged at any time via the Swarm Network exchange, providing instant liquidity in what is normally a less liquid market.

[deportivo]

Most of ICOs are scams. Almost all knew that but continue to give the scammers money. Need control over new ICOs i think.