ICO - white paper yes / no

[AA_Bitcoin]

hi,

Not every company has a white paper.
 I think every company needs one for the ICO.

What do you think?

[Passive Coin]

Of course, not every ICO needs whitepaper long for PDF 35+ pages.
Do you think salesman selling burgers and who invest in crypto, is going to read 35 pages, full of technology jargon? Even, person who wrote such whitepaper do not understand it... 

However, I would like to see clean FAQ page(s) packed with crucial information of the project.
Hope this crayziness with ICOs will be over and we will see sensible projects (in less quantity) popping-up.
At the moment, I stopped investing in ICOs.

[gedor]

It is not necessary much in my opinion.  In fact not many people read projects' whitepapers. They just jump in every ico that will be profitable.

[McWorse]

More important is the credibility of the team behind, because an interesting, gamechanging and good written paper is worthless when these beautiful words won't become converted into facts.

[HonestSurfer]

There are 2 types of whitepapers: techical and non-technical. The idea of a whitepaper was to present how a technological solution should work. So if you dont have a whitepaper or similar document explaining that, I assume you dont really know how the whole thing will work under thr hood - or if it will work at all. The non-technical whitepaper is more about marketing, business case etc. Ideally the whitepaper should contain both aspects.
Btw do you know that originally there were also brownpapers written where all the problems and issues with the current state was described in detail..

[Minotus]

I think every company should have whitepaper. People read it before ico, it is important for trustment.

[Svelto]

IMO, white paper is important for investors to know about its project before investing. It can be a short or long white paper but the necessary information should be included. I do read white paper before investing.

[bennybeezy]

I think a white paper helps to create the perception of legitimacy, and helps to provide both technical and marketing details that are important to know when evaluating an opportunity. It certainly doesn't need to be drawn out or very lengthy but I think having one shows a level of thought and commitment on the part of the developer. The way I see it, if you're starting a business you're more likely to succeed if you actually come up with a business plan and have your goals in writing, and so a white paper is essentially the equivalent of that for an ICO. Obviously, you don't have to read a white paper but having one is better than not, in my opinion, especially if you're genuinely interested in a concept and want to know the intricacies.

[jlp]

Of course, every ICO should have a white paper.

Even then, a white paper is only a small factor on whether the ICO is investable.

The most important factor is whether they have build something that we can use.  Read:

3 kinds of ICOs - Protect Yourself
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2243157.0

[Anndrianno]

Whitepaper is a must as well as strong team, readymade alpha version of the product, particular advisors and really strong and supportive marketing campaign in twitter, facebook, bitcointalk, Reddit and various publications. Translation is really essential for holding a successful project. And finally we are not to forget about the coin itself and it's allocation.

Whitepaper is certainly a must for any ICO- and for me it's not even worth discussing... though it never means that I'm right

[cdb1690]

Not necessarily. I won't invest in the project unless I can find and read detailed technical explanation of how it's going to work. I don't care if its in the form of whitepaper, FAQ, Wiki or documentation on GitHub. In fact I actually prefer documentation on GitHub as they tend to be much more terse. Whitepapers typically contain lot of unnecessary padding. I mean who wants to read the same 5 pages describing how bitcoin has changed the world over and over again in every second whitepaper?

[sukamasoto]

White paper are official document that should be have by legal company or project in order to convince people to join since white paper contain important vision and mission about the project.
So if they not have white paper, the project must be question a lot !

[BogdanGFTP]

Despite quantity of users who read that, it's one of several things which ICO needs. Projects which don't show their WP is scam - 100%