An ICO is not the same as an IPO. In an IPO, you actually own the stock of the company, while in an ICO you own a coin which can be used to transact in that particular application. For example, when you walk into ABCmart and buy groceries, you pay with fiat currency; ABCmart takes care of sourcing, transportation, and display of the products. Imagine ABCmart started offering ABCmart coins, and only using these coins you could by groceries in ABCmart. In addition, you can trade these coins with friends for Hypermart coins, but you have to pay another friend mediating this transaction. You can also trade back these ABCmart coins for fiat currency (in the ICO world, you have to trade to ETH or BTC, then to fiat).
The creation of coins is analogous to loyalty points in retail. Retailers have always tried to create a loyal customer base through offering discounts in their store. These incentives are now crypto-economic incentives and bounties in the blockchain space. Liquidity of these coins is low, network effects will diminish and transaction costs will increase when there are a large number of competitors issuing tokens for a particular market segment (currently there are numerous applications in the decentralized betting and gambling space, each with their own tokens).
There are, however many advantages of having a separate token as highlighted here. In summary:
- Governance over the tokens and the community;
- Monetary policies separate from Ethereum/other blockchains;
- Incentivization of developers, users, investors;
Trading products on WandX.
With over 200 coins already on the Ethereum blockchain, decentralized exchange applications are releasing to increase public participation through low or non-existent exchange fees. Our pilot at WandX will enable investors to diversify their portfolio of cryptocurrencies through creating a basket of currencies which can be traded as a single product. The WandX application layer will help token holders of different currencies to invest in other products, similar to creating a product of ABCMart + GroceryMart + ClothesMart loyalty points and trading this product, hence increasing the liquidity of these coins/points.
Originally posted on the wandx blog. Check out the wandx marketplace here -
https://exchange.wandx.co
