The proliferation of ICOs will be just like the tech bubble (and subsequent burst) in 2001. Some will be wildly successful, most will be scams and burst. After they burst crypto will probably be mainstream.
I agree that ICO's are for sure a bubble, but I wouldn't say the dotcom craze takes it far enough.
I'm not just saying this to be disagreeable but ICO's look more like the digital equivalent of stocks, just like Bitcoin was the invention of "digital money" a company Token that pays out a share of profits as a dividend and has a price per token, tokens outstanding and a market cap on an exchange looks and talks like a stock, however with one major difference: there is no regulation yet, and there are no past financial like income or balance statement to go over. Because of this I'd say ICO's are more like the rise of the early stock market since there was still "regulation" during in the dotcom craze. Tokens are Stocks 2.0 and it's the fucking wildwest out there.
So what does this mean for investors? Be CAREFUL with your money. If you're not an experienced investor, you're highly likely to lose everything you invest.
By experienced investor I mean: able to separate the hype from the details.
You MUST be able to know, ask and answer these questions:
What problem is this ICO solving?
Is there demand for that problem to be solved?
Can they maintain a sustainable competitive advantage?
Is the business model understandable and will it create profit?
Even if the business makes sense, does the team have the capabilities to be able to make this happen?
The last and most important question, can you afford to lose this money?
If the answer to any of the above questions is no, then you should probably pass.
Even though the risks are high, there's still HUGE profit potential for the few ICO's that will be big winners, but you'll have to be both highly skilled and a bit lucky to win. Most people will lose almost everything they invest. Even experienced people will lose. Stick to the list above, answer it honestly, and it should serve as a good general guide for investing.
Thanks for this. Those 6 questions are going right into my evernote so I can refer to them for my next token purchase to make on an ICO. I have just started and I don't make money but I am extremely happy to operate in the crypto ecosystem so that we can escape the tyrranical and biased policies and regulations that come with the current fiat and stock trading system. It is like the wild west indeed but I would gladly lose all my money in a system that is trying to provide solutions for the future rather than ones that perpetuate unfair ones from the past. Don't put all your eggs into one basket and try to find things that get both birds stoned at once AKA something that helps your conscience AND your finances at the SAME TIME!
Give this man a 100 upvotes! Spot on with the breakdown.
I feel ICO investors suffer from something like 'confirmation bias' in TA. They want to win so they are won over with the upsides, while totally underestimating the downside picture!
I'm one of the founders at Bancor and I was in the middle of the 1999 Bubble. Had "Contact.com" - personal and professional social network downloadable application (later web based). We raised $15m venture funding (Lead by Accel). Soon after we released the first beta, the market crashed (April 2000) and the board explained to us that there's no more funding for "Internet" stuff and we should pivot, which we did, to "mobile internet" which happened 10 years later, years after we had to wind it down. In retrospect, we should have just kept our cost low, and keep building a social network.
Today, I work on a shared vision for not a social, but a commercial network. A network of interchangeable liquid tokens, used by communities along with other standard features (e.g. profiles, messages, discussions, etc).
We had 250k ETH cap in the Token Generation Event (TGE). The 150k ETH we got above that went to the reserve (20%) and the price floor (80%). 50k of the 250k was allocated to the reserve, so 200k budget, which was worth $18m just 30 days prior to the TGE. We suspected that the price might not be maintainable at this levels in the short term, given the recent insane spike to $400 and Indeed it went down, but we are far from worrying about the future funding of Bancor since we took that option under an account. We don't need to panic sale now, and we really believe in the long-term value of Ether, mostly due to the unprecedented developer adoption this platform attracts.
I invested in the "Bitcoin Bubble of 2011" when it quickly climbed to $30 and crashed, gradually, to $2 (when Wired published "The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin"). Those bubbles really mean anything. They could even be manufactured and we wouldn't know about it. We should not let these "bubbles" get to us. We should focus on our common goal, which is to overcome the trust gap that exists in our society. That trust gap is the reason we got bureaucracy - and I don't know anyone who likes it to much.
Using the blockchain technology we can organize societies in a different way. It's good that we have upcoming high-profile Ethereum alternatives such as EOS and Tezos, it's great that Cosmos and Polkadot are working on cross-blockchain interoperability solutions. But instead of focusing on that, some of us are fixated on the single parameter which is completely out of our control - the current trading prices of the different assets.
Anyway, one of Bancor protocol missions is to bring some stability to this madhouse using the non-profit automated market-makers we call "Smart tokens'. You can read more about it on our website bancor.network
tl;dr - forget about bubbles and prices and focus on funding, developing and using decentralized trust solutions.
Certain ICO's in the past have shown to be very popular and profitable, making a proliferation of new ICO's trying to get in on the pie inevitable. That said though, many investors look for clear signs of game-wining ideas to be present before they invest, this most-likely being especially true for big investors who have knowledge from past investments. While it may be easy to make a Coin on the Ethereum network, I would hope that knowledgeable investors in the crypto space would be aware of clear signs of a product made just to go along the wave but does not have any real value, and shift the market accordingly. ICO's have a lot of potential to be the basis for ground-breaking technologies, but as you insinuated, not every good idea ICO will survive, as was evident in the dotcom bubble.
It's true there is a craze about this whole ICO thing nevertheless, they are is a real problem they are trying to solve .It has become increasingly difficult to access finance to do business and technology has come to solve this issue.The ICO phenomenon is here to stay. However, alot must be done to regularize and safeguard citizens and investor in general.
This is very exciting time to be alive. Getting into ICO's and crypto in general is like getting into the internet in the early 90s. Big times ahead! Which ICO next?
Too many ICOs. It's so easy for them to get fast money. No wonder there is magazine. As investors, we really need to be more cautious and try to distinguish good from bad as otherwise we could potentially lose it all.
The proliferation of ICOs will be just like the tech bubble (and subsequent burst) in 2001. Some will be wildly successful, most will be scams and burst. After they burst crypto will probably be mainstream.
I agree that ICO's are for sure a bubble, but I wouldn't say the dotcom craze takes it far enough.
I'm not just saying this to be disagreeable but ICO's look more like the digital equivalent of stocks, just like Bitcoin was the invention of "digital money" a company Token that pays out a share of profits as a dividend and has a price per token, tokens outstanding and a market cap on an exchange looks and talks like a stock, however with one major difference: there is no regulation yet, and there are no past financial like income or balance statement to go over. Because of this I'd say ICO's are more like the rise of the early stock market since there was still "regulation" during in the dotcom craze. Tokens are Stocks 2.0 and it's the fucking wildwest out there.
So what does this mean for investors? Be CAREFUL with your money. If you're not an experienced investor, you're highly likely to lose everything you invest.
By experienced investor I mean: able to separate the hype from the details.
You MUST be able to know, ask and answer these questions:
If the answer to any of the above questions is no, then you should probably pass.
Even though the risks are high, there's still HUGE profit potential for the few ICO's that will be big winners, but you'll have to be both highly skilled and a bit lucky to win. Most people will lose almost everything they invest. Even experienced people will lose. Stick to the list above, answer it honestly, and it should serve as a good general guide for investing.
Great answer. I'm even going to copy-paste this whenever I see someone asking if X or Y ICO is worth investing on.
Wow, I'm honored, thank you. :)
Excellent reply. You should have just written this as a post. I completely agree.
Good idea. I'll make a post on this topic. Thanks for the idea.
Thanks for this. Those 6 questions are going right into my evernote so I can refer to them for my next token purchase to make on an ICO. I have just started and I don't make money but I am extremely happy to operate in the crypto ecosystem so that we can escape the tyrranical and biased policies and regulations that come with the current fiat and stock trading system. It is like the wild west indeed but I would gladly lose all my money in a system that is trying to provide solutions for the future rather than ones that perpetuate unfair ones from the past. Don't put all your eggs into one basket and try to find things that get both birds stoned at once AKA something that helps your conscience AND your finances at the SAME TIME!
Give this man a 100 upvotes! Spot on with the breakdown.
I feel ICO investors suffer from something like 'confirmation bias' in TA. They want to win so they are won over with the upsides, while totally underestimating the downside picture!
Great reply !!!
Short and full answer for a hard question !!!
Be or not to Be ???
=]
I'm one of the founders at Bancor and I was in the middle of the 1999 Bubble. Had "Contact.com" - personal and professional social network downloadable application (later web based). We raised $15m venture funding (Lead by Accel). Soon after we released the first beta, the market crashed (April 2000) and the board explained to us that there's no more funding for "Internet" stuff and we should pivot, which we did, to "mobile internet" which happened 10 years later, years after we had to wind it down. In retrospect, we should have just kept our cost low, and keep building a social network.
Today, I work on a shared vision for not a social, but a commercial network. A network of interchangeable liquid tokens, used by communities along with other standard features (e.g. profiles, messages, discussions, etc).
We had 250k ETH cap in the Token Generation Event (TGE). The 150k ETH we got above that went to the reserve (20%) and the price floor (80%). 50k of the 250k was allocated to the reserve, so 200k budget, which was worth $18m just 30 days prior to the TGE. We suspected that the price might not be maintainable at this levels in the short term, given the recent insane spike to $400 and Indeed it went down, but we are far from worrying about the future funding of Bancor since we took that option under an account. We don't need to panic sale now, and we really believe in the long-term value of Ether, mostly due to the unprecedented developer adoption this platform attracts.
I invested in the "Bitcoin Bubble of 2011" when it quickly climbed to $30 and crashed, gradually, to $2 (when Wired published "The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin"). Those bubbles really mean anything. They could even be manufactured and we wouldn't know about it. We should not let these "bubbles" get to us. We should focus on our common goal, which is to overcome the trust gap that exists in our society. That trust gap is the reason we got bureaucracy - and I don't know anyone who likes it to much.
Using the blockchain technology we can organize societies in a different way. It's good that we have upcoming high-profile Ethereum alternatives such as EOS and Tezos, it's great that Cosmos and Polkadot are working on cross-blockchain interoperability solutions. But instead of focusing on that, some of us are fixated on the single parameter which is completely out of our control - the current trading prices of the different assets.
Anyway, one of Bancor protocol missions is to bring some stability to this madhouse using the non-profit automated market-makers we call "Smart tokens'. You can read more about it on our website bancor.network
tl;dr - forget about bubbles and prices and focus on funding, developing and using decentralized trust solutions.
Totally agree, focus on the common goal of driving crypto into mainstream adoption. Forget about the bubbles and never sell into weakness.
Buy into weakness and sell into strength!
Certain ICO's in the past have shown to be very popular and profitable, making a proliferation of new ICO's trying to get in on the pie inevitable. That said though, many investors look for clear signs of game-wining ideas to be present before they invest, this most-likely being especially true for big investors who have knowledge from past investments. While it may be easy to make a Coin on the Ethereum network, I would hope that knowledgeable investors in the crypto space would be aware of clear signs of a product made just to go along the wave but does not have any real value, and shift the market accordingly. ICO's have a lot of potential to be the basis for ground-breaking technologies, but as you insinuated, not every good idea ICO will survive, as was evident in the dotcom bubble.
It's true there is a craze about this whole ICO thing nevertheless, they are is a real problem they are trying to solve .It has become increasingly difficult to access finance to do business and technology has come to solve this issue.The ICO phenomenon is here to stay. However, alot must be done to regularize and safeguard citizens and investor in general.
This is very exciting time to be alive. Getting into ICO's and crypto in general is like getting into the internet in the early 90s. Big times ahead! Which ICO next?
I agree, I would be interested in this answer too.
I personally am betting on rialto.ai
Too many ICOs. It's so easy for them to get fast money. No wonder there is magazine. As investors, we really need to be more cautious and try to distinguish good from bad as otherwise we could potentially lose it all.
True Flip {ICO} - Already running a transparent blockchain lottery! Bomb! Bonus 20%! Hurry! :)
The platform is already working and making a profit :)
https://steemit.com/ico/@happycoin/true-flip-ico-already-running-a-transparent-blockchain-lottery-bomb-bonus-20-hurry