The first grandpa-approved ICO

Even Grandpa knows that ICO investments can be risky.

You can practically hear him shouting, “Most of ’em are scams I tells ya! Scams!” while angrily shaking his fist at an imaginary 25-year-old CEO who simply refuses to get off his lawn.

Imaginary is the key word here, mostly because the vast majority of ICOs are nothing more than an imaginary company offering an imaginary solution to an imaginary problem. As you can imagine, Grandpa doesn’t much care for that sort of thing. He’s been through his fair share of hucksters, grifters, charlatans, peddlers, and hustlers in his time. He sure knows a scam when he sees one.

“But Grandpa,” you try to reason with him, “people are making, like, sick gainz from investing in ICOs!” They sure are. They get rich and then they don’t mind telling you about it.

“But what about all the folks who sent their ETH and got jack squat in return, eh?” Grandpa would say. “You don’t hear much out of ’em now, do ya?” Of course you don’t. Nobody wants to be thought a fool. Most people just swallow the loss in silence and move on.

ICOs are unregulated, high-risk, high-reward investments. Yes, some are outright scams, but most are simply doomed to fail due to inexperience and failure to deliver. Others, however, will spawn the Facebooks, Amazons, Netflixes, and Googles of the future. Blockchain technology, when used in the right way, can solve many real-world problems. Solid ICOs have to deliver equally solid projects. They should not try to overpromise or do too much at once.

The world is truly better with more innovators in it. But the sheer number of ICOs in recent months has made it way too difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. The ones with a real problem to solve, and a real product to offer, are often lost amidst the 24/7 hype cycle.

‘ICO’ shouldn’t be a dirty word
We at Brickblock were recently banned from MailChimp for being an “ICO company.” Twitter and Facebook have banned all ICO ads. Try bringing up an ICO at a dinner party and watch your audience slowly sidle away to the punch bowl. Somewhere between the moon memes of late 2017 and now, ‘ICO’ became a dirty word.

That’s why we think measured government regulation is certainly a good thing for the long-term health of the crypto economy. There are just too many shady companies out there that try to get funded by selling tokens.

“Back in my day,” Grandpa would say, “we researched an idea, drafted a business plan, created an MVP, and pitched investors.” That’s the classic startup way of launching a tech company and it still has merit. Nowadays, however, you just fork any coin, hire a freelancer to write your whitepaper, slap a one-page website on the internet, do some promotion, and launch your ICO. What could go wrong?

We still think that people should have faith in the ICO model when it comes to truly innovative companies. Brickblock is an example of doing it right. We have a working product, not just an idea disguised in a whitepaper. Our smart contracts are approved by the best in the business. Our token (BBK) incentivizes HODLing. We are about to offer the world’s first tokenized building on the blockchain.

One thing Grandpa knows about investing is you can never go wrong with putting your hard-earned cash in real estate. If you’re in it for the long run, real estate is truly one of the most stable investments you can make.

But it’s not readily accessible to everyone. You have to be somewhat rich to be able to invest in real estate. And live in a country with a robust real estate market to make it worth your while. And be willing to sacrifice a considerable portion of your investment to high fees. And after you invest, your capital is kind of stuck.

Tokenizing real estate removes these barriers. Brickblock makes it possible to invest as much or as little as you want, at a fraction of the cost. And in case the real estate market in your country is not that stable, that’s okay, because you can invest globally without geographic restrictions. A little research will allow you to pick the country you think has the strongest real estate market. What’s more, whenever you’re strapped for cash, you can liquidate your investment with just a click of the mouse. Brickblock is currently developing an asset-backed token exchange, which will make the whole transaction process easier than ever. That’s not something regular real estate can offer.

Simply put, Brickblock combines the benefits of crypto with the stability of real estate. Now there’s an ICO even Grandpa can get behind.