ICO: Crowdfunding Tool Or Modern Scam?

An ICO cannot be funded by peppermints and gumdrops alone as tasty as they may sound! Code that is going to usher in the future of finance and the way people exchange money requires a significant amount of thought as well a tremendous amount of working hours exclusively dedicated for coding and innovation of design as systems become more sophisticated. Creativity within complex code is not funded by chips, beer and pizza money alone, the fact developers in the crypto community have families, mortgages/rent and lifestyles which require capital is a very real dilemma for young , new and experienced coders alike.

I liked it best when Frank Zappa once mentioned "a musician should not have to work at a gas station to earn a living" Just like a coder should not have to wait tables or hustle at any secondary job just to earn enough money to write new code, given that individual is dedicated to creating code that is going to change the future. In our reality, it's almost impossible to see the value of code that is not yet shaping the way we live our lives everyday until the code becomes absolutely necessary and users of a given system have to one day wake up desperately seeking serious viable long term solutions for existing problems.

It's always cool when young people pop out of the woodwork, with a fresh perspective on Blockchain concepts and code that promise to cut cost and time from the way older systems operate. People need to realize the majority of Cryptocurrency solutions are not necessarily going to come from college level minds with tones of spare time or some high school genius who lives at home with their parents and doesn't have to pay rent, the proverbial computer since wiz kid that spends 18 hours a day over the holidays randomly solving sophisticated algorithm equations that in turn are going to make the next generation of Blockchain technology possible is realistically not going to happen every other week if it happens at all. Chances are the next great Blockchain innovations are going to manifest through projects that have been properly funded via an ICO at an early stage of a project identified to have solid code base as the foundation for the initial investment. In other words the crypto community is going to need to have a system in place such as ICO's that help identify relevant new code as well as platforms that are going to usher in a more secure user-friendly cryptocurrency experience then what the average person currently has to deal with today, even if the person who is offering the code happens to be in Collage or at any job or school in general for that matter. The trick for any new ICO is to convince crypto hounds a new ICO is worthy of the communities attention in the first place, yet according to world governments that want to outlaw ICO's, the average Joe is not intelligent enough to differentiate between coins that are innovative VS coins that are made exclusively to separate people from their Bitcoins or USD.

Technically speaking ICO's are the crowds/public way of backing a project that the crowd believes to be the most viable option for solving or updating Blockchain code. When a developer/DEV for a new Crypto offer a solution for a given cryptocurrency problem, essentially most ICO's start out as a way for a group of developers to say "hey we are a group of people who can potentially organize a project that will help a lot of users and we're looking for your backing to get our ideas off the ground" In some cases ICO's with the most meat on the bone are projects where the code is written, as was in the case of Ethereum which at the time when ETH was first conceptualized around 2013 the person who wrote the code, Vitalik Buterin was in his late teens when Ethereum first emerged seeking crowd funding, at 35 cents USD needless to say ETH was a bargain in retrospect considering how valued the Crypto is to this day.

Assuming companies like Ethereum had to face the kind of scrutiny we are seeing today in the crypto Community landscape as well regulations on the table for legislation as new law's are being drawn up at this very second to keep us Americans safe, who knows if we would have still gotten a chance to discover great companies or people who have the ability to offer superior advanced code who's ultimate goal was protecting users, as we have seen as a result of countless ICO's to date.

I find it very curious even as world governments are racing to innovate and expand Blockchain technology with one arm, the other arm of the governments reach is being used to outlaw and regulate ICO's not to mention Cryptocurrency in general potentially stifling industry growth, current project developments across the board not to mention future innovations. The majority of the time, in my estimate, crypto currencies that have the most public attention as a result of announcing a white paper or launching a crowd funding opportunity usually seem to be the products that bring the most relevance to the table with respect to innovating Blockchain technology. The crowd tends know what the crowd likes and needs!

The bottom line is that ICO's lately are getting a very bad rep in the media worldwide politically speaking and there needs to be a fresh dialogue emerge discussing the notion that many great Innovations have come out of cryptocurrency initial coin offerings. Sure there have been a few bad apples that have fallen from the tree but why would we cut the tree down from a few bad apples falling alone? Cryptocurrency is ever-changing and complex, it is easy to understand how mistakes could be made or ideas that were once praised as being innovative and genius are now viewed as a joke, since cryptocurrency is really less than 10 years old at this point, from my perspective this industry should be given a little consideration and the respect it deserves as well as some time to blossom into something beyond the five or ten things people have to say about what they don't understand about cryptocurrency today.

I'm not here to defend ICO's that are redundant and by default a wasted long term investment, I am simply here to point out that the kind of innovation the cryptocurrency community is waiting for should not have to be funded by a corporation with their own needs at stake or by a corporation who can afford to play "the game" politically weaseling through loop holes that the average Joe lives and dies by. Innovation for the crypto community and Blockchain technology should be driven by people as well as the needs of the people who use the system primarily over the needs of corporations or global governing entities who will eventually adopt this emerging technology in spite of the facade being created to miss inform and distract people from the potential. That being said I feel there could be some type of Blockchain watch dogs or security blankets put into place to check new ICO's and scrutinize projects so to speak, however it's hard to argue with someone who has their mind set on something in spite of all the many Fail-Safe efforts put into place to protect individuals.

For the time being Blockchain technology is not yet touted as something that has already dramatically changed the landscape of how people in the world transact with one another financially, those of us who understand Blockchain technology recognize the potential cryptocurrency like BTC, STEEM and many others offer! One day soon Blockchain technology will be the source of a more secure and advanced system of interaction on every level everywhere in the world innovating and reaching into every industry, with Solutions for every possible application conceivable. The amount of research and development required to get to that point is going to demand a tremendous collective effort that initial coin offerings make possible in a way ICO's seem to best incentivize developers. Waiting for governments to innovate cryptocurrency is possibly one of the funniest concepts I can imagine, unless a government is innovating Blockchain tech to serve that countries own needs, I find it difficult to imagine crypto evolving with the help of world governments in the current crpto atmosphere. I don't think rallying a mob of torch-bearing angry people is going to slow down the growth of the cryptocurrency industry anytime soon, no matter how many governments ban ICO's or how many articles are published trying to lable ICO's as questionable, people who code crypto are some tough and brilliant cats. In the future as cryptocurrency becomes more of a solution and standard for financial systems, people will begin to open their minds to the potential good ICO's can accomplish, so we don't have to wait for Johnny Plummer to finish his shift pumping gas at the local Costco before the Blockchain community can get an update on that new code everyone has been waiting for, know what I mean?

• Do you feel like world governments should be trying to do more to protect investors and people from the
  threat and danger of ICO's and Cryptocurrency scams by creating tough new laws to regulate the Blockchain?
• Should the Blockchain find a way to govern itself?
• Do you think government's can do more to harm to Blockchain growth then good trying to regulate and control cryptocurrency and ICO's while secretly working on national crypto projects?
• Does world governments secretly working on national crypto projects that want to publicly ban ICO's seem questionable at the very least as a potential conflict of interest?
• What kind of system would you put into place to oversee ICO's to make sure that ICO projects are more fair and legitimate if governments actually left ICO's up to "the people" taking a step back?

Written by STEEM user: Jazmin Million