ICOs and Appcoins: A Blockchain VC's View
Initial coin offerings (ICOs) and appcoins are a hot topic in the blockchain community these days. Forward-thinking investors have thrown their support behind the movement, thought leaders have proclaimed that ICOs are turning the traditional venture capital model on its head, and bitcoin industry veterans have launched hedge funds to invest in blockchain tokens. I expect this discussion and activity to gain momentum in 2017, but I remain skeptical. As the most active investor in blockchain startups, we at Digital Currency Group are uniquely positioned to capitalize on the growth of ICOs.....
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I'm pro-appcoin. There, I said it. Haters take note. Other lawyers take note. I think appcoin sales (often called "initial coin offerings" or ICOs) are a new form of crowdfunding and some can have as much legal merit as a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign. On the other hand, when executed inelegantly, some can break the law. One of my goals in this definitive three-part series on appcoin law is to help you tell the difference, and share my experience in how to ICO the "right" way. To set the stage, many decentralized products incorporate the use of a cryptographic....
A quick scan of any popular cryptocurrency forum will reveal numerous announcements for crowdfunding campaigns intended to support the launch of a new altcoin or decentralized application. In these crowd sales, digital tokens associated with the application (called “appcoins”) are sold to early adopters in an effort to raise capital for the new project. The hope of many who purchase appcoins in a crowd sale is that the price of the coin will go up significantly if the application becomes widely adopted. In response to these crowdfunding campaigns, some have warned that certain appcoins....
You may have missed it in 2016, but initial coin offerings, or ICOs, have become the dominant way to fund new cryptocurrency projects. In an ICO, a project sells part of the total token supply to early adopters in exchange for money with which to progress. ICOs have two primary benefits: they provide funding to the team to see the project through, and incentivize a community to contribute (who gain if the project succeeds and the tokens are worth more than they bought them for). Although 2016 witnessed a high number of ICOs, they are not a new phenomenon and some ICOs from earlier than....
Initial cryptocurrency offerings, or initial coin offerings, (ICOs) are the flavor du jour in the sprawling crypto-tech market. As I've described in previous writings, ICOs represent a fundamental shift in how companies get funded, at least when compared to the traditional venture capital driven methods. What I inferred from that post is that the way forward is a clever combination of both worlds, the old and the new, a point that Zenel Batagelj from ICONOMI picked-up in "ICO 2.0 – what is the ideal ICO?" – a good post that I strongly recommend. For background, I’ve already....
At CoinAgenda, OpenLedger CEO Ronny Boesing said his company is “taking ICOs mainstream” by opening pre-investment to 3 new funding projects, all of which are unrelated to the cryptocurrency market. Three Companies to Draw Attention to Blockchain Through OpenLedger ICOs. Boesing said that the three incoming ICOs will be fore Apptrade, Centz and Beyond the Void, all of which will reportedly attract institutional investors to the ICO funding method. “Apptrade, Centz, and Beyond the Void all show applications of blockchain technology to mainstream audiences,” Boesing said. “By accelerating....