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Comment by booleandilemma | Hacker News Reader

My parents know about bitcoin, so as far as I'm concerned digital coins are already mainstream.

I'm still waiting for them to ask me what an ICO is.

What is an ICO?

(I'm only being half-serious. But it's amusing that there isn't a consistent definition. It's basically "you can buy an asset I created out of thin air that may or may not have any utility.")

I have a theory that once you can define ICOs, they will cease to exist in their current form. If the layman buying ICOs for their speculative value understands the asset they're buying, they might not want to buy it anymore.

I have another theory, that this has already happened.

I see what you did there. ;-)

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2397-there-is-a-theory-whic...

Don't be so sure. The penny stock market is alive and well. People love to gamble.

I have another theory, ICOs will evolve with public due diligence, real products instead of whitepapers, etc. In this way, companies and people from developing countries and below could raise money faster and with less friction. I am not saying that scams will be surpressed but interesting projects will find a better destiny.

An ICO is the process of providing liquidity to early coin miners and investors.

Projects are issuing tokens to raise funds (ICO ~= IPO). They are of two types:

1) Protocol coins (coins that have some value within the project / product) and

2) Asset coins (coins that can be thought of as shares in a company).

Protocol coins are being positioned as presold revenue and need not necessarily conform with securities laws. Most ICOs are trying to position their coins as kickstarter-type "token gifts" (e.g. T-shirts)

Asset coins on the other hand, come under the purview of securities laws and act

People are buying these coins because of FOMO. Large majority of these projects having ICOs are scams - not too different from the dot-com bubble. Eventually, some good ideas are going to come out of these projects.

Pretty good summary:

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/initial-coin-offering-ic...

My dad has Bitcoin and sends me Cryptocurrency articles.

My girlfriends father was an investment banker during the 80s and is long on gold. Every time I see him he asks me about Bitcoin.

Note: I am not a crypto expert.

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