With nearly half a million views, my article Seven Lies Bitcoin Fans Tell Themselves (And Anyone Else Who Will Listen clearly touched a nerve.
Today, however, the fervor has moved on. Bitcoin still has its fans, of course, but this year the excitement is centering on Initial Coin Offerings, or ICOs.
With an ICO, a startup uses blockchain technology to issue ‘cryptotokens’ which represent something of value, typically products or services the company (or someone else) will deliver in the future. Investors snap up these tokens at a discount, hoping to cash in by selling them or perhaps using them at a later point in time. The money the ICO collects then goes to fund the company.
In spite of the term’s similarity to IPO, or initial public offering, ICOs more closely resemble obtaining venture capital or angel investment, as ICOs solicit funds from all manner of individuals and venture funds directly.
However, in spite of the pandemonium around ICOs – or perhaps in part because of it – there are many hard truths about ICOs that their fans would rather not believe. Here are my top seven.
Read the entire article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2018/06/29/seven-lies-ico-fans-tell-themselves-and-anyone-else-who-will-listen/.
Intellyx publishes the Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster, advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives, and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. The author does not own, nor does he intend to own, any cryptocurrency or other cryptotokens, or any interest in any ICOs. Image credit: Erich Ferdinand.
