HN Explorer

Ask HN: Are any of you exploiting the ICO hype?

19 points by Young_God ↗ HN
There are so many ICO's in cryptoworld right now. Someone even started an ICO for a "useless coin" and collected something like $60k.

So, I was wondering, if HNers are taking advantage of that, either by conducting their own ICO or by providing some services around it?

What do you think about this hype? Is it worth doing business in that area?

13 comments

[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 49.2 ms ] thread
thecupisblue
99% of ICO's are scams and bullshit. Get your money if you have an ICO idea, otherwise don't "invest" in them.
Rmilb
But you can still sell the shovels for the ICO gold rush.
thecupisblue
Don't forget to prepare pitchforks for after the gold crash ;)
galantbutterfly
We found out that ambisafe, tokenmarket and the like receive a huge amount of requests for handling ICOs, but they also charge a vast amount of money.

So, we started working on our own smartcontract and ICO platform. You can give it a try already at https://crowdsale.express/ but it's working on the testnet. We will activate livenet soon and are eager to hear your feedback.

geoah
I'm not sure why this is getting down voted, it directly answers the op's question.
Rjevski
My biggest problem is that there's no way to guarantee value of your "tokens" if the product you're delivering is not also built on the Ethereum blockchain.

For example I plan on launching a mobile network - I guess I could make an ICO and whoever owns a token is entitled to X amount of data traffic. Nothing prevents me from saying one day "I changed my mind - your tokens are worthless", so that's why I don't see it ever working.

hashbangladesh
It seems like if you're fast and have good marketing, it's a great way to make some money.

I'm kind of surprised it's not getting regulated as a security.

wcummings
Anyone itt committing financial crimes?
tyingq
The https://uetoken.com example does show there's room to play in this space without deception or crime :)

$67k for probably a week of effort.

avaer
Right now ICO combines the legitimacy of seeming like an IPO with the security of code written by strangers on the internet, the virality of Twitter rants, the promises of a budget spent producing concept videos, and the value of snake oil.

Almost none of these ICOs are founded on a concrete product that exists. That's a shame because there is the germ of a good idea here, but it's mostly being exploited by opportunism.

Some will walk away with fortunes, but it won't be the people buying.

And even though I lean pretty far to the libertarian side, I think this space needs some serious regulation to protect people from themselves.

Arubis
If I not only don't understand something, but also believe that the people flogging that thing don't understand it, I'm certainly not touching it myself. So, no, skipping ICOs, thanks.

Exploiting the hype, on the other hand, I am entirely comfortable with.

I've flipped a few GPUs on eBay and easily doubled my money, and am currently trying to do the same with a small number of hardware wallets. Further, I'm holding a couple hundred bucks each of ZEC and ETH in anticipation of volatility, potentially from the shakeout of current BTC movement, from ETH moving to Proof of Stake, or from just the nature of these (currently, albeit not by intent) all being speculated investments that I'd be willing to go long on--so if I miss a spike, I'm comfortable waiting a year or two.

What a weird space.