They get money, no accountability, and everyone just moves on.
No wonder crypto-currencies enjoy such a positive image among the ‘haters’ and ‘doubters’. Because they keep earning it.
Most ICO's - if not all of them - are powered by the greater fool theory, sustainable value isn't really on the table.
I see value in the blockchain and some in BTC (but not as much as others apparently do), but the whole ICO concept seems to be just a way to transfer wealth from greedy suckers to even greedier suckers.
Traditionally, it's hard to make money in porn due to fraud and chargebacks. Most payment processors also won't touch you. But crypto has no chargebacks, so it's a natural fit.
One could argue that if you have to dip down to the level of porn just to find some value, ICOs are worth dismissing. But I would say that it's a decent example of the future potential.
One could also argue that when porn starts adopting a technology, you should adopt it too because that tech is what is going to win.
Porn has consistently chosen the winners and any tech that discourages or disallows porn's involvement loses.
More to the point is there any evidence of the mainstream porn user actually adopting SpankChain (or any of the other supposed "blockchains for porn") as opposed to ICO profiteers adopting pornography as a relatively plausible potential future business model to sell unnecessary tokens at an implausibly high value?
Just had a look at the company page of the service. The CEO is a "decentralization laser gun" who boasts about how much money he raised in other ICOs (hmmm...) as well as his favourite computer games. In lieu of an actual testimonial, we get him in blockquote saying "we've honestly got the best team ever". Apparently this is one of the more promising ICOs and yet it's making me feel the SEC parody ICO site was a bit mild...
If you search for spankchain, you'll likely end up on their discord. There are friendly people to help answer your questions and set you up.
It's the same advantage YC has: by being a meta-layer, you end up attracting everyone who's trying to do anything in the space, rather than one specific aspect. Eventually, the network effects are most of the value.
Buy it with another crypto currency? Problem moves one step down the road again.
Is that so?
Tell me more...
I think you sort of missed the point.
> you mean all startups that fail at very high rates are also that?
No, I did not mean that.
It is important to remember that what we are seeing is a v1 of the ICO model - it is likely that future versions will be able to implement more controls and governance mechanisms like the kind you described.
These "entrepreneurs" are just raising as much as they can. And because there is so much dumb money in crypto, they raise a lot.
They don't actually want any pre-order tokens that entitle them to 2 GB of storage on a distributed crypto-file-system, or whatever the ICO promises.
Think ticket scalping, except that the tickets are for a concert that may or may not happen. (Because the band hasn't actually written any songs, found a drummer, rehearsed anything, rented a venue, or even bought any instruments.)