> Eventually someone will realize that the smarter move is to create sustainable value over time.

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.

One promising example is SpankChain. It's a cryptocurrency specifically designed for the porn market.

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 argue that if you have to dip down to the level of porn just to find some value, ICOs are worth dismissing

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.

Contrary to popular belief, porn was available on Betamax...

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 it is just payments, why have a special cryptocurrency? Or does it do something more clever?

A good question. And the answer is a bit surprising: community.

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.

Assuming I'm someone who wants to spend money on adult entertainment, why would I want to use a coin specifically for that as opposed to a general purpose coin? Same for someone who works in adult entertainment; why would I want a coin who's only use is to pay for porn?

Does it actually solve the problem or just move it by one step/layer? Payment processors are already blocking cryptocurrency exchanges since best way to use stolen credit card is to buy cryptocurrency.

Why not use another, more liquid cryptocurrency like BTC or ETH then?

You’re just moving the problem though. The sites won’t get chargebacks, the groups selling the coin to consumers will.

Buy it with another crypto currency? Problem moves one step down the road again.

> Traditionally, it's hard to make money in porn due to fraud and chargebacks.

Is that so?

Tell me more...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432801 was what got me thinking along these lines. If CCBill has a stranglehold on the porn payment processing industry, crypto is a natural threat to them. And that implies crypto has real power to shake up old models.

why would a company trying to build a product be a greater fool example? you mean all startups that fail at very high rates are also that?

> why would a company trying to build a product be a greater fool example?

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.

The market for lemons argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons) suggests this is not true. When a sufficiently large percentage of the market is fraudulent (and in the ICO space it's damn close to 100%), buyers will demand a price premium to compensate for their risk to the point where honest actors can't participate profitably. That isn't happening yet because we're still in the tulip mania phase, but eventually people will want such high returns for the absurd amount of risk in the crypto space that no one will bother.