Talk:Initial coin offering

What are ICOs?
ICOs are not necessarily a way to "fund cryptocurrencies" as the article says. They are offerings of non-enforceable virtual shares (the "coin" being "initially offered") of some sort in real-world projects. These shares happen to be cryptocurrencies, and ICOs are best seen as anarchic IPOs. Holders of these virtual shares can eventually be cryptographically targeted for rewards such as dividends, or the reward can be the possession of the share itself, as it can perhaps be consumed by some sort of service being developed, besides being in itself a cryptocurrency that can compete in the crypto-currency market of value storage and transmission. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 179.181.155.46 (talk) 21:24, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Excessive external links
I just removed all of these from the page per WP:ELNO: The ones that constitute WP:RSes should be added back as references as and when they're used - David Gerard (talk) 21:25, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Calendar of Upcoming and Ongoing ICOs
 * Easiest Path to Riches on the Web? An Initial Coin Offering
 * ICO, Explained
 * ICOs: New Model of Blockchain Capitalism
 * Welcome to the Age of ICOs
 * Why Tech Investors Love ICOs—and Lawyers Don’t
 * WTF is an ICO?
 * What Are Initial Coin Offerings (ICO’s)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lksa2014 (talk • contribs) 12:24, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

September 2017
For something so important in investing circles, this page is more like a stub than a point of information. This page is coming to the point where with extra information will need better formatting which I will do if I have a moment. I have added some more information about the Ethereum ICO but more information about the metrics of the Ethereum ICO is needed considering that many ICO's are being conducted within the Ethereum platform.

Also a bit of a rant. At the top of the talk page, it says ICO's are related to Numismatics. ICO's are so unrelated to Numistics. Even though they appear as tokens, it is a form of crowd funding, a medium of organization. Often they represent technology projects itself. Kozan Huseyin (talk) 14:01, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

As a mechanism for scams?
While personally I think he's absolutely right, is Jimmy Wales somehow an authority on cryptocurrencies or scams? If not, I don't see why his opinion merits inclusion rather than any other random person's. Pinkbeast (talk) 10:37, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
 * His experience as an entrepreneur prior to founding Wikipedia was in financial instruments. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:59, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I admit I didn't know that. However, does six years' experience in the field, all of which is prior to the emergence of these particular financial instruments, particularly make him an authority? Pinkbeast (talk) 18:03, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Updating for the decentralized Initial Coin Offering (dICO)
Ronz, to respond to our conversation from your user talk page, I believe that adding in information about the decentralization of the ICO process is relevant to the historical movement of "initial coin offerings." As shown in this Forbes article, the dICO cannot be directly regulated in the old fashion of managing people. A decentralized platform (on which a dICO is launched) does not exist as a single legal entity. It is a collection of users who have nothing that binds them together other than an agreement to use a particular set of code on their computer. Nothing more. Once we add privacy into the picture, using encryption technology, it is nigh impossible for an outside observer to know what specifically is happening. This Forbes article here shows the paradox of the situation: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/12/01/sec-gives-advice-on-icos-but-leaves-questions-unanswered/#62e9be45398e Komodo is relevant to this discussion, as we invented it and were the first to successfully conduct a dICO. We just conducted our second as well. We're only doing small amounts of coins right now, as it is quite complex, but these are fully functioning dICOs. They're not conducted on a testnet.

I can understand that the term may not be popular enough yet to include a direct reference to Komodo. I'll leave that to you to decide for now.

Here is a reference to our announcement on The Merkel, a popular crypto news outlet:

https://themerkle.com/what-is-the-dico-platform/

Our announcement blog post is referenced here:

https://blog.komodoplatform.com/the-decentralized-ico-platform-9a3291b5cfa3

Specific details about how a dICO are conducted can be found in Part II of our whitepaper: https://komodoplatform.com/en/whitepaper

If dICOs do become more popular, we would appreciate it if the Wikipedia article accurately reflects our contribution.

Setting aside matters of Komodo, what I would suggest is putting in a paragraph that states something along these lines:

"While governments have indicated their intention to regulate the ICO process, many questions remain about how they will achieve this. On a decentralized exchange, there is no governing body or user that can be held accountable for those who break regulations. At the Blockchain at Berkeley Conference members of the US SEC board conducted a Q&A panel with the audience. One member asked how the SEC would regulate ICOs that are conducted on a decentralized exchange. When the members of the board remained silent and appeared to be perplexed, the audience broke out in laughter."

And then include the Forbes article for the reference.

(The same one as above: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/12/01/sec-gives-advice-on-icos-but-leaves-questions-unanswered/#7a7e7555398e )

In the rest of the Initial Coin Offering article, I would suggest on mentioning Ethereum in conjunction with its most significant ICO in history, SALT.

This article from the Business Insider shows the largest ICOs in history: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-biggest-ico-fundraises-of-2017-2017-12?r=UK&IR=T/#1-filecoin-257-million-11

I would suggest writing it like this (having removed references elsewhere): "The largest and most successful ICO in history was SALT, a financial-lending blockchain institution built on the Ethereum platform."

And then reference it above. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Siddhartha-Komodo (talk • contribs) 18:41, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Investors or Speculators?
"a quantity of the crowdfunded cryptocurrency is preallocated to investors in the form of 'tokens'" Investing in ICOs is more akin to speculation than investing due to high risk/high reward. Many people use the term investing when what they are really doing is speculating. The article should instead refer to speculators. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maxlysle (talk • contribs) 09:41, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 June 2018
There is a misspelling in source no 6.: Currently it is stated Schuettel, Patrick (2017). The Concise Fintech Compendium... which is WRONG.

CORRECT it should be Schueffel, Patrick (2017). The Concise Fintech Compendium...

Please be so kind and correct that.

Unfortunately even scientific texts have already used this wrong citation. Hegfrler (talk) 04:13, 20 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes check.svg Done. Thanks. Grayfell (talk) 05:17, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

ICO name and concept is probably inspired on IPO (initial public offering), but it's not mentioned in the article
So, I saw this article which concept predates ICO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_public_offering And I thought it maybe should be considered to relate to this.The name is clearly reference to IPO.Santropedro (talk) 02:34, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 February 2019
Section may be added after Regulation section:

Improvements over ICOs:

STO (Security Token Offerings): Security Token Offerings, also called STO is a similar mechnism like ICO which allows users to buy/exchange tokens as a part crowd sale. However, unlike ICO’s; STO’s are the purchage and sale of tangible securities for example assets, profits or revenue share. STO’s are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC). Reference: https://medium.com/menapay/ico-vs-sto-cf1419e54f86

DAICO Decentralized collection of funds, called “DAICO” is a new method for crowd funding. Vitalik Buterin discussed about it in 2018: DAICO involves the collection of the elements of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) and ICOs, in order to reduce the risks associated with the ICOs. Reference: https://coinfunda.com/goodbye-ico-the-daico-era-has-officially-started-ico-vs-daico/ Ankurgupta1985 (talk) 10:44, 13 February 2019 (UTC)


 * medium.com is not a reliable source. it just a host of blog. Some individual blog by notable people may be reliable, but not the site itself. Matthew hk (talk) 11:02, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: Neither source - non-expert blogs without editorial oversight - is a reliable source for encyclopedic information. Please see WP:RS (especially WP:USERG) for more information about reliable sources. GermanJoe (talk) 16:14, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 January 2022
Change "equal to approximately $2.3 million at the time." to "equal to approximately $18.3 million at the time."

If you check reference 11, you'll see that somebody put the incorrect numbers for Ethereum's ICO

. Vincentfredster (talk) 10:58, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ Sentence reworded to remove uncited statement about the first 12 hours of the token sale. SpinningCeres (talk) 01:54, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 September 2022
Delete the Schueffel source. Schueffel is a cryptocurrency shill who has been spamming and off wiki canvassing for this and a couple of other of his own sources on a whole bunch of articles, most inappropriately: FPGA

see this nonsense at https://www.linkedin.com/posts/patrick-schueffel_defi-wikipedia-decentralizedfinance-activity-6949571549871923200-9QQm/?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web with a rebuttal at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Decentralized_finance#edit_war_for_table_in_key_characteristics 2601:204:DC00:C1B0:DD85:2B6E:DE48:4154 (talk) 23:13, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ Yeah, looks like that source is a self-published booklet, doesn't seem a reliable source. JaggedHamster (talk) 09:45, 14 September 2022 (UTC)