A Brief Introduction to Token Sales – A blog by Vinny Lingham

Firstly, you have to ask yourself, what is your token good for and why will people buy it?

Secondly, you have to design your token in such a way that it makes sense to prospective users, and be as clear as you can when you describe the terms and functionality in connection with the sale of the tokens. A token sale is essentially the same as a crypto currency — e.g., Bitcoin or Ether — but the distinct difference is that you’re not offering a crypto coin that is mined with consensus rules, instead you’re offering a token, for example Civic (CVC), which might have a special purpose (smart contracting, etc). Tokens are typically not mined — they merely sit on top of the crypto platform they are issued upon.

Source: A Brief Introduction to Token Sales – A blog by Vinny Lingham

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Utility Coins or Crypto Assets? Token Terminology Is One Big Gray Area | CoinDesk

“The majority of ICOs that are happening now are in fact securities and should follow the standard process for securities offerings. They are fooling naive investors into believing that they are buying a piece of decentralized infrastructure when, in fact, they are only buying the promises of the management team.”

Source: Utility Coins or Crypto Assets? Token Terminology Is One Big Gray Area | CoinDesk

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ICOs: 10 things that cool me off | Hacker Noon

… most projects are about deep tech but very rarely address the business aspects: how they will grow their audience and adoption, how the token will gain in value beyond the speculative activity of a token once listed in an exchange. I want to know if the company has the ability to build a real business and not just a great tech. You can find this answer also in the profile of the team, if they have a good track record or deep expertise in the domain they are addressing. But in my experience this topic is just simply too many times ignored. And for a reason: it is REALLY hard and difficult to get something marketed right.

Bottom line: Blockchain is supposed to disrupt the way Trust is built. If you can’t send positive signals of trust during your ICO process who will trust you for your mission

Source: ICOs: 10 things that cool me off | Hacker Noon

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How Will The Blockchain Change Venture Capital Investing?

A few months later into 2017 came a very informative article from Richard Kastelein going into detail on why VCs should care about initial coin offerings. Although it raised several important points, two jumped out at me: 1) ICOs could mean the liquidation of a significant portion of venture capital investing allowing for the democratisation of the space in a way that equity crowdfunding hasn’t quite done so yet, and 2) the return on investment is significantly higher. Hence, if adopted en masse, swathes of

Personally, I think that the intersection of VC and blockchain technology will result in the coming-of-age of liquid equity-style crowdfunding for blockchain innovations at the protocol level — this is being kicked off by projects like Ethereum, Tezos, Cosmos and Filecoin amongst others, and funds like Polychain. I’m completely sold on the idea that altcoins are here to stay and VC needs to get ready for it, but it’s important to remember that despite all the hype there is still a lot of noise around these tokens and many people still don’t understand what they are, how they work and why they have intrinsic value.

Source: How Will The Blockchain Change Venture Capital Investing?

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Congressional Candidate Accepts Bitcoin Donations for 2018 Election Cycle | Bitcoin News

The US Federal Elections Commission (FEC) gave approval for political candidates to accept bitcoin back in 2014. According to the rules, this is a kind of “in-kind” donation, and each donor has a $100 cap on what they can provide. Once the candidate accepts it, they have 10 days to sale the bitcoin and place the returns into their campaign fund. An official document went into more detail:

Source: Congressional Candidate Accepts Bitcoin Donations for 2018 Election Cycle | Bitcoin News

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Estonia could offer ‘estcoins’ to e-residents – e-Residency Blog | Medium

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has a keen interest in Estonia’s development as a digital nation and has provided valuable feedback for the estcoin proposal.

He believes estcoins could be used to incentivise investors to support the success of a country in a way that is not currently possible through existing means of raising international finance.
“An ICO within the e-Residency ecosystem would create a strong incentive alignment between e-residents and this fund, and beyond the economic aspect makes the e-residents feel like more of a community since there are more things they can do together,” says Buterin.

“Additionally if these estcoins are issued on top of a blockchain (they could possibly be issued in multiple formats at the same time, nothing wrong with this) then it would become easy and convenient to use them inside of smart contracts and other applications.”

Source: Estonia could offer ‘estcoins’ to e-residents – e-Residency Blog | Medium

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