Quote from: bathrobehero on October 28, 2016, 11:41:00 PM

The Ethereum and Coke examples along with "following your balls" all points towards that you like gambling.

The "coke investor dude" is billionaire Warren Buffet; and he says:

https://steemit.com/money/@anonymint/speculation-rule-buy-when-others-are-irrationally-pessimistic-cautious

Quote from: bathrobehero on October 28, 2016, 11:41:00 PM

There's nothing wrong with gambling, but gambling in crypto is especially stupid. And you should acknowledge that you're gambling and not making educated decisions (investing).

That's not quite correct. Investing is differentiated from speculation in that you typically are taking in a long-term position in something that is so well understood and calculated (with insurance to handle calamities) that you are virtually assured of a return-on-investment unless some major shift in the industry or failure on the marketing study fails. For example, investing in a fixed interest rate AAA rated bond, or a expansion of a profitable factory.

Speculation is a probabilistic bet based on sufficient knowledge of the potential gain that is very high (e.g. 10 times) and the odds of failure while great are offset (e.g. > 50% chance), and you are so well diversified across numerous speculations, that the failure of the majority (e.g. 80%) of your speculations still results in a huge gain for your speculative positions.

Gambling can be a form of speculation, but for most people this means random trials with no probabilistic calculations (e.g. counting cards¹), and thus it is a guaranteed loss on average. So in that sense you are correct:

Quote from: bathrobehero on October 28, 2016, 11:41:00 PM

In most form of gambling the house has an edge which is acceptable but giving money to a random anon character over the internet in exchange for some magic internet money he created out of thin air and some promises is just on a ridiculous level.

If I were you I'd not waste money on ICOs at the off chance of hitting a goldpot because even if you sometimes get lucky, you're guaranteed to lose money long term (e.g. when variance cathes up with you). You'd probably earn more money grabbing a shovel and just start digging in your backyard trying to find artifacts and whatnot.

With that said if you do want to throw money randomly at the wall and encourage the scammy nature of ICOs, you better be prepared to lose all of it.

¹ James Woods (who confirms in the linked video that he has a 180 Stanford-Binet IQ) explained that poker is the only card game where you can attain any probabilistic advantage.

However not all ICOs have been poor speculations. In fact, one of my angel investors has speculated in various ICOs that have been 10X or higher gains when he held them for up to a year or more. He speculated in nearly every major ICO and/or mined launch including ETH, XMR, IOT, STEEM, and some others that were good payoffs. He has lost money on several as well, such as Skycoin and so far on his investment with me.

I summarized some of the attributes that seem to distinguish successful altcoins from the others:

Quote from: iamnotback on October 27, 2016, 07:26:25 AM

The speculators I know have gained wealth in BTC by buying ICOs and holding for the 10X gain. You've got to select the quality projects that will have follow through, have experienced marketing, and have some whales who are accumulating. @jl777 knows some of these people. Again I can't vouch for the future success of this speculation.

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Note I would prefer if @jl777 had another quality developer on his team. (Edit: I see some other anonymous devs are listed, but afaics we don't know who they are or what work they have done in the past)

Quote from: iamnotback on October 27, 2016, 08:47:45 AM

If the marketcap is small enough in terms of the ICO then one would think it should have very good upside if those other factors are handled well.

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If they do raise all 30,000 BTC that would be sort of high at $20+ million marketcap, given Monero is only at $80 million. Also remember marketcap is always much greater than actual money invested (or extracted) due to the wealth effect, so $20 million seems high to me, but Waves and Lisk apparently raised half that much combined.

I was thinking more of a cap at 10,000 BTC, which I think I mentioned to him. I do think 30,000 BTC raise is too high for my risk/reward preferences.

Quote from: iamnotback on October 28, 2016, 04:33:05 PM

Yet I must agree that the anonymous developer aspect, the lack of a visual team doing promotional videos and a conferences (a la Ethereum) to nourish fanboys, doesn't seem congruent with raising $20 million and driving a $billion market cap.

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I did make one video on Ethereum when I was feeling not so energetic, so you can sort of get a feel for myself as a public speaker but note I was suffering from my illness when I made this:

http://www.coolpage.com/commentary/economic/shelby/Shelby_Ethereum_Paradox.avi (Feb 15 2016)

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So you can sort of visualize the value of having a non-anonymous public speaker on a project. You can contrast my style and appearance to Vitalik:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxk4g2y28Os (video suggestion thanks to r0ach)