You may have noticed increasing coverage of Initial Coin Offerings (ICO ) in the press recently. You may not, however, be totally clear what an ICO is.
The easiest way to explain it is that its a type of crowdfunding that has grown out of the current growth in popularity of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
https://www.selachii.co.uk/Blog/What-is-an-ico-and-should-i-get-involved.htmlNot sure about this. Satoshi only intended for people to mine Bitcoins, not sure what these other cryptos are thinking and why they are doing ICO's.
Not cool!
Well it's pretty obvious really. People have an idea for a new coin and they want others to participate. It also contributes to decentralisation of the new coin from the crowd funding and it's always useful to have a high supply of the coin at the start to prevent high inflation.
Plus there are the ICOs that are just for people to buy into the coins cheap and dump them as soon as they get on an exchange, which is plenty of them to be honest.