Nice write up OP, i agree with most points. However, even if there are a few legitimate (and good) ICOs, i think we need to rethink the system as a whole and come up with better solutions to get these worthwhile projects off the ground... The company that solves this will be one of the most important groups in the crypto market.
Agreed.
There are legitimate and good projects. But they're getting drowned out by two factors:
- There are so many crap ICOs that investors probably give up searching for the good ones because they've lost patience or don't have the time.
- Investors are being distracted by ICOs with the most marketing. DomRaider comes to mind. This ICO is going after a tiny market. This market is so small that it is questionable that it can even support a small business. Yet DomRaider was running commercials everywhere, including on a Youtube video I was trying to watch. The uninformed viewer will think that DomRaider is onto something big, but the opposite is true.
If this problem isn't solved, then the following might happen in a few years when investors finally realize that they've lost a lot of money on crap ICOs:
- The crypto space will get a bad reputation as being riddled with scammers and crap.
- With the bad reputation, legitimate and good projects will have a harder time raising money, which means fewer good products.
- ICOs will need to do much more work and spend more to prove that they are legitimate and not crap. Think of how much easier and cheaper it would be to build websites if you didn't have to worry about hackers.
- Governments and regulators are always looking for any excuse to label this space as riddled with money launderers, terrorists and drug dealers. They would love to get more excuses to clamp down on cryptocurrencies and ideally shut them down. Soon they'll have more justification. They can shut down ICOs by saying they're protecting investors. China has done this already. Many other governments will get around to it as well. Yes, investors will be protected, but the good ICOs will be shut down as well.