I'm going to mine Ethereum. I might even go VPS and mine the shit out of Ethereum in the beginning.
Exactly. I plan on investing in this IPO, but at this point it looks like it's going to be a very small amount just for this reason. If I can mine
the same or greater on a set of VPSes for less than the IPO price, then mining is clearly the way to go.
But, after the recent bout of scam coins (e.g. VisaCoin and Neon), I'm out on giving money to strangers. The BTC-based IPO hopefuls need to know that the capital well here has been poisoned. They need to get more creative about how they want to launch.
Giving away money for an IPO is risky, and the higher the total amounts given to a group the more people may perceive it as being unfair.
This is something I noticed about Counterparty and their Proof-of-Burn distribution model: PoB is a cognitive hack. It short-circuits people's sense of fairness.
The Counterparty Project has two Bitcoin addresses set up: one for donations, and one for Proof-of-Burn. The donation address, which benefits the development of Counterparty, has received nearly no funding. The Proof-of-Burn address has received nearly one million US dollars worth of Bitcoin so far, and the burn period is still on-going.
It's crazy!
(Not that crazy is necessarily bad. I admit I've done three burns for XCP myself.)