Megaphone
Then came ICOs.
A techie has an idea but no money to do
it. He writes a White Paper (a condensed
version of a prospectus almost without
Premises
risk factors), prepares a nice funky websi-
te and group some friends and family to
raise between 200 to 500,000 Dollars and
then start a marketing campaign where he
asks various categories of people to invest
in the next ‘Bitcoin’!
He promises to use their money and do
No matter how big you are or even how some wonderful technical feat that ne-
rich you are, doing an IPO is very costly eds consensus and that is decentralized
– only for compliance, you must spend at and based on the blockchain (the magic
least 250,000 USD per year with at least words).
one full-time employee devoted to that
task. In other words: give me your money and
This does not take into consideration then in one to two years time if all goes
all other factors pertaining to the size of well I will perform! Believe in me… Many
your company and to the recorded sales of them raised Millions upon millions of
accompanied by insured audits made by Dollars from investors who did not want
a select few groups of auditors that will to miss out on the next ‘Bitcoin’ and inve-
charge you a lot for their services. These sted small amounts of money just to see.
tenuous requirements that came into for- Once the funds were raised the y sudden-
ce after 9/11, Enron and all the other ensu- ly realized that they did not owe anything
ing scandals leading to the 2008 collapse to anybody as the funds were paid in ETH
were designed to protect investors’ funds and BTC to private and anonymous crypto
so that never again the same things could accounts. Many of them decided to move
happen! to the Bahamas and to Rio…