What are cryptocurrency ICOs?

Cryptocurrency ICOs are the global business finance revolution that uses the power of blockchain technology. Thanks to these, it is possible to obtain the financing to make big projects come true, quickly and easily. But ICOs are much more than financing, that's why we invite you to know everything you need to know about this powerful tool.

IIt seems that a group of people could finance an initiative, but all of them being linked (financially or by decision) to said initiative, this is possible thanks to cryptocurrency ICOs. An ICO is an instrument that makes all this and more possible without the usual administrative and legal bureaucracy that traditional financing channels entail.

In this new and complete chapter we delve into the world of cryptocurrency ICOs. This is a new type of crowdfunding that goes hand in hand with the Blockchain technology. An option that is revolutionizing the entire planet and the world of cryptocurrencies with benefits greater than 50.000% in some cryptocurrency ICOs.

The financial revolution that has come almost without realizing it

An ICO (whose initials stand for "Initial Coin Offering", in English: "Initial Coin Offering") seeks the financing of an initiative by issuing a currency on Blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies. These cryptocurrencies, like the other existing ones, can be freely exchanged. It can also be freely bought and sold. And it is the market (people) that sets its price based on supply and demand. This allows that, if you buy at one price and sell at a higher one, you can generate benefits.

But to understand cryptocurrency ICOs in depth, as in everything, we must start at the beginning. And here, the principle means understanding traditional financing and then describing it in detail: What is an ICO?. Including their advantages, examples, precautions and everything you need to know about them. In order to know in depth this revolution in the world of cryptocurrencies.

Let's talk about Financing 1.0

Any initiative, if it wants to be put into practice, requires a series of economic resources. Making something come true is always subject to a series of expenses, be they major or minor. Traditionally, in the absence of personal resources, these expenses have been financed in one of these three ways (or a combination of them):

• Sale of shares.
• Debt (Loans).
• Grant.

However, these options require bureaucracy and enormous costs. They are quite archaic options, which limit creativity and leave everything in the hands of a few "financial dictators". In the end, it is they who have the decision of whether the project is bankable and what is not. But let's take a closer look at all of this:

Financing for the sale of shares

Financing through the sale of shares is one of the most used traditional options. either way private (with family, friends or professional investors) or through a offer act via IPO (in Spanish OPV, public sale offer). In this option, whoever wants to start an initiative could get other people to buy part of their company through the actions.

In the Wikipedia offer us the following concept:

A public sale offer (OPV), is an operation that is carried out through the stock market, by means of which a bidder puts up for sale some financial asset of a company or society.

Thus a company can take out, for example, 1.000 shares that will be bought at the initial moment at a price. With this, the company has financed itself by selling those thousand shares. These shares represent a share of the company and therefore of its profits. If the company is doing well and making more money, its shares will typically go up in price over time. In this way the shares generate dividends, that is, the company periodically gives part of its profits to whoever owns its shares.

For these two reasons there will be people interested in buying the shares at a higher price than the starting price. Subsequently, whoever has purchased any of these shares may exchange them for money to other interested buyers. You will have benefits if in this exchange you sell at a price higher than the purchase price.

Debt financing

This type of financing consists of to ask for a money loan. Loans can be requested from anyone who can lend you money: individuals or companies, financial entities and even government institutions, among others. The most common scheme is the following: They lend you an X amount of money to pay it back in Y years paying Z% interest. That interest is the benefit that the lender takes.

This form of financing allows you not to give shares in your company at that time. With this, financing was obtained that will allow you to develop your product to revalue the company. In other words, revalue all the shares.

Subsidies

Grants can go associated or not with a loan. They are often issued by government agencies and are not subject to a refund. In a grant, you do not hand over any shares of your company.

The Financing 2.0 Revolution

However, one of the main problems for companies when it comes to going public is the enormous demands they have to meet. That is why a few years ago a new form appeared popularly known as through crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding is a way of getting money (or sometimes other resources) through a network of people. A window of time is defined (normally a month) and in this period is when the money would be collected. This money should be used to finance the project, however nothing guarantees that it will be. There are more and more websites dedicated to crowdfunding. This is because the Internet allows people around the world to finance a project if they are interested.

Despite having many types of crowdfunding (donations, rewards, actions, loans, royalties ...) it is normal that, due to bureaucracy and costs, investments are treated simply as donations in the hope of receiving some discount, recognition or gift from another type.

Funding 3.0: Welcome to ICOs

Despite being called the same way, an ICO has nothing to do with ICO grants that occur in Spain from the government to entrepreneurs and companies. This is just a pure coincidence. An ICO is in the blockchain world, raising financing through the sale of a cryptocurrency. The name comes from Initial Coin Offering u Initial coin offering.

ICOs democratize the funding of ideas. This by allowing anyone on the planet to finance an idea in a matter of seconds. As a result, the person get a digital asset comfortable to manage and emphasizing the idea of ​​a global world without borders. an ICO does not mean create a cryptocurrency Nor does it mean to pre-order or issue it and it does not mean to create a Smart Contract or colored coin either. All this is indifferent and may or may not have lived with an ICO.

An ICO is the process by which a cryptocurrency is distributed (usually charged) at an early stage of development of something. Said cryptocurrency may be used in the project, and with this, the objective of financing said development is achieved.

Such has been the explosion of cryptocurrency ICOs and other blockchain projects, that the investment raised by their companies exceeds the traditional investment raised from all startups.

The birth of cryptocurrency ICOs

Since the birth of Bitcoin, many cryptocurrencies have been appearing (currently there are tens of thousands). But the way in which they have appeared varies markedly from one to the other.

Generally speaking, from 2009 (Bitcoin's year of operation) to 2014, it was normal for new cryptocurrencies to be based on an algorithm-linked issue. For example, the algorithm PoW (Proof of Work) o PoS (Proof of Stake). At this point, PoW is the most normal being the format used by Bitcoin and by practically the majority of cryptocurrencies that exist.

The cryptocurrencies based on PoW / PoS allow a democratic way of distribution of the total of the cryptocurrencies that were mined and appear during the distribution period. Regardless of the pros and cons of each algorithm, the reality is that in these algorithms no central entity issues the new coins, if not that they are mined. This thanks to a program with clear rules for everyone, which allows coins to be mined, not issued, and have to compete for it.

But that was going to change, albeit gradually. In 2013, the first initiatives appeared that, before releasing the cryptocurrency software, its promoters / developers mined it in advance in private. One way to finance yourself afterwards. They became known as pre mined coins.

In this model, they kept a part of the coins for later. In this way, once the currency was quoted, they could sell them and recover their previous investment and, at times, get rich. These types of practices were associated with strong criticism from the community. This was because they were associated with unfair models based on disadvantaged environments.

In 2014 appeared Ethereum And they were not only going to redefine blockchain technology, but also traditional financing.

Ethereum did the following: they mined the coin in advance. This is because the project would not be put into operation until a little over 1 year later. Instead of saving them, they put these coins up for sale so that they could finance the subsequent work. Although they were not the first to try to sell their cryptocurrencies, one of the first cryptocurrency ICOs had just been born. With this action Ethereum was able to raise close to $ 19 million in bitcoins.

In those years, new cryptocurrencies went from being cryptocurrencies with competition-based generation, to coins with a model where the promoters of a project sold cryptocurrencies that they had mined with advantage, before anyone could compete with them.

ICO explosion

But a new change came. In 2015, Ethereum released its functional software at the RED blockchain act. Hand in hand with Ethereum came the Smart Contracts and cryptocurrency ICOs would go on to become the fashion of the blockchain world. Ichomania was born.

Ethereum's Smart Contracts, or colored coins over Bitcoin, have allowed the creation of new cryptocurrencies over existing cryptocurrencies. That is, on blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum, new currencies could be created. To do this, all the infrastructure, security, transparency, speed, and privacy of the new currencies are delegated to these networks.

Thanks to this, it was not necessary to create a new cryptocurrency with its nodes., blockchain, miners. The truth is that these new cryptocurrencies worked on an existing chain with all that solved. They also allowed someone to issue all the millions of cryptocurrencies they wanted in a second. All this at the click of a button, without long periods of pre-finishing.

With this model dozens and even hundreds of cryptocurrency ICOs would be born in a few years.

After the launch of Ethereum it has been very normal to see cryptocurrency ICOs for the pre-sale of tokens that work on Smart Contracts. This with the aim of generating transparency and automation to the process.

Cryptoactive consolidation

Until 2014 almost all the cryptocurrencies that appeared were currencies that tried to emulate Bitcoin or provided a major change at the protocol level. Nobody thought about creating a new cryptocurrency so that its only use would be to be the payment method on a website or application, in a very limited environment.

But cryptocurrency ICO revolution changed everything. Now cryptocurrencies were created for anything. This made it clearer than ever that cryptocurrencies could be treated as digital assets. That is to say, to be cryptoactive: Tokens that they represented a value and that it could flow at the speed of light with the security and ease of a cryptocurrency.

We were observing in first person, in a clear way, the birth and welcoming the Internet of Value. With this type of tokens, any idea could use this technique to finance themselves comfortably. All this offering, for example, a token that would allow you a certain service in the future application of the idea in question, for example.

The use cases that this technique has taken are varied and creativity does not stop. With these ingredients, it is encouraged that, similar to the actions, the more demanded the service to which this new cryptocurrency is linked or the better characteristics the cryptocurrency has, its price could rise due to demand.

As we have explained in the chapter dedicated to Smart Contracts, with a Smart Contract they can to interact people, client, But also others smart contracts, or even machines. And cryptocurrency ICOs are created on the basis of Smart Contracts.

You have already thought about it, right? The machines could even launch cryptocurrency ICOs that other machines finance. These scenarios are possible, and will probably be normal in no time.

How ICOs work in cryptocurrencies

As we have seen, anyone can create a cryptocurrency ICO. A certain number of tokens are issued and they are all or partially put up for sale.

ICOs often have a few minimum and maximum collection. For example, in the case of the minimum, if the minimum money to be raised by the ICO is not reached on a certain date, the ICO is canceled and the money returns to its investors. These conditions, if they exist, will be reflected in the smart contract in the form of a code.

If the ICO is successful, the money will, in theory, be used to develop the associated project. And investors will expect its execution to be positive, and attract more people who want to buy such tokens. With this, the value of the tokens will rise due to their limited condition and a model based on supply and demand.

In addition, proof-of-stake (PoS)-based ICOs can periodically give a small percentage of cryptocurrency to investors who have them.

Difference with actions

As we will see in the corresponding section, the main difference right now is at the legal level, but apart from that there are other important differences:

• FOR participate in the IPO it is required by governments to be a billionaire (it is usually required to have more than $100.000.000) with which very few people can participate in IPOs (although once they have gone public anyone can buy these shares). On the other hand, in a cryptocurrency ICO, there is usually no minimum amount. And if there is, it is rare that this is more than €100.
• Another difference is in terms of the economic health of the company: For a company to take shares, it must be audited and meet the criteria requested by its government, which will normally be quite high. On the other hand, any company or ordinary citizen can participate in a cryptocurrency ICO. Which is good for the person carrying out the ICO but dangerous for investors if the person carrying out the ICO has an idea that they are not going to know how to develop or simply if the person carrying it out does so with the aim of defrauding.
• Related to this last point is the support what do the investors. A government will somewhat support investors who buy shares but not those who participate in a cryptocurrency ICO.
• And finally there is the recognition of what is bought by the governments. The shares are recognized as a privately owned financial product, currently cryptocurrencies are not in most countries, so if cryptocurrencies are stolen from us it will be more difficult to take legal action.

Launching an ICO

Let's imagine that you are a company (or an individual) that you have an idea in mind that you think can be beneficial and useful to the world, but you need a lot of money to develop it.

What can you do?. With the Blockchain technology could you open a way of financing. Here we explain very superficially how to do it:

1. Creation of a Whitepaper: the document that explains in detail what you want to do. Enough to capture interest and be convincing.
2. You put together a team to carry the idea forward.
3. Create a prototype.
4. Create page website explanatory.
5. you do a lot promotion and hype, buying the opinion of influencers.
6. Schedule a Smart Contract that manages the token. Better if you use a standard ERC20 which will facilitate integration with exchange houses.
7. You open the ICO: You sell the tokens based on certain previously defined and disclosed conditions.

Scams in cryptocurrency ICOs

But all that glitters is not gold, and even less in ICOs. It could seem that by operating on a transparent and revolutionary technology such as blockchain, ICOs are free from scams. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let's be real, ICOs if they are full of something they are scoundrels, there are them everywhere.

Despite the fact that technology allows to give many guarantees, the ignorance of investors makes them enter into anything that claims to be called ICO, that they offer a token deal or that they put the word Blockchain among neon lights.

And it is that, in the face of the fast money fever, many scammers take advantage of it daily. On the other hand, the general media and pseudo-experts or insiders abound, so for normal people it is difficult to reach the pure sources of information to document.

How to avoid an ICO scam using cryptocurrencies?

Do you want to invest in any cryptocurrency ?. Well great. But by far, VERY careful, today more than ever.

There is a fever surrounding cryptocurrency ICOs, and the "bad guys" know it. It is the perfect recipe. While at first only people with high knowledge and study ability participated in ICOs, choosing projects with value very well, now ICOs are people who, sometimes, literally do not even know how to turn on a computer.

Despite these and a dozen other tricks, there is no magic recipe that prevents us from getting rid of 100% of any scam in the world of cryptocurrency ICOs, just being smart. We must be very cautious and critical when giving our money to other people.

Next we leave you the Bit2Me list of top tips you should follow and that they will greatly reduce the percentage that you can fall for a scam disguised in ICO:

• Don't be naive. The main and most important.
• Analyze the white paper of the project.  This is where the objectives and steps to follow of the project are explained in detail along with the technical solution.
• As a general rule, question all projects from the first to the last letter. Don't believe absolutely nothing. Analyze every detail of the whitepaper very well. If you do not understand the whitepaper, it is better not to invest, since there are those who take advantage of the technical opinion to make the scam more credible.
• We must study the team behind the initiative. Search your profile (on LinkedIn for example) compare your experience experience. But watch out, a profile can be falsified very easily, anyone can say that he has worked at NASA, for example. So be very careful and check everything from multiple sources. If an ICO doesn't have a visible team run off the web.
• You have to see who is going to guard (escrow) the portfolio where the funds are deposited. If behind her we do not find anyone real, badly we are going…
• It should be explained (usually in the white paper) how the funds will be managed during the project.
• It also helps a lot find reputable companies after the project (Microsoft, NTT Data, etc.).
• EYE with cryptocurrency Telegram groups, summary websites, Facebook pages, pseudo specialists. Remember that everything can be bought and your administrators can make it seem impartial.

Unfortunately, the world of cryptocurrencies has become a point of attraction for scammers, scoundrels, quacks and pseudo experts who will do their best to take advantage of you. You will have to be very attentive.

Newly, stay tuned everywhere. Do not trust the opinion of a single unknown person. Contrast the opinions/recommendations as much as possible, but above all, educate yourself and create your own opinion.

We're sorry to be heavy, but that's how it is, You will find everything!. In ICOs you enter the wild west, and for the most part, like most ICOs, they will either be a scam or try to condition you to do something that only benefits them.

Many applications are born or redefined by saying that they are now blockchain companies just because they add a token to their application, an application that no one previously used, and they take advantage of the wave to finance themselves with naive investors.

Does it look bad? The reality is that yes. Let's be honest, there are real barbarities, and the main culprit, hard as it sounds, is the investor, for being fooled.

There are already many ICOs that have disappeared overnight, without a trace, after raising the money.

Even really famous ICOs such as tezos, who raised more than $230 million, and are currently embroiled in multiple scandals and countless lawsuits from investors wanting their money back.

As always, it is not the technology, but the evil and irresponsible use that is made of it. However, in all this chaos of blockchain ICOs, only one technology can solve it: Blockchain.

Misuse of funds

Remember that Blockchain technology provides transparency and immutable environments to prevent fraud. In his theory he seeks to solve just what ends up happening in the current practice of ICOs on Blockchain. What happens then?

As we have said, no matter the precautions you take, it is very likely that, if you try your luck in the world of ICOs, one day you will fall for a scam. Maybe the project was already clear that it was not going to do anything with that money, just keep it, but it did great marketing. Perhaps along the way they decided that they no longer wanted to continue with the project, they saw some basic error, ... whatever.

In that case, what happens to the investors' money? Unfortunately, in most cases, it is simply lost.

ICO with Escrow

A first attempt to solve the previous problem was the Escrow. An Escrow is a figure that can be made up of one or more people. They exist in the traditional world, and also in cryptocurrencies. These people, in theory impartial, mediate between multiple parties storing assets in exchange for a commission.

I knowscrows in ICOs control a multisignature address (Bitcoin or Ethereum generally), which is the one that has all the funds received in an ICO.

As we have explained in detail in the article dedicated to multi-signature addressesThis type of management requires that, to spend the funds totally or partially, a minimum of X of the Y persons who control the management must agree. The values ​​of X and Y are values ​​that are publicly known and can be verified.

They are usually chosen people not directly linked to the project, with a minimum of public recognition, with an impartial role, which should guarantee the proper use of funds.

Again, this brings a very different reality to that described in the theory. Many escrow, due to bribes or real ties to the final money, decide to authorize the release of the funds for no purpose other than to get rich.

These situations have made banks even want to offer themselves as intermediaries, as custodians. This is the case of Globex Bank, which is developing the ICO-hub system, to safeguard the accounts of ICOs.

By intermediating in the process, they are allowed to send the money to the creator of the ICO progressively, as it progresses, in order that if it later goes wrong or it is a scam, what has not yet been used can be returned to the investors.

WE KNOW. Something archaic. Something from the analog world, not very in tune with Blockchain technology.

With escrows, the control and decision is not up to the investors themselves. Besides Blockchain technology can provide more security and transparency, you just have to implement it correctly.

Financing 4.0: DAICO

Welcome to the new revolution. Finally something smarter.

Own Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, moved and disappointed by this type of perversions of financing through Blockchain technology, has been motivated to design an improved version of the ICOs, the DAICOs. Vitalik incorporated this concept in January 2018.

A DAICO is the merger of a DAO and an ICO.

The DAO is the acronym for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. In essence, it is a Smart Contract that defines through an immutable and transparent program the interaction between a group of entities and the internal management of one or more assets in a collaborative way.

DAICOs take the role of escrow to a new level, eliminating the possibility of corruption with complete loss of funds, with the Smart Contract blocking the funds until the investors themselves authorize their spending.

In other words, with DAICOs all investors act as escrow.

In this way, and unlike an ICO, financing would be blocked in a smart contract, being the investors who during the development of the project will be able to democratically release the funds based on the past results of the project and its future proposals.

In essence, if the holders of the tokens do not agree with the development of the project associated with the ICO, they will be able to vote to have the funds returned to them.

This means that they are funds governed by the investors themselves. A process that ensures investors the correct use of funds.

This creates a fair ecosystem of two-way incentives, since the development team behind the ICO is motivated to periodically publish improvements to the product so that investors can evaluate it. While investors are encouraged to continue unlocking phases of the initial financing so that the project evolves and that the currency they bought continues to rise in value. As long as they consider that it is worth continuing to finance the initiative, the funds will be released within the established deadlines.

But be careful! A DAICO also has its potential problems:

1. Mistakes: If a DAICO has been poorly programmed it could end in "tragedy". For this reason, a very important field of specialization in Smart Contracts opens up.
2. Handling: If developers have a large chunk of tokens distributed, they only need to influence a small percentage of taxpayers to influence their vote and get more funds released from the smart contract.
3. Low involvement: If the participants consider that they do not influence the direction of the project, it could generate detachment from the voting process, thus generating a chain of non-participation, reaching the point that the project does not unblock the funds despite normal operation and compliance.

Whether or not this initiative will become common practice remains to be seen. Perhaps the DAICOs are only the intermediate step of an even better proposal. At the moment the breeding ground for new improvements does not stop.

Finance open software and not a company

Despite the absolute freedom and radical change that has given the way cryptocurrency generation works, from mined to pre-mined to “spontaneous generation”, not everyone is happy about the applied model.

Many believe that some models are not democratic, since repeatedly these cryptocurrencies are created to be used in a private company or private software where what ends up rising in value and generating dividends are the shares of the company and not the cryptocurrency.

There are those who defend that if these tokens worked on open protocols that everyone can take advantage of, there would be no scenarios where the company only seeks to enrich itself by issuing a token, and this would focus on creating real usability that makes the cryptocurrency rise in value because the protocol , open source, could be reused by any company.

Difference between token and cryptocurrency

At this point we can see the main nuance between traditional cryptocurrency and token (the cryptocurrencies born in ICO).

We know, there is a fine line of separation between the words token and cryptocurrency.

Essentially tokens and cryptocurrencies are similar. Both can be treated as representation of assets, they operate through cryptography on blockchain technology, they can be freely exchanged and thus quote with a price based on supply and demand, and even the name is very similar, since a cryptocurrency can also be understood as a token (an "token" in English).

Therefore, if at any time the line should be delimited to differentiate them, it is possibly in the form of generating:

• The tokens are issued. Like the Euro.
• Cryptocurrencies do not have an issuer, they are generated based on the competition defined by a protocol.

Legislation and taxation

Although it depends a lot on the country (and because of how new this technology is) something seems to be common in regards to ICOs.

logically there is two parts for regulation, from the point of view of the one who participates in the ICO and, on the other hand, the one who carries it out.

Remember that, both for offering shares (buying and selling them) or receiving money through crowdfunding, the gobierno wants his part:

• When a company makes a OPV and takes shares, this company will have to declare them and you will pay tax in your country.
• When you buy/sell shares, profits are taxed in your country of residence.
• With crowdfunding at the beginning there was a kind of legal vacuum and it seemed that you did not have to pay taxes, but soon they took action on the matter so that each company that resides in Spain and receives financing (even if it is foreign) must pay the porcentaje that corresponds to revenue authorities.

But what about ICOs? Behind many of them there are no companies, but a group of people from whom sometimes nothing is known. Investors can be anonymous, individual or group, and they can even be machines.

Furthermore, these types of operations are not currently regulated by governments. This causes them to lose control of the money, stop collecting taxes for these movements of money and on top of this this money could be used for criminal activities. For these reasons, a country can announce at any time that it temporarily or permanently prohibits ICOs (as has already happened, for example, in China).

In the near future a a large number of countries are going to start legislating ICOs, and it will be important to see the direction that is taken globally. In powers like Japan o Canada ICOs will foreseeably end up being very similar for tax purposes to IPOs (sale of shares).

Special mention should be made of Gibraltar, a country that wants to position itself as a kind of tax haven for ICOs. Gibraltar is trying to be the first in the world to generate very favorable legislation for ICOs.

Security token and Utility token

It should be noted that, depending on the usefulness of the cryptocurrency, the regulation applied will be different.

Because tokens are issued, the regulation can classify them differently than cryptocurrencies and, in turn, depending on the use of the token, they can be classified into two categories:

• security-token: They are those that would closely resemble stocks, that is, they generate dividends.
• Utility token: Those that are treated like gasoline for a specific use case to work.

This is best seen with a couple of examples.

Security token: ICO of a bar

Imagines you want to set up a bar, and that you want to finance this bar through an ICO, making it known that the benefits of the bar will be distributed among the token holders.

In this case, the token is a security token, and the regulation seems to want to go in one direction: among other things, all investors should be correctly identified.

Unfortunately, identifying the investor means add bureaucracy, technical complexity and data management as well as remove privacy, something that is a huge barrier to innovation.

On the other hand, not to add it, and in view of a tokenized future, the palpable reality of the constant, and simple, risk of money laundering will be increasingly normal.

Utility token: ICO of a video game

In this other example, let's imagine that we want to make a video game and that we are going to launch an ICO to develop it. We can explain to investors that the token will be used to buy weapons in the game, that is, the internal currency of the game, since it will only be used for this.

In this case what we have created is a utility token.

In the utility tokens, the regulation does not seem to want to force its issuers to so many requirements.

Be that as it may, both end in the same thing: having certain cryptocurrencies with a certain value set by the market of supply and demand.

That is why in Bit2Me we defend that, if some type of regulation has to be applied, how these tokens can be quoted and exchanged for money in exchange houses, end up applying the regulation in the exchange houses as Bit2Me before in entrepreneurs. launching an ICO, because that would block humanity's innovation.

Most popular ICOs

The number of ICOs is growing in an amazing way. Every day new projects and companies seek to finance themselves through this tool.

But let's look at some of the most famous ICOs.

Ethereum

Date: 2014
Raised: $ 17 Million.
Description: Smart contracts evolved. It has a strong development team behind it.

Filecoin

Date: 2017
Raised: $ 257 Million.
Description: Seeks to develop a decentralized storage protocol.

NEO

Date: 2016
Raised: $ 50 Million.
Description: Implements P2P networks, digital certificates, interoperability between chains, transaction between different technologies and execution of smart contracts.

Bancor

Date: 2017
Raised: $ 150 Million.
Description: Allows anyone to create their own digital token and enable it without the need for third parties through smart contracts.

tezos

Date: 2017
Raised: $ 237 Million.
Description: Decentralized platform that is governed using a true digital community.

Polkadot

Date: 2017
Raised: $ 140 Million.
Description: Technology developed by former members of Ethereum and that seeks to create an information exchange protocol between the different blockchains that exist.

Links of interest

If you are interested in seeing that ICOs are running, or have been made, a good place to start are some of the websites that list them.

Remember: do not pay attention to what these websites may say or recommend, always take it as a source to complement your research. Many times they receive money for promoting and speaking well of a certain ICO.

• https://tokenmarket.net: One of the most complete websites that collect and update information from the different ICOs. We can see ICOs that are in process, that are about to arrive or that have passed.
• https://www.smithandcrown.com: They carry out research and analysis of each cryptocurrency and ICOs. They are usually good studies carried out exhaustively.
• https://www.icocountdown.com: They show a list of 'reliable' ICOs, when some of them do not fit for some reason, they do not show it, explaining the reasons.
• https://www.icoalert.com: Alerts and reports, although the reports are paid, the ones that are free are interesting.

None of these websites, of the dozens that exist, list all the ICOs that exist, they decide which ones to list.

Conclusion

Now you know what ICOs are, their origin and evolution as well as how to be beware of scams and how the DAICO can represent a before and after in the collective.

With all this we strongly encourage you to go in search of projects interesting. Never value a project by profitability, because it is something very very difficult to predict. Rather do it because you see and understand that the project is creating something that you are passionate about.

And last but not least, investing in an ICO is almost always synonymous with wasting money: if after a full test en detail you dare to take the step with someone, NEVER put more money than you can afford to write off.