Crypto Coin Consultants's video: Will ICOs Bankrupt You 5 Facts About ICOs

ICO & ICO review information on crypto token sales can be tricky! Here's what you need to know about cryptocurrency initial coin offerings. Find out more about the coins/ICOs mentioned in the video here! Datum: https://datum.org/ Universa: https://www.universa.io/ WePower: https://wepower.network/ Gnosis: https://gnosis.pm/ Filecoin: https://filecoin.io/ Storj: https://storj.io/ Omni: http://www.omnicoin.org/ Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. I absolve myself of all responsibility (directly or indirectly) for any damage, loss caused, alleged to be caused by, or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article. As usual, DYOR. ICO is short for initial coin offering. You may also hear it in the crypto world being referred to as a token sale or crowdsale. An ICO is a way for blockchain-based companies to raise public investment funds. Companies looking to issue an IPO are required to create a prospectus (a legal document stating its intent to issue an IPO along with other forms of information so potential investors can make better, more informed decisions). ICOs aren’t required to do that since there’s little (if not, loose) laws regulating them. Instead, crypto-companies running an ICO release whatever they choose to be released in a document called a whitepaper. There are no legal criteria that whitepapers have to abide by. Most legitimate, promising ICOs have extensive, professional whitepapers outlining their business plans & roadmap. The more information they provide in their whitepaper, the more transparent they are with their potential investors, and the more favorable they’ll be in the public’s eye. Take Datum for example. The Datum ICO ran from October 29th, 2017 till November 29th, 2017 and raised over $7,000,000 total! This entire transaction process occurs seamlessly through the use of smart contracts, which I discussed in the video on Ethereum, and payments are made in the form of DAT (Datum’s native token or coin). This entire exchange of DAT tokens for personal data within Datum is just one example of how a cryptocurrency can be used within a blockchain’s ecosystem. Bancor, for example, raised a whopping $152 million in just 3 hours; that’s over $14,000 per second! Brave raised $35 million in 30 seconds, or well over $1,000,000 per second! All you really need to participate is BTC or ETH to be able to buy the coins offered during the ICO. While ICOs remained unregulated for the longest time, governments are now seeing the potential behind cryptocurrencies & how easy it is for anyone & everyone to participate in an ICO. These governments are now trying to step in to regulate. ICO regulations vary from country to country, so you’ll have to do your own research to find out which laws apply to you. In July of 2017, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) said that they’d now have the ability to apply federal security laws to ICOs. The SEC would not classify every single cryptocurrency as a security, but instead would make this determination on a case-by-case basis. Some argue that regulations such as these will help encourage adoption & funding from more mainstream investors. Another significant event in cryptocurrency history was on September 4th, 2017 when the Chinese government announced that all ICOs were banned throughout the entire country. In addition, they demanded that all proceeds raised from ICOs be refunded to investors. But just a week later, a Chinese official stated that the China ICO ban was temporary until more concrete regulatory policies were in place. Cryptocurrencies in general have since made a fast & rapid recovery! Companies--and the progress they’ve made on their roadmaps--vary during their respective ICO process; some already have a minimum viable product being tested while others are still a proof-of-concept. Gnosis, which raised $12 million in 10 minutes to help fund their platform for human & AI-based market prediction applications and there was Filecoin; the largest ICO of the year, which raised $257 million for a blockchain-based platform in which you can rent or lease out digital storage space, similar to Storj, which I briefly talked about in a previous video. WePower is going to be a game-changer in the clean energy industry by tokenizing clean, renewable energy that can be sold to--and used by--customers at discounted rates. Universa is providing a simple protocol for people to create their own apps, blockchains, and smart contracts while also being able to carry out transactions at a fraction of the price of Bitcoin & at a much faster speed. All you basically need to participate in an ICO is either Bitcoin or Ethereum. Another thing you’ll need is an online wallet. I’ll be going over the exact steps of how to buy into an ICO in a future video that I’ll be releasing here on Crypto Coin Consultants very soon!