
South Korea bans raising money through initial coin offerings - omarchowdhury
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-bitcoin/south-korea-bans-raising-money-through-initial-coin-offerings-idUSKCN1C408N
======
subroutine
ICO investments are inherently flawed. I simply do not understand why anyone
would throw significant money at a startup without them providing legal equity
in their company. Sure, the value of their coin may rise for a while, but if
they are successful enough, some of them will get acquired by a large
corporation with no interest in their cryptocurrency; and they may even get
absorbed into an existing product of the corp. This would leave a coin on the
market with the name of a company that doesn't even exist.

~~~
mathgenius
It's musical chairs: just don't be the last one standing when the music stops.

~~~
sschueller
Like regular startup investments theses days... I don't want the be the one
holding Uber stock after IPO.

~~~
charlesdm
That would be your pension fund, said bag holder.

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simonh
The whole ICO gold rush really looks like a crazy bubble. Accepting for the
moment that crypto currencies can have a viable place in the finance system,
how many of these do we need? What differential value do these new crypto
coins offer that Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Etherium or the other existing coins don’t
already provide? Honest question, the articles I can find on this don’t really
answer this.

~~~
slyfocks
In some cases, they actually contribute a novel feature (e.g. Monero adding
features that enhance privacy).

In most cases (all but a handful), they add nothing.

It’s a money grab—so much so, that a somewhat self-aware crypto enthusiast
created a parody coin, Useless Ethereum Token, whose sole feature was that it
had none. It raised $40k in 3 days and was, at its peak, worth $160k, which is
a pretty lofty valuation for a joke.

~~~
corford
See also the Fuck Token ([http://www.fucktoken.io](http://www.fucktoken.io)),
which raised over $30K in 30 minutes :)

~~~
bhaak
Hey, FUCK at least has a real use case.

Making it possible to give a fuck or give no fuck digitally.

That's what the world has waited for!

/shill mode off

~~~
Semaphor
I tend to say I can't give a FUCK because I don't have any FUCK left to give.
So just by existing they already enriched my life, a truly glorious token.

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mhluongo
Banned raising money through ICOs for _securities_. It looks like they're
taking a more even-handed approach than the article maintains.

The r/ethereum post has link to translated announcements, etc [0].

[0] -
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/734qv4/south_kore...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/734qv4/south_korea_banning_icos/)

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hendzen
The citizens of South Korea love to trade financial instruments. The KOSPI 200
index future used to be the most liquid equity index future in the world -
mostly fueled by Korean retail traders [0]. Eventually, then, as now, the
government had to step in to prevent things from getting too out of hand.

[0] -
[https://www.ft.com/content/231fa13a-e4f4-11de-817b-00144feab...](https://www.ft.com/content/231fa13a-e4f4-11de-817b-00144feab49a).

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seanalltogether
Off topic, does everyone who used to have an MT Gox account get spammed with
ICO crap almost daily? Losing money on their exchange was bad enough, but now
getting spammed constantly is salt in the wound.

~~~
LeoPanthera
Never used mtgox, still get ico spam daily. It's useful, though. Anything I
receive any notable amount of spam advertising is very likely to be some kind
of scam.

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milansuk
You don't need ICO. Bitcoin started from scratch and it's still #1! Crypto
currency is software which is very cheap to make and distribute(compare to
hardware). Also the most of internet startups get seed money under $200K, so I
don't understand why are ICO's designed for $1M and more?

~~~
jiggunjer
Bitcoin had an ICO...

~~~
kwikiel
Ethereum had an ICO, first bitcoins were aquired in mining, there was no
ICO/premine

~~~
jiggunjer
There was a guy who went around offering bitcoins for real cash. How is that
not an ICO ;)

~~~
LeoPanthera
You can't just make stuff up. The history of bitcoin is well documented.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bitcoin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bitcoin)

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nadam
The amount of misinformation in this topic is frightening. Guys, most of the
serious cryptotokens are about making some markets more efficient, eliminating
lots of middlemen. I have no time to go into details, but some coins I am
currently invested in:

iExec BAT DASH Factom

These (and some others) are serious projects with huge potentials. I am not
only speaking about huge investment potentials. I am speaking about potentials
to add value to society, make markets more efficient. 99% of the tokens out
there are crap, but why is it important? 99% of startups are also crap, but
nobody cares.

I am also very sad that most people here are against making the investment
landscape more meritocrtic than it is currently with all the privileged VCs,
angles and lawyers born into lucky countires.

~~~
wils1245
There's also lots of hype from people reassuring everyone that the coins they
just happen to have invested in are rock solid, with nothing to back their
arguments up.

~~~
nadam
In my opinion none of the coins I mentioned is rock solid, but I have
researched lots of coins, and currently these are the ones which I find most
valuable compared to market cap. 3 years ago I made a very good bet with
Ripple (almost exclusively invested in Ripple for 3 years, and achieved more
than 30x returns), now we will see.

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throw2016
Crypto has unleashed an epidemic of greed. Only people with a feeble
understanding of the world, economics and finance will seriously engage with
the idea one can make money out of thin air, wasting electricity.

The only way crypto gains value in the world we live in is if established
interests decide to support it, at which it point it perpetuates entrenched
interests and is subsumed into the whole.

So bitcoin is not going to disrupt anything. And all the 'revolutionaries' and
'liberatarians' who spend hours sitting idly in front of their PCs mining and
then let loose periodic outbursts on 'freedom' and 'innovation', will happily
cash out to the devil himself quietly burying their incredible claims.

~~~
julian_1
> Only people with a feeble understanding of the world, economics and finance
> will seriously engage with the idea one can make money out of thin air,

You don't need an econ degree, to understand fiat money multipliers but it
helps,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier)

> wasting electricity

Is it fair to cite this as a blanket criticism, given the number of projects
seriously looking at non POW consensus?

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jondubois
One possible loophole: You can give away all your tokens for free... So if you
want to get your new coin into circulation, you can donate some to open source
projects or charities.

~~~
jiggunjer
So an upvote doesn't give karma, but karmacoin™

~~~
tolas
Yep. See Steemit.

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KasianFranks
Time to buy - "Japan's FSA Gives Official Endorsement to 11 Cryptocurrency
Exchanges"
[https://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2017-09-29/j...](https://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2017-09-29/japans-
fsa-approves-11-companies-as-operators-of-crypto-currency-exchanges)

------
thisisit
Australian Securities and Investment Commission has done a good job how and
when ICOs should be used:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15357549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15357549)

~~~
CamelCaseName
I love that their acronym is ASIC.

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EternalData
I wonder whether Trump's SEC will consider doing the same -- so far, they've
been very lax in terms of enforcement (for better or for worse).

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I_am_someone
I have a feeling this is going to start happening more and more. The golden
age of the ICO's was over a few months ago before everyone and their dog
started one.

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amalgan
This shouldn't come as a surprise. Early this month SK announced they would be
banning them.

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aptituder
It seems like every time we get some good upward movement, some sort of stupid
fud hits again.

~~~
WWKong
FUD? You want the general population to gamble away their life savings in what
effectively are some shiny slides? Completely unregulated? Would you like to
invest in this bridge I have here for you? Hey, you want to get in now before
everyone wants in and the prices go 10x.

