The biggest issue for me is that while there are plenty of problems with the extant VC model, it breaks fundraising into a number of discrete checkpoints. At each checkpoint, you must justify your valuation to a progressively more informed and sophisticated investor who has to put their money where their mouth is. This process is repeated until your business is able to list publicly and provide liquidity for the founders and employees. The incentive structure is for you to build a <i>business</i> and grow that business over time - and hence the intrinsic value of the equity.<p>IxO tokens are totally different. By providing liquidity on day one (before you have <i>anything</i>) and opening it up to anyone of any level of sophistication is an abject disaster. These tokens aren't linked to equity, they aren't linked to business value, they don't provide voting rights. They're just fun little tokens.<p>Once you do this the token <i>is</i> the product.<p>The founders, employees, investors all get their liquidity on day one (and even with vesting schedules on tokens, VCs have been selling their interest in their un-vested stakes). There's no incentive to build a business. The only incentive that exists is to pump the token at all costs. Your only incentive is to build a "community" and "enthusiasm" and spend your entire budget on marketing. Anything you spend building a business is a complete waste and sets you at a disadvantage relative to your peers.<p>It's been almost 14 years and to date not a single business built around tokens has actually become successful. Not a <i>single</i> one in 14 years even though if you ask any crypto advocate, they've got a list as long as your arm of industries ripe for disruption.<p>I posit this is because the incentive structure doesn't exist.<p>There's nothing new here, either. These are simply the blue sky securities that were outlawed when the SEC came into existence following the Great Depression. [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_sky_law" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_sky_law</a>
No. And they shouldn't.<p>The article basically boils down to "people <i>believe</i> in the scam so founders should embrace it because it'll make them rich".<p>Which is hardly a new phenomena but... come on. Let's at least pretend to care about ethics, eh?
(mostly paywalled?)<p>The important difference is that equity provides actual legal rights. Tokens do not.<p>Before making an investment, always ask basic questions like "who are these people I'm giving my money to", "what jurisdiction are they in", and "what recourse do I have if they've lied to me"?
What a paywall! Article really gets going and then cuts off paragraphs in. Had me hooked.<p>Is the idea you all are subscribers or are we all just commenting on the beginning? The first few paragraphs were just lead in.