ICO... The good, the bad and the ugly

Anyone who is remotely familiar with Crypto Currencies will know what is an ICO.

But just to recap, ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering. A quick google search result shows a pretty accurate definition.

"An initial coin offering (ICO) is a means of crowdfunding the release of a new cryptocurrency. ... And unlike an IPO, there is little or no government regulation of an ICO. The first ICO was for Mastercoin in 2013. Ethereum raised money with an ICO in 2014. ICOs are now extremely popular."

So lets dive in to the actual context of this post. People out there think these ICOs are gold mines where they will invest few Ethers or Bitcoins and as soon as the ticker of the coin will hit an exchange they will double or tripple out by shorting the coin.

Am i right or am i right when i say who doesn't like easy money.

The bad

Well wrong, the recent history has shown every major, promising tech tanking as soon as it hits the exchange. The examples are BAT, SNT, BNT to name few.

So what is happening here, People investing into these ICOs blindly, not knowing what the tech offers, what real world problem it is trying to solve. etc. and expect to cash out as soon as it hits the market. This is creating a bubble which is bursting in funny ways...

The Ugly

Today what happened at the ICO of COINDASH, It was horrible. Thousands of people lost their investment due to fear of missing out. Some perpetrator allegedly hacked the site just before the launch of the ICO and replaced the deposit address with an address of their own. People instead of realizing kept sending money and the perpetrator made out with nearly 7 million USD worth of Ether coins. To me that is madness.

The Good

I am not saying that all ICOs are the bad ones. Ether started as an ICO. It took it 3 years to get where it is now. Because there was a strong development team behind it.
A recent ICO, Metal successfully raised the funds and came to exchange and became an instant hit. Because they had a real product with a great team of developer.

Takeaway

My advice to anyone reading this post is to please do not invest blindly and do your research before jumping into something. There are plenty of ways you can research a project and you don't really have to be a brainiac for that. An esteemed member of community who goes by the name @ashr recently wrote a great post highlighting few of the ways you can research a project. The post can be found by click this link. Please have a read.

Stay safe out there.