ICO or IPO?

Hi. It’s been a little while since I posted here and a lot has gone on in the world of crypto$.

Also, there have been a lot of things going around in my head which I wanted to try to put together in some coherent form without sounding (too much) like a gibbering idiot.

I watched an entertaining conspiracy documentary called “97% owned” a few years back and until I came across this Bank Of England report (Money creation in the modern economy) l didn’t believe the fundamental premise of the “fountain pen” money outlined in the film that wrote the cheque that paid for the 2009 financial crisis; the crisis which spurred the birth of bitcoin!

Another point that I took away from this film was that, as a civilisation, we had to get back to a world where currency was backed by something of value, and that in an ideal world this thing of value would actually benefit mankind. I think a form of currency backed by investment in the production of green energy was given as an example.

So, in the past, I have been critical of fiat money because I don’t subscribe to the “confidence” (in the government that issues it) model of valuing a currency and because quantitative easing doesn’t pass my smell test as a financial panacea.

However, upon reflection, I think that my view of the confidence element of fiat (but not QE!) is a little harsh. This is because a fiat currency is in fact backed, albeit indirectly, by something of value; in the form of the natural resources of a country that support its’ economy. For example, iron ore (Australia) and oil (Russia, America).

I also believe that bitcoin is failing as a currency and is (therefore) a poor investment. In my opinion its only value lies in it being a successful currency.

On the other hand I believe that ether (https://www.ethereum.org/) and miota (http://iota.org/) have an underlying value in the form of their respective networks, tech and aspirations (distributed apps and the internet of things).

Both these networks were financed by initial coin offerings (“ICO’s″). Subsequently, ICO’s have been popping up all over the place.

I’m not a great advocate of ICOs as I think that a lot of people will get their fingers burnt. But one notable success, for an example, is binance.com, which has bootstrapped itself into one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges within the last 6 months by ICO.

This sounds a lot like an initial public offering (“IPO”) on a stock market to me.

Which brings me full circle!

Earlier this month I sent a cheeky email to the executive vice chairman of a private limited company in which I wanted to invest. This is because I believe that the product/tech that this company is developing has a huge positive investment potential and will also save mankind!

Unfortunately, the minimum investment was out of my league and the company wants to raise a significant investment before its IPO.

I told the executive vice chairman that the company should consider issuing its own ICO backed by the vision and IP of its world changing technology and aspirations.

This would enable his company to bootstrap the development of its tech in a much shorter timescale and save humanity at the same time!

…. more than simply inserting “Blockchain” into the company’s name.

I don’t believe he thought I was serious.