Ethereum Q&A: ICOs and financial regulation [TIOM2-21]

Are ICOs disruptive, democratic venture capital? Or bubbles fueling greed? Obviously, both. We're re-defining entrepreneurial capitalism, corporations, securities, fundraising, stock markets - everything financial and the regulatory system around it. There is a certain contingent that is looking at ICOs and revealing their very statist, traditional ideas. The SEC, securities law, and restrictions on initial public offerings came out of an initial environment that was a crazy bubble, but that kind of regulation is the old way of dealing with things. This ICO bubble will have negative consequences and people will malinvest. It's still created an opportunity to do something never done before: bridge the big gap between early-stage organic financing and stock market public offerings, for companies to fundraise from a completely globalised audience. What can we do with programmable money that's decentralised, re-imagines funding and escrow structures, with protections driven by crowdsourcing? If the crowd is funding, the crowd should be vetting. Banking is not the primary incumbent being disrupted, it is regulators and the institutional, centralised regulatory environment as well. In the meantime, I will not be investing in 99.999% of these ICOs because I don't invest in minimally viable whitepapers.

This is part of a talk which took place on June 6th 2017 at a joint meet-up with Blockchain Professionals, BitcoinSYD and SydEthereum in Sydney, Australia: https://antonopoulos.com/event/blockchain-professionals-sydney/

RELATED:
Initial coin offerings (ICOs) - https://youtu.be/Q5R8KuxV4A0
The token ICO explosion - https://youtu.be/vdaW8NtJXuQ
Altcoins and the scaling debate - https://youtu.be/slbpdW-H3yk
Irreversibility and consumer protection - https://youtu.be/R107YWu5XzU
TheDao: Why failure is necessary for learning - https://youtu.be/2KZTx8IYc9s
Programmable Money, Smart Contracts and DAOs - https://youtu.be/_0jxX84mzts
The Killer App: Engineering the Properties of Money - https://youtu.be/MxIrc1rxhyI
Blockchain vs. Bullshit: Thoughts on the Future of Money - https://archive.org/details/TheInternetOfMoney-Volume2/2-03-BlockchainVsBullshit_ThoughtsOnTheFutureOfMoney.mp3
Bitcoin, Payment Security, and Consumer Protection - https://youtu.be/qMkGfB8X58o
The separation of money and state - https://archive.org/details/TheInternetOfMoney-Volume2/2-18-BitcoinQA_SeparationOfMoneyAndState.mp3
How to get people to care about security - https://youtu.be/Ji1lS9NMz1E

ABOUT
Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most well-known and well-respected figures in bitcoin.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonop https://twitter.com/aantonop
Website: https://antonopoulos.com/

He is the author of two books: “Mastering Bitcoin,” published by O’Reilly Media and considered the best technical guide to bitcoin; “The Internet of Money,” a book about why bitcoin matters.

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Read more:
“Mastering Bitcoin” - https://www.bitcoinbook.info/
“The Internet of Money” - https://theinternetofmoney.info/

Originally published as a YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plu_WX3Gs8E&list=PLPQwGV1aLnTu0KFDbHk4AUiiyce0xLX7p&index=21