What is the Cryptocurrency World About?

This article is written by Nardine B. M’barek, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.

Our dear guest, Mike Butcher, is the Editor-at-large of TechCrunch 1 . He is a writer, an editor, moderator, and columnist when it comes to technology, and lately, he has been writing about Blockchain and Crypto.

Mike’s speech was mainly about ICOs and VCs. Now, for you who do not know what ICOs are; they are called the “Initial Coin Offering”, it is basically a non-regulated fundraising mechanism, when you can buy into a platform using cryptocurrencies like an Ethereum or the ether, as Mike stated, it is like an IPO 2 in some sorts, but it’s on the blockchain. Mike talked about the slight issue that is arising right now, it is that ICOs are being split into private and public ICOs. Private ICOs are mainly when you
go to a selected number of people, and give them a better price than the public ones, just because they are important investors.

Some people could start thinking that this new method could be the future. Getting rid of angel investors, and joining the ICOs’ wave in order to raise money from all over the world just within few clicks. That however would only be a good idea if all people, absolutely all people around the world are using Cryptocurrency, and could invest in a company, this could really make anyone a millionaire.

However, as much as that idea seems interesting and acceptable to the mind, it is not that easy to accomplish. Cryptocurrency only exist when there is hard work. For new startups who want to build up a technology platform, work is very much needed.

Mike further explained what ICOs are, he described them as being what we call equity through coin offerings, or even smart contracts with or without a tradable token. Now, a token is what you get when you participate in an ICO. It is basically like buying into an API key, and cryptocurrency being the coin token sales that allows you to access into the platform, because you are buying their tokens in the platform.

All this process is made swift, automatic, and more efficient through token sales or swaps.

https://vimeo.com/240818637