What's the point of IPO? If people are actually interested in investing this coin, they can rent rigs to mine it or buy it on the exchanges.
IPOs only helps the dev team get more BTC, in additional to premine.
You're wrong, i have invested in several IPOs, most of them with good returns, even with very good returns. Rent a rig is more expensive then joining a IPO.
Why? There are several reasons:
1. What if there were problems and they have to re-launch the coin? Money gone!!!
2. Everybody rent a rig in the beginning and you will only be able to mine a few coins, so a lot of money spend on rig for a few coins, BAD investmen.
3. IPO is not only good for small people like me , that don't have mining power but want to own a coin and to not spend thousands of dollars on electricity or on rigs.
4. IPO is good for dev team to use it in supporting the coin. Like marketing, a lot of those big twitter followers like Thisweekcoin etc are asking a nice amount of money to promote your coin. With that IPO money they can for example promote the coin.
5. A lot of exchanges want some BTCs to get it listed, when you look at the voting system of mintpal then it already cost you 15BTC to get listed!!! And believe me the coins selected by mintpal theirself were already bought by theirself and dumped on their own exchange. I cannot verify this, but i won't be surprised, why are all those coins that hit mintpal dropping? ...
6. I love IPO IF, AND ONLY IF, DEV is staying around and use a partial of it to promote the coin. I don't mind that he use some for personal expenses etc.