When we started working on our ICO we had to consider if we should offer discounts, which a lot of ICO's do. We came to the conclusion that discounts and bonuses are a thin line away from fraud. In fact, projects offering volume bonuses are probably all scams, projects with massive discounts are not as easy to classify. I dont expect this to be a popular statement, but there is something really wrong with ICO's these days, they are getting more and more desparate.
I will break this down into the two main concernes:
Early supporters receive a discounts, so they clearly see this as what it is, a discount.
The majority of the supporters come later, and get no discounts. They received a penalty.
What business would penalize their biggest contributor? No real business for sure.
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You have a project, its worth xx ETH/BTC/USD - whatever you used as a valuation model.
Then you decide that the first day it is worth 50% less of what you originally mean its worth.
The next day it is worth 30% less.
Then 20% less.
You get the idea
But the reality in the real world is the other way around. For some strange and unknown reason your project went up significantly in value from day one to day two. The same happened the next day, and the next day. For no reason your project are being prices higher and higher, the idea is the same, you havent launched any business during these days. In fact, you havent written a single line of code, and your project is going up in value. Why? Because there are no discount models in normal markets, you set a valuation on a business, this does not change from one day to another when there is no trading. A stock market on the other hand will vary in price from one day to another, the same goes for crypto exchanges. But no business, or project, can set a variable valuation. The world does not work this way.
The sad reality is that discounts and bonuses will probably be one of the reasons ICO's will become heavly regulated, and it will happen a lot sooner than we think. So the greed and close to fraud alike ways some of these ICO's raise money will eventually kill this marketplace. I cannot be the only one who see this?
I wrote a article on this, if you are interested:
https://medium.com/@mogico/why-ico-bonuses-and-discounts-have-a-negative-effect-on-the-ico-market-7b6324545c77