Topic: Should ICOs without blockchains be removed from Alternate Cryptocurrencies forum (Read 1506 times)

Theymos is based in the US and pays US taxes. Not sure where the forum is actually hosted but that will be irrelevant and the forum will certainly be governed by US law. With that being said, as far as I'm aware there don't seem to have been any issues with the ponzis posted here but I wouldn't be surprised if the forum does catch the eye or wrath of some US authority eventually.

If the operator of this private forum lives in the US, or if the forum/domain is hosted/registered in the US, then think he has every right to protect himself and the forum from falling afoul of US law. This includes taking unilateral action to stop these scamming scumbags, even if that might raise First Amendment issues.

These icos could disappear tomorrow and the ads on this forum would not diminish at all. In fact, if that happened they'd probably bring in much more money than they already do because many of these icos would then bid on slots as they would have no other option to advertise themselves here.


I'm not requesting it I just hope these get rich quick scammers get what they deserve. Most of these icos have little to nothing to do with crypto or at the most are largely worthless or negative to it. Most are just straight up scams which are nothing but get rich quick schemes to make the operators millionaires. And I would seriously  question the intelligence of a lot of the people that invest in some of this crap because I doubt most of them will deliver on their promises.

And this is a private forum so you don't have total liberty. Look at how much liberty users already get and they abuse it on masse. There have been people caught with 200 alt accounts spamming the same reworded crap one after the other and they got paid to do it by these ico idiots  who don't care as long as their advert is getting spammed all over the forum. Dozens of campaigns pop up every month and do exactly the same so that's why you need some rules to play by sometimes and not just let the scammers and greedy capitalists run rife and unregulated.

In fact it does generated a big trafic in term of pageviews, and that make forum ads more and more valuable, with price increasing substantially at each round.


So you are requesting an entity totally unpowerful outside the U.S. to mess in the crypto-sphere just because people are raising money ? Investors are not dumb as some may think here. If they invest it means that they want to do it, and I do not find it too fair to go against the will of the people while Bitcoin was created to promote total liberty, for whatever it is.

Yes it would. We can easily disallow them and trash their threads. And how is the forum financially supported by icos? They pay absolutely nothing to the forum to post or promote themselves here unless they purchase advertising space and most do not. Most just pre mine a load of worthless tokens and dish them out to anybody who can be bothered to sign up and post the most basic of crap or copy and paste somebody else's responses. The level of spam and issues they contribute to the workload of staff is insane and they should be held responsible for that. If they're not just banned outright they should all have to pay something to advertise here because they shouldn't be allowed to advertise for free (which is crazy in itself) and it certainly shouldn't be at the expense of the forum when they do next to nothing about poor posters.


I really hope they legally get shut down if this forum doesn't do something to stop or restrict them because the people who run them are some of the greediest and laziest people I've come across.

Relevant.

Sec rules that token sales / non blockchain ICOs are securities

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/6pj46w/sec_issues_investigative_report_concluding_dao/

For many years member now here are now adept to those scams not only the ICO's but also other ponzis in the physical world because it has almost the the same schemes. Some users may have different perspectives on this ICO's but nothing it could be done to change those. There are many payments for these schemes but it is just the same what ever it is. Schemers could just find new ways and smarter to hide those facts in plane sight.

They don't have to be removed, and shouldn't be removed. But depending on the type of fundraiser, I do believe that there should be different types of forums as well. As is, it's extremely difficult to conduct any market research.

I don't it would be possible to remove ICO's from this forum at all. Bitcointalk is financially supported by ICO's - now we can see ICO advertisements in forum ad spaces. Why they would need to cut off branch on which they are sitting now.
I would agree if ICO's would have their sub-forum, to separate it from usual coins. Because now on Altcoin announcement board we see almost only ICO's.

I would prefer a separate forum for Tokens without their own Blockchain. That would make research a lot easier.

In the long run it would also be great to see more "filters" to better distinguish Token/Coin distributions, such that one could immediately tell if they are buying shares of a company, Tokens that are to be used on a platform, and whatnot.

There's going to be a lot of different models that will need some better form of categorization.

Yes I understand these tokens are issued on the blockchain even though there is no technical or legal way to actually bind "tokens" to those issuing them.  

Like they don't represent shares in a company.  There's no digital or cryptoaphy to enforce this the same way you can know an address is bound to unspent outputs.  It's just some pictures and some dude saying stuff and promising to do things with a token (not a cryptocurrency, not a coin, not an alternate blockchain.)

In other words since ICOs fall outside of the purview of the SEC and development on their offerings have nothing to do with blockchain there's nothing keeping from me from pretending to be Peru farmers, there's nothing to keep real Peru farmers from launching a token claiming they will share profits.  Like none of this has ANYTHING to do with a cryptocurrency.

The link between "well technically this token having nothing to do with cryptocurrency was launched from a blockchain instead of bitmex launching Peruvian Coffee Futures" is as strong as the connection between being able to trade ford stock with bitcoin.

It would be like me going into bitcoin speculation area and demand to pump my pink sheets because "technically there is an exchange that allows me to speculate on stocks with bitcoin".  It would be sheer insanity to allow this.

People pumping shit that has as much to do with blockchains as speculating on Tesla has to do with bitcoin.  Nothing.

Which actually brings me to my next point.  This place is fucking full of scams and everyone knows it.  But from these scams new blockchain ideas arise.  Dash, as shady and terrible it's background is of instamine, changing coin release amounts, master node ponzi scheme.  It brought us masternodes and on chain governance.  

The 70% premine from bytecoin brought us a fully functional and working ring signature code that was forked to something that is likely the best privacy you can find in crypto.

My point being that as long as the scams and the discussions are about blockchains it can lead to the evolution of the crypto market.  We pay a goddamned high price in reputation points by eating noobs alive and spitting them out penniless to make whoever is best at being shady rich as fuck.  And it's not like its a state secret.

Why in the world should we allow those who do nothing with blockchains spend reputation capital for their scams, clog up the forum and do absolutely nothing to contribute towards the evolution of cryptocurrency?  It defies forum definitions, is off topic, does nothing to advance crypto ecosystem or technology.

I get your point. The coffee production thing is interesting, because the way you pointed out, this is not at all a blockchain and thus is off-topic, as you pointed it out. However, if we consider this shares in the production facility are registered on the blockchain, I think there is some place for it here. Blockchain is not just altcoins, it can be much more. I think the topic is more on this evolution than something else.

I'll go with a sub forum option in my opinion as cryptocurrencies evolve we find new spaces are required for different topics and areas, since the original section would get clogged up and it points out to reason to create another subsection addressing the issue that clogs up that space.
Without a blockchain does sounds MLM.

Yeah what this guy says is key.

The forums have never been about trying to filter scams because the mods can't deal with the sheer quantity and even more importantly the definition of "scam" is not definable.  Some people say Ethereum was a scam.  Some people say Dash was a scam.  Some people have said litecoin is a scam.

I am saying it doesn't matter if it's a scam or not.  If it has NOTHING to do with a blockchain but is just a commodified issued token it is a very clear line to draw in the sand to get rid of a lot of this shit that literally has 0 to do with blockchains.

It's like going to a Ford Stock Ticker forum and pushing bitcoin.  It's off topic and doesn't belong in an "alternate BLOCKCHAIN" forum.  If someone is raising money with a presale to launch alternate blockchain #491 that is mined by killing puppies and uploading videos to youtube then I think it's fine.  If they are a token launching "a 20% share in a coffee production business in Peru" without their own blockchain  then by forum definition it is off topic and should be treated as such.

If there was a "General investment forum" for people wanting to invest/gamble their bitcoin in non blockchain ventures then I think that would be on topic.  Or just ban this non cryptocurrency shit all together.  Either is fine.

The OP has been specific as to what ICO he is talking about which he stated that those "without blockchains" be banned. In the case of general point of view regarding ICOs, they do bring value in fostering Bitcoin's economy but not as a competitor rather a way to be used to earn bitcoins which I feel no need to enumerate what those are.

So what you are exactly talking about, is it ICO in general or an ICO in specific which the OP mentioned? If ICO in specific like OP mentioned then I agree but if you are talking about ICO in general then no.

Regarding ICO in general, how can we know that they will fail if they are not given the chance to be realized but also we need to filter out those who are real, those who are used to scam, and those who are pointless.

I don't see why ICOs are allowed here almost at all. What value do they bring to anyone here really, especially when they don't even have a blockchain or a coin ready.

I understand the value of ideas, but when 98% of them fail or become worth almost nothing, should we really allow them? I also understand the freedom of it, if we banned it it would be censorship.

I don't know how to feel about t honestly.

I am most concerned about the forum advertising for these ICOs as I think this has the most potential to land the forum in hot water.

In RE: the OP/topic, I understand that most of the ICOs use the etherum blockchain to transfer ownership between users, so they belong in the altcoin section as much as any other similar token would.

At worst, they could be moved to another forum if they dominate the subforum too much (a la Investor-based Games).

They are based on cryptocurrencies to some degree, and even if they are not actual cryptocurrencies they seem to be of interest to forum members.

Ethereum is in fact not a standard crypto-currency but rather the fuel of a platform but isn't it an altcoin ? The tokens run on the blockchain, they are just using another established one, and thus they are crypto-currencies. Anything that is a crypto-currency and not Bitcoin is an altcoin, so it has its place there.

I think it's possible the SEC looks at this mess and has decided morons who think government regulators are the ultimate scum of the earth giving their money away to scammers the SEC normally prosecutes is good PR for them.