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General Discussion / Re: PSA: Be weary of investing in decentralized exchange UIAs
« on: December 09, 2015, 12:34:05 am »This will likely be an unpopular opinion, but I feel I must speak up. The way I see it, the operators are trying to cash in immediately and shift most of the risks of their businesses to those who buy their UIA. If they think their businesses will be wildly successful, then it makes little sense to me as to why they would try to sell so much equity this early in the game. Take a look at the list of cryptocurrency exchanges and notice how many of them have little to no volume. I gave the same warning to the Nxt community when they were largely investing in many UIAs immediately following the creation of their UIA exchange. I think a majority of them wish they would of taken my advice. You have been warned. I don't mean to ruffle any feathers and mean no offence to those who are selling these assets, as you guys likely do not have any bad intentions in offering these sales.
*promptly looks for an underground bunker to hide in for eternity*
From what I've seen on BitcoinTalk, ICOs (basically the same as UIAs) have been around for a few years now, and aren't anything new. Rule of thumb, is most ICOs are scams. It's however not always that it was intended to be a scam, but just the person couldn't deliver (and then decided they were going to make no effort to reimburse investors). For example, NXT was an ICO.
The reason to however have an ICO can be justified. If the developer(s) intends to work full-time on the project, they have no source of income until the project comes to frutation. Not everyone is in a position where they can go months (or however long the project would take before ROI) without any pay, so sacrifices need to be made, and thus crowdfunding is born.
It's important to note, not all ICOs/UIAs are the equivalent to equity.