BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: liondani on March 25, 2016, 12:39:18 pm
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3. Crowdsales Allow Unethical Behavior
It is, in fact, immoral to sell dreams.
Why? Because humans have a “wishful thinking bias”. This means that we are more likely to believe a false thing, if that false thing is a dream. Therefore, all dream-sellers have the ability to deceive (“steal money from”) the credulous.
You see, while people should be able to invest in whatever they want, others should also be able to openly criticize bad investment-choices. Unfortunately, silence is often interpreted as implicit endorsement, and so this criticism is simply too rare (because criticism makes one unpopular). With a few notable exceptions (all of which are devoutly informal, and non-startup), most people are too selfish and/or afraid to do anywhere-near the right thing.
So, crowdsales allow predators to get away with the crime of selling a dream.
had a very interesting reading here... http://bitcoinhivemind.com/blog/crowdsales/
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Would you have considered the AGS sale a crowdsale?
I understand to a degree your concern of selling a dream.. but I like to get a more defined sense for what you are referring to exactly.
Is your issue with sales that have no defined terms to what is being sold?
Is your issue to it being done by individuals instead of real registered corporate entities?
Just trying to better understand the point you are making.
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That looks equally applicable to everything that is sold on the market, not only to crowdsales. Everyone should be free to invest in whatever they want, however, that comes with responsibility as well, everyone should do his own due diligence and no one is forcing them to participate. It's just like everything in life. Being able to participate in everything isn't an excuse not to take responsibility for your actions.
Following that same line of thought, gambling should be illegal. That argument doesn't make sense to me.
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It is not crowdsales which is bad, it is crappy crowsales which is bad. Pretty much all of crowdsales on DEX are crap at the moment. Let's call them
crapsalesdreamsales. Wishful thinking is the right term for dreamsales buyers. :)
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Following that same line of thought, gambling should be illegal. That argument doesn't make sense to me.
It is illegal in many parts of the world.
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Following that same line of thought, gambling should be illegal. That argument doesn't make sense to me.
It is illegal in many parts of the world.
Doesn't mean it should, imo
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It is not crowdsales which is bad, it is crappy crowsales which is bad. Pretty much all of crowdsales on DEX are crap at the moment. Let's call them crapsalesdreamsales. Wishful thinking is the right term for dreamsales buyers. :)
Many of the project out there in the crypto crowdsale will fail...as in other industry. I've study venture capitalist sector and get to understand that more than 50% of the early stage or serie A investment failed and the usually have success in 20% of the deals that cover all their losses. Yep people should do their due diligence, take responsibilities. We should make sure we protect the Bitshares Core value for the long term. Maybe find a way the remove failed crowdsale on DEX after a period of time, I don't know. What to we qualify as crappy crowsales?
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3. Crowdsales Allow Unethical Behavior
It is, in fact, immoral to sell dreams.
Why? Because humans have a “wishful thinking bias”. This means that we are more likely to believe a false thing, if that false thing is a dream. Therefore, all dream-sellers have the ability to deceive (“steal money from”) the credulous.
You see, while people should be able to invest in whatever they want, others should also be able to openly criticize bad investment-choices. Unfortunately, silence is often interpreted as implicit endorsement, and so this criticism is simply too rare (because criticism makes one unpopular). With a few notable exceptions (all of which are devoutly informal, and non-startup), most people are too selfish and/or afraid to do anywhere-near the right thing.
So, crowdsales allow predators to get away with the crime of selling a dream.
had a very interesting reading here... http://bitcoinhivemind.com/blog/crowdsales/
Generally if people are selling dreams they will use convoluted, long winded marketing speak and try to avoid giving clear simple answers to questions. Some crowdsales however are very good. Crypto and DACs are one of the most innovative and fastest growing sectors in the world & many will also positively benefit society.
The answer to your question lies in your own response. We should not be afraid to openly challenge & do due diligence on investments that we are unsure about. In the case of BTS, brand value by association can be very positive as we saw with Microsoft Azure. However there is a huge reputation & valuation risk to being associated with bad partnerships & crowdsales as we saw with Summer Announcements. (Also with projects like Banx many felt they were mislead about what they were investing in - https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21657.msg284851.html#msg284851 )
So provided we make an effort to challenge projects and distance ourselves as a brand from the negative ones, even though they might be based on the BTS blockchain, I think some can be very positive for investors, society and BTS.
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The answer to your question lies in your own response. We should not be afraid to openly challenge & do due diligence on investments that we are unsure about. In the case of BTS, brand value by association can be very positive as we saw with Microsoft Azure, however there is a huge reputation risk to being associated with bad partnerships as we saw with Summer Announcements. (Also with projects like Banx many felt they were mislead about what they were investing in.
This is exactly right. Crowdsales are an important tool for jump-starting new ventures. But there have been a number of crowdsales on here that I have not really understood well. I am usually one of the ones asking questions in these threads. Sometimes, the promoters provide answers that satisfy me and other times they still do not do an adequate job explaining how they are going to use the money or create actual value. I lived through the 1990s in Silicon Valley, so I saw my share of websites that were peddling bullshit with pure marketing speak and by the end of reading it or even having a beer with the lead person, you still had no idea what their technology or idea was, yet people were still throwing money at them. Not me. Now, we have people creating slick videos to try to explain their plans, but having sorted through my share of garbage, I get pretty impatient when the substance is buried or absent. Give it to me straight up or it belongs with the snake oil.
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It is not crowdsales which is bad, it is crappy crowsales which is bad. Pretty much all of crowdsales on DEX are crap at the moment. Let's call them crapsalesdreamsales. Wishful thinking is the right term for dreamsales buyers. :)
Many of the project out there in the crypto crowdsale will fail...as in other industry. I've study venture capitalist sector and get to understand that more than 50% of the early stage or serie A investment failed and the usually have success in 20% of the deals that cover all their losses. Yep people should do their due diligence, take responsibilities. We should make sure we protect the Bitshares Core value for the long term. Maybe find a way the remove failed crowdsale on DEX after a period of time, I don't know. What to we qualify as crappy crowsales?
I think something like this (https://www.kickstarter.com/rules) could be a guideline to distinguish crappy crowdsales from legit ones. We don't necessary need to force these rules, but to make following them a good habit.
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The only reason to work is to chase dreams, whether it's the American dream or something else. If we don't have dreams we have nothing.
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Following that same line of thought, gambling should be illegal. That argument doesn't make sense to me.
It is illegal in many parts of the world.
Which is absolutely insane to me, trying to tell consenting adults how they can spend their money. I-N-S-A-N-E! But that topic is for another day. :)
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Following that same line of thought, gambling should be illegal. That argument doesn't make sense to me.
It is illegal in many parts of the world.
Which is absolutely insane to me, trying to tell consenting adults how they can spend their money. I-N-S-A-N-E! But that topic is for another day. :)
There are consenting adults who do not think and behave like a baby in some parts of the world. They are especially rampant in countries with very low/zero free press.
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If you want free markets you have to accept the shit parts of it as well.
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If you want free markets you have to accept the shit parts of it as well.
Agree, you can't have one without the other.To me is like the gambling example I gave above. Or another would be not being able to use Bitcoin because at the same time is used in the deep web for illegal stuff. Or not being able to have privacy because some people are hiding stuff from the government, etc.
You can't have one without the other. That's just the excuse governments use to restrict people's actions.
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If you want free markets you have to accept the shit parts of it as well.
Yes.. but free markets doesn't mean free of standards. There is at least a standard framework even to a market of any kind.
What the OP i think is concerned with is the lack of framework behind these crowdfunds that allow for snake oil tactics to get people buying one thing and not realizing till it's too late that they bought something else.
I agree that when offers are made they should be VERY clear.
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If you want free markets you have to accept the shit parts of it as well.
Yes.. but free markets doesn't mean free of standards. There is at least a standard framework even to a market of any kind.
What the OP i think is concerned with is the lack of framework behind these crowdfunds that allow for snake oil tactics to get people buying one thing and not realizing till it's too late that they bought something else.
I agree that when offers are made they should be VERY clear.
We should encourage good practice but not enforce it.
Talk of removing crowdsale tokens because they are scams is dangerous talk and we shouldn't even consider it if we want bitshares to be taken seriously.
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If you want free markets you have to accept the shit parts of it as well.
Yeah. And if you don't want shit, you don't have have to accept nothing which contains it.
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If you want free markets you have to accept the shit parts of it as well.
Agree, you can't have one without the other.To me is like the gambling example I gave above. Or another would be not being able to use Bitcoin because at the same time is used in the deep web for illegal stuff. Or not being able to have privacy because some people are hiding stuff from the government, etc.
You can't have one without the other. That's just the excuse governments use to restrict people's actions.
This is not about excuse for nobody. This about problems which shit creates to human society. Do you think anybody would care about gambling, if it did not create problems? If you do, think again. Every healthy human society is just like healthy individual, it has immune system. This immune system rejects any aggressive media. If parasite attacks the body, blood kills it. This does not depend on your wishes, this is the law of nature.
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Would you have considered the AGS sale a crowdsale?
I understand to a degree your concern of selling a dream.. but I like to get a more defined sense for what you are referring to exactly.
Is your issue with sales that have no defined terms to what is being sold?
Is your issue to it being done by individuals instead of real registered corporate entities?
Just trying to better understand the point you are making.
just wanted to make people think twice before participating on crowd-sales and pointing out that they should be extra careful before investing their hard earning money, and make of course the needed investigation before participation... just that!
(not that there are not out there some good opportunities, but still only a little fraction of the total crowd-sales are really worth it)