Did I Say $4,100? I Meant $5,500. Bitcoin and Blockchain -- the BLOCK-CON Update

Until the last ICO or TGE for Token Generation Event if you prefer dies every media owner and marketer will need to assess new methods of media monetization through payments despite the powerful lure to old pros of quotbeen there done thatquot bromidesamp160 One implication of quotprogrammable moneyquot is the rise of ventures looking to more easily implement payments often micro for the use of content attention to advertising and collection and sale of the data that drives modern marketingamp160 Consider just a few some nascent some resuscitatingDataWallet and Insights Network are among those going after the 200bn per year US data brokerage industry whose biggest customers are the marketers designing the products services and messaging that fund much of mediaamp160 Insights39 ICO will help fund its trustless decentralized market research networkamp160 Whither targeted TV advertising for example if over the next decade data brokers shrivel and optout becomes the norm for consumersBitClave wants marketers to pay consumers searching for offersamp160 Its pending service looks to target the large profits of search enginesGil Penchina a member of eBay39s preIPO team and an early investor in Brave which raised 35m through the sale of Basic Attention Tokens this spring is now backing sweepstakes on the blockchainamp160 The Pryze protocol will allow anyone to enter for free and is not your father39s iWoncom apparentlyPROPS is a new token being introduced into YouNow a live video streaming platform which numbers Comcast Ventures among its investors Since 2011 YouNow has generated 50m in virtual goods sales sharing most of its earnings with its content contributorsamp160 YouNow looks to boost growth through the token launch and integrationYours styled as Medium with a micropayment pay wall social39s only one outside of WeChat Wall has a number of new content monetization models leveraging Bitcoin Cash which processes onchain transactions for less than a pennyamp160 These models include giving users a revenue share for sharing content paying consumers for looking at ads and daily subscriptionsIn defense of utility tokens consider 1 US securities regulations look manageable 2 why quotlock upquot network effects if you can help it and 3 you can39t hang a blockchain share of the Mona Lisa on your wall anywayamp160 The white flag of counterrevolution warns of securities lawsuits aplenty when grandma approaches the bar having lost her life savings in an ICOamp160 Perhaps she should diversify her portfolio with Ireland39s newly issued Che Guevara stamp now worth more than its 1euro face value and whose offering even if by a private entity would hardly require securities registrationamp160 Vinny Lingham of Civic summed up the fear of regulation when a regulator appears your coin goes to 0amp160 To slide past securities regulation requirements via a utility token lawyers counsel the following The token should be as functional as possible at ICOtime and buyers should be motivated more to consume than to flip the token eg avoid white paper references to secondary markets and generally mimic a crowdfunding as much as possibleamp160 Indeed per a BLOCKCON presentation EuropeanUK regulations may be particularly favorable for the software crowdfunding approachamp160 Advantages of unregistered offerings of utility tokens are lower cost no lockup on token useresale greater flexibility in picking advisors and investors and no per se requirements for financial reportingThe BLOCKCON crowd seemed loath to walk away from utility token ICOs as a form of Kickstarter for open source software although WeTrust noted that many Kickstarter projects lack network effects perhaps a hint that some ICOs may as wellamp160 Although tokens securitizing assets called quotsecurities tokensquot by some may eventually accumulate a larger market cap than utility tokens for operating ventures that39s because the market value of assets eg real estate is larger than that of equities in companies certainly public companiesOne view of ICOs is as a new means of funding the sales and marketing necessary to launch SaaS companiesamp160 Per Penchina token sales can help fund the first few years of spending to acquire initial customers an ICO39s PR splash helps convert some to evangelists and recruit both sides of a networkamp160 Although ICOs may offer network businesses new ways to start the market may still deliver most of the value to the biggest network in the endamp160 Another twist is the continuing riskincentive to fork protocols which could mutate the model into this maximize the ICO raise and then drive profitability down to as close to breakeven as fast as possible to ward off competitorsWhile there is much else to say to save some breath for bitcoin39s November when we can expect a price reversal per presenting crypto chartist Tone Vays let39s close now with convention per Calacanisamp160 First Calacanis does not HODL not a typo Google it any crypto secure in his conventional VC deal access which keeps him out of public stocks as wellamp160 Second his inclination is that the No 1 use case for crypto is speculation primarily in the quotmanipulatedquot bitcoin and was surprised that the BLOCKCON crowd advanced Steemit where users are paid to post and curate as a candidate for top crypto app given his dislike of its design As to ICOsamp160 while conceding they could drive an increasing share of funding out of the VC community an quotexistential riskquot for VCs he criticizes the following ICOs39 lack of facetoface marketing their resulting lack of governance coins don39t require boards which risks there being no big investors with enough of a stake to help a venture through tough times and ICOs39 largely being projects not companies achieving funding before products the inverse of good practiceamp160 His bottom line is to either actively trade in the space or wait for the winners to emerge and then invest in those

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Did I Say $4,100? I Meant $5,500. Bitcoin and Blockchain -- the BLOCK-CON Update

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Did I Say $4,100? I Meant $5,500. Bitcoin and Blockchain -- the BLOCK-CON Update

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