What is an ICO?
An ICO, is a fundraising mechanism where new projects sell an underlying crypto token in exchange for capital. In the early days, the capital was in the form of bitcoin, but over time this increased to other forms of cryptocurrencies, in particular ether. Now that the industry has developed, regular fiat currency is being accepted under certain conditions as well. Accepting fiat currency means the ICO can reach more people.
The term "ICO" was created and popularized to allow comparisons to the term Initial Public Offering, otherwise known as an IPO. Similar to an IPO, where shares are sold to investors for equity in a company to fund operations, an ICO is where "coins" are created and sold to investors to fund the operations of a company or project.
There are some subtle, but important, differences between an ICO and an IPO. The lack of current regulations and oversight in the ICO space has been seen as an advantage to helping avoid the costly and expensive...
