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This review synthesizes 48 academic studies on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) from 2018 to 2023, employing bibliometric and content analyses to illuminate their complexities and innovation in entrepreneurial finance. It identifies four key themes: (1) regulatory intricacies, market transformation, and strategic implications for emerging ventures; (2) the opportunities and challenges presented, and key factors influencing the success of ICOs; (3) ICOs and entrepreneurial finance; and finally, (4) review of reviews. By examining the intersection of legal frameworks, disruptive potential, and stakeholder challenges, this interdisciplinary perspective captures the essence of ICOs and charts a course for future inquiry. It serves as a pivotal reference for researchers, practitioners, and regulators to understand the multifaceted ICO landscape and its implications for the future of finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are an alternative financing source for startups. Based on blockchain technology, they allow entrepreneurs to raise funds digitally, ensuring speed and low costs. ICOs increased significantly in number and size until the first quarter of 2018, and then the market declined. Mismanagement and fraud are suspected to be the cause. In this respect, our paper analyzes the literature on ICO benefits and challenges and provides recommendations for sustainable ICO activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of initial coin offerings (ICOs) as a means of fundraising for companies through the issuance of blockchain‐based tokens. Specifically, we investigate how a company can implement ICOs and issue tokens supported by its products while taking into account the presence of network effects. We examine several aspects of ICOs, including the impacts of network effect on the company's optimal token sales design, such as the optimal token issuance price, the ICO cap (which refers to the number of tokens to be issued), and the amount of funds raised. We also consider the cases of deterministic and uncertain network effects, the impacts of limited speculators purchasing tokens during the ICO period, the comparison between ICOs and traditional bank financing, and the impact of ICO cost. The research unfolds in five key parts. Firstly, leveraging a baseline model, we derive equilibrium outcomes and the optimal token sales design, discerning the impact of deterministic and uncertain network effects. Notably, network effect uncertainty consistently benefits companies, ensuring profit resilience despite potential challenges, although in the face of such uncertainty, the ICO company may decrease the raised fund. Secondly, we investigate the consequences of a limited number of speculators in the ICO landscape, finding that adjustments on the token sales design are not required under low expected network effect. Thirdly, a comparative study between ICOs and bank financing reveals distinctive advantages of ICOs. ICOs prove capable of decreasing profit volatility while maintaining an equivalent profit compared to traditional bank financing. This insight offers valuable guidance for companies seeking optimal financing methods aligned with their risk preferences. Lastly, the impact of ICO cost on outcomes and token sales design is scrutinized. Contrary to expectations, ICO cost does not uniformly lead to an increase in the ICO cap, underscoring the nuanced relationship between costs and fundraising strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This review synthesizes 48 academic studies on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) from 2018 to 2023, employing bibliometric and content analyses to illuminate their complexities and innovation in entrepreneurial finance. It identifies four key themes: (1) regulatory intricacies, market transformation, and strategic implications for emerging ventures; (2) the opportunities and challenges presented, and key factors influencing the success of ICOs; (3) ICOs and entrepreneurial finance; and finally, (4) review of reviews. By examining the intersection of legal frameworks, disruptive potential, and stakeholder challenges, this interdisciplinary perspective captures the essence of ICOs and charts a course for future inquiry. It serves as a pivotal reference for researchers, practitioners, and regulators to understand the multifaceted ICO landscape and its implications for the future of finance.

This study contributes to sustainable entrepreneurship by examining the influence of entrepreneur personality on sustainability orientation in a digital finance market context. Extraverted entrepreneurs exhibit strong social connectivity. Consistent with the upper echelons theory, we show that extraversion has significant explanatory power for commitment to a sustainability agenda in initial coin offerings (ICOs). Drawing on institutional difference theory, we find that regulatory change and social pressure moderate the relationship between the extraversion of ICO entrepreneurs and sustainability orientation. Importantly, extraversion plays a significant role in an ICO's success. Our study highlights the impact of entrepreneur personality traits on driving sustainability efforts and fundraising success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial coin offerings (ICO) have emerged as a niche financing arrangement, primarily used by budding tech-savvy entrepreneurs to fund their projects through token sales. This paper explores the various research dimensions on this complex means of raising funds, primarily its relevance, grey aspects, and offers future research directions. The theoretical underpinnings of various scholarly articles in reputed journals are reviewed to gauge the continuously expanding ICO domain. To recognize key aspects of ICO, this study relies on a three-tier analysis comprising of systematic literature review, bibliometric analysis and content analysis. The study identifies five distinct clusters: dynamics influencing ICO, drivers facilitating ICO investments, empirical validation of ICO success factors, adopting best practices for efficacious ICO and emerging perspectives on ICO. Based on these clusters, future research directions are offered. This study is a ready reckoner for scholars, aspiring to identify the evolution of ICO, current dynamics, and future research directions. This study not only offers existing and prospective entrepreneurs into efficiently designing and deploying ICO, but also highlights determinants that should be considered by investors while investing in ICO. Further, the study also illustrates several key challenges that requires adequate global regulation to ensure its sustainability and advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of technology and network externalities on exchange-listed Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Utilising an online database comprising of self-reported ICO characteristics, measures of post-ICO performance, along with information on business social networks, higher fundraising figures are found to contribute positively to the ICOs long-term success. This positive impact is multiplied by six times when fundraising is conducted to an existing, proprietary blockchain. This is explained by the network effect. The modified information ratio measure is used to approximate the quality signalling of ICO organisations using price time series and benchmarking these to already functioning blockchain technology, e.g. ethereum in the long term. The ICO sample's mean trading period on an exchange is 1.5 years and is used for long-period asset analysis. Additionally, the cointegration to the market technology benchmark is found to have a large, significant neg [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a token offering, investors fund a venture in exchange for tokens that grant rights to future economic output. To many financial industry insiders, tokens have no intrinsic merit and exist only as a way to evade regulations. We demonstrate that generic revenue-based token contracts are indeed economically inferior to equity and lead to over- or underproduction. However, an optimally designed token contract, which is a combination of an output presale and an incremental revenue-sharing agreement, yields the same payoffs as equity and debt. Moreover, with entrepreneurial moral hazard, tokens can finance a strictly larger set of ventures than equity. This paper was accepted by Will Cong, Special Section of Management Science: Blockchains and Crypto Economics. Funding: This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Canadian Securities Institute Research Foundation [Grants 20013075 and 435-2017-064]. Financial support from the Global Risk Institute and the Mackenzie Investment Chair in Evidence-Based Decision Making is also acknowledged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional two-sided platforms (e.g., Amazon, Uber) rely primarily on commission contracts to generate revenues and fuel growth, whereas their decentralized counterparts (e.g., Uniswap, Filecoin) often forego these in favor of token retention. What economics underpin this choice? We show that with properly designed initial coin offerings (ICOs), both mechanisms can independently alleviate market failures at the initial fundraising stage and incentivize long-term platform building. However, they achieve this in different ways. Although commission contracts often lead to higher profits for founders, token retention leads to higher service levels, benefiting the users and service providers. In essence, token retention surrenders a fraction of earnings to better align with the tenets of decentralized governance. Combining both mechanisms can add value, but only in relatively limited cases. These findings offer guidance and a possible rationale for why platforms may want to favor one mechanism over the other or use both. This paper was accepted by Will Cong, Special Section of Management Science: Blockchains and Crypto Economics. Funding: This work is funded by the Mack Institute at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.02076. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reviews initial coin offerings (ICOs) based on 80 empirical studies from 2018 to 2022. We apply a blend of bibliometric and content analysis to consolidate ICOs' prior findings, track the evolutionary impact, and explore the semantic discourse and underlying theories in entrepreneurial finance. The content analysis concludes with five main streams that extensively explain the advent of ICOs, main features, embedded technologies, pricing, valuation, regulatory frameworks, frauds, and scams. It contributes to a better understanding of the ICOs hype under the following contexts: benefits versus challenges, decentralised system versus market stability, speculative behaviour and herding versus market efficiency, and geographical spread versus systematic risk. The study is beneficial for portfolio managers, hedgers, wealth managers, investors, policymakers, regulators, and entrepreneurs. Plain English Summary: ICO Boom and Bust: What is Next? The study fosters the knowledge of ICOs as a new financing avenue. It consolidates prior empirical studies and extracts valuable findings from different perspectives: benefits versus challenges, decentralised system versus market stability, speculative behaviour and herding versus market efficiency, and geographical spread versus systematic risk. This study reviews initial coin offerings (ICOs) based on 80 empirical studies from 2018 to 2022. It impacts portfolio managers, hedgers, wealth managers, investors, policymakers, regulators, and entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract As prior researchers have suggested, a firm’s success in an international market depends on how well its strategy fits the nonmarket environment, such as formal institutions. This paper examines the determinants of formal institutions around new areas of economic activities. Specifically, we propose a framework for understanding how the quality of formal institutions in promoting entrepreneurship drives the focus of such institutions concerning initial coin offering (ICO), which is emerging as a popular fundraising method. The paper uses inductive analysis to examine how nonmarket factors—such as a jurisdiction’s tax haven nature, regulators’ perceptions of ICOs as threats to national or political interests, and trade and industry associations—might moderate the relationship between the quality of institutions and the focus of such institutions regarding ICOs. One of this study’s key findings is that an economy’s quality of entrepreneurship-related institutions, perceived threats to national/political interests, and tax haven nature lead to different policy orientations. Consequently, regulators assign different importance when promoting crypto-entrepreneurship and dealing with associated risks. Regulators focusing mainly on promoting crypto-ventures have taken measures to enrich the blockchain ecosystem and provided tax and non-tax incentives to attract such ventures. Regulators focusing mainly on dealing with crypto-venture risks rely on a regulatory sandbox and close regulatory monitoring of such ventures.

Crowdfunding is a fundraising method that involves raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically through online platforms. It allows individuals, businesses, or organizations to present their projects, ideas, or causes to a global audience and request financial support from a crowd of potential backers. Crowdfunding has gained popularity across various industries, including technology, arts, entrepreneurship, social causes, and more. It provides a democratized approach to financing, allowing innovative and creative ideas to come to life with the support of a diverse community of backers. The current research explores the potential of blockchain technology and smart contracts to revolutionize traditional crowdfunding methodologies. Traditional crowdfunding has been plagued by issues such as lack of transparency, centralized intermediaries, slow payment processing, fraud, and limited access. In response to these challenges, blockchain solutions offer a transparent and decentralized approach, allowing contributors to track their contributions, eliminate intermediaries, automate fund disbursement, and enable cross-border transactions. Tokenization and reduced entry barriers further enhance accessibility and participation. The current research presents a conceptual model and implementation of a smart contract-based crowdfunding system using Solidity, addressing these issues and providing a foundation for future research in the field of decentralized crowdfunding. The research scope has been expanded to encompass Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) as a means of fundraising for startups. Within this context, fungible tokens, which adhere to the ERC-20 standard, are generated using the OpenZeppelin library. These tokens are then subject to approval by the startup, granting authorization to a crowdfunding manager for the purpose of distributing tokens to contributors based on their respective contributions. The percentage of tokens made available for distribution can be customized to suit the specific needs and preferences of the startup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on language expectancy theory, we predict that linguistic errors in ICO white papers negatively impact investors' willingness to financially contribute to ICO projects. We manually annotate a sample of 546 ICO white papers according to 13 different error subcategories related to spelling and grammar. The error-annotated data are subsequently submitted to regression analyses which confirm that linguistic errors discourage potential investments in ICOs. Specifically, our analyses reveal the presence of 'high penalty' vs. 'low penalty' errors which result in higher vs. lower financial investment losses for the ICOs. The negative impact of language errors is stronger when ICO white papers are (1) written in native English-speaking countries and (2) from countries without cryptocurrency regulation. Results from an experiment confirm that this relationship is not driven by the entrepreneur- or investor-specific characteristics. Overall, we highlight that the reader identifies linguistic errors as a major 'red flag' that ultimately affects financial decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This survey talks about the problem of security and privacy in the blockchain ecosystem which is currently a hot issue in the blockchain community. The survey intended to study this problem by considering different types of attacks in the blockchain network with respect to algorithms presented. After a preliminary literature review it seems that some focus has been given to study the first use case while, to the best of my knowledge, the second use case requires more attention when blockchain is applied to study it. The research is also interested in exploring the link between these two use cases to study the overall data ownership preserving accountable system which will be a novel contribution of this work. However, due to the subsequent government mandated secrecy around the implementation of data encryption standard (DES), and the distrust of the academic community because of this, a movement was spawned that put a premium on individual privacy and decentralized control. This movement brought together the top minds in encryption and spawned the technology we know of as blockchain today. This survey explores the genesis of encryption, its early adoption, and the government meddling which eventually spawned a movement which gave birth to the ideas behind blockchain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: In recent years, many initial coin offerings (ICOs) scams have been reported, attracting attention to this relatively new and unregulated ICO market, which lacks disclosure requirements and therefore suffers from intensifying problems of information asymmetry inherent in crowdfunding. As a prospectus‐type document, an ICO white paper serves as a major means of voluntary disclosure practices adopted by ventures seeking external financing. Given the importance of an ICO white paper and the difficulty of assessing its quality, we propose to benchmark it against white paper content for security token offerings (STOs)—a more regulated ICO subset. Using the similarity of ICO white papers with STO white papers to proxy for disclosure quality, we document that the ICO campaigns that have white papers more similar to STO white papers are more likely to raise funding successfully. Our findings provide implications for policymakers, ICO fundraisers, and investors on the importance of white paper quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain technology offers firms a novel method of raising capital via so-called initial coin offerings (ICOs). In the most common form of an ICO, a firm creates digital assets called "utility tokens" that are tracked on a blockchain-based ledger, requires that its product be purchased only with those tokens, and then, raises capital by selling these tokens to investors prior to creating any saleable product. (Some nonfungible tokens (NFTs) may function in a similar fashion.) We model a fundamental paradox with the use of ICOs involving utility tokens and similar structures. To increase capital raised by an ICO, the firm may attempt to reduce blockchain operating costs, thus expanding the quantity of goods sold. However, because of the mechanics of miner compensation, doing so increases the number of utility token transactions that take place in any time interval (i.e., increases token velocity and thus, the effective supply of tokens). By Fisher's equation, this lowers the dollar value of tokens and the amount investors are willing to pay for them. We show that this paradox limits the value of utility token ICOs as an alternative to traditional financing options. We discuss alternatives to and variations of utility tokens that can mitigate the conundrum and promote ICOs as a more viable form of financing. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study furthers recent research on Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) in understanding the set of characteristics that drive ICO performance and reduce information asymmetry. Using data on 166 ICOs and more than 300,000 contribution addresses that sent funds to ICOs in Bitcoins or in Ether between 2013 and 2017, we examined the effect of ICO characteristics on ICO performance. We found that three boundary conditions predict ICO fundraising amount, number of investors, hard cap achievement and token ranking. These are registering ICO and publishing project's code on GitHub, obtaining VC or Business angel financing before the campaign or during presale, and finally, publishing the whitepaper before the campaign's start. Other factors such as serial investors, presale of tokens, bonus sales and funders' ownership share explain ICO performance. We offer implications for ICO investors and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) is crucial for investment decisions in the ICO market. Since most ICOs succeed in raising funds, failed ICOs must be discriminated against through intelligent classification methods. In this context, this research proposes an intelligent decision model for predicting ICOs’ success that merges both the Information Gain Directed Feature Selection (IGDFS) technique as a features rank procedure to select the discriminative features representing the initial pool of features for Genetic Algorithm (GA) to find the ICO’s optimal feature set and Fuzzy Support Vector Machine for Class Imbalance Learning (FSVM-CIL) to tackle the problem of imbalanced classification. Two benchmark datasets were used to examine the proposed hybrid model referred to as IGDFS-FSVM. The experimental results reveal that the proposed model that employs an intelligent technique for ICO’s feature selection outperforms state-of-the-art classifiers without features selection. In this regard, we conclude that the proposed hybrid model is a practical approach to support investment decisions in the ICO market.

In the popular imagination and in academic literature, scams are usually seen as dyadic, involving a con artist and a mark. This article retheorizes scams as networked, collective activity. Scams, like all commerce, are shaped by and in turn shape communication channels. The "network scam" is therefore offered as a lens for understanding scams in the digital economy more broadly. As a case study, this article documents the 2017 Initial Coin Offering (ICO) Bubble. ICOs were supposed to be a new, radically disruptive way of crowdfunding to finance the development of a new, radically disruptive blockchain technological ecosystem. All told, ICOs raised an estimated $5 billion in 2017 alone. But by all analyses—both from observers and participants, both during the bubble and after—the vast majority of ICO turned out to be scams. This article uses these scams to theorize the "network scam" as a collaborative effort to bring about a shared future, but one that is fundamentally characterized by arbitrage on uneven belief among participants in that future ever coming to pass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artists make vital contributions to our society and lay the foundations for billion-dollar industries. However, these artists consistently struggle to acquire sufficient funding for their projects and their livelihood. New technology-supported possibilities for funding artists and their projects have emerged in recent years. Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is a novel form of reward-based tokenized crowdfunding. Although ICOs are promising as a way to fund artistic projects, they lack widespread adoption in the creative and cultural industry (CCI). Based on 35 qualitative in-depth interviews, we identify four barriers that hinder the funding of artistic projects through ICOs: legal shortcomings, investment restrictions, lack of consumer interest, and intermediaries' resistance. Our research contributes to cultural finance and funding literature by disclosing barriers that impede a promising form of financing artistic projects. Further, we outline possible solutions to overcome them. We also contribute to the research about ICOs by showing that rather than reducing investment risks, these offerings merely shift them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the factors affecting the probability of success of initial coin offerings (ICOs) with a specific focus on the tourism industry. ICOs emerged as a financial technology (FinTech) development and use blockchain technology. As a novel form of crowdfunding, ICOs are public offerings that can be used to raise capital for entrepreneurs and also have the potential to be a new financing method for tourism ventures with financing challenges. Although ICOs can represent a very substantial alternative financing method for today's innovative business models, the phenomenon seems to be poorly understood. With this in mind, this study highlights the importance of blockchain technology and thus ICOs as an alternative financing tool for the tourism industry. In this context, 49 ICOs that ended between 05 July 2017 and 27 January 2021 were analysed by applying the logistic regression analysis method. The results show that the most essential signals of the probability of success of a tourism ICO are human capital, duration, acceptance of Bitcoin as the most popular cryptocurrency, and bonuses offered as an incentive instrument. The findings have useful practical implications for the determinants of ICOs' success for both tourism entrepreneurs and contributors of tourism ICOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sentiment analysis of Twitter data is quite valuable for determining the market opinion. Twitter sentiment analysis is more challenging than generic sentiment analysis owing to slang and misspellings. The techniques utilized for evaluating the sentiment of tweets that have the greatest importance for the success of an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) are machine learning approaches. In this study, we examined market sentiment and used Expert Ratings to predict the success of ICOs in the Australian and Singapore markets. Based on 68,281 tweets from 57 ICOs across four industries: business services, cryptocurrency, entertainment, and platform. Several classification methods were investigated, including Support Vector Machines (SVMs), Logistic Regression (LR), Random Forest (RF), and Naïve Bayes (NB). The outcomes indicated that sentiment analysis of tweets and expert ratings may be used to forecast the success of an initial coin offering. The results indicate that the suggested model is capable of accurately assessing the tweets of the ICO Successful with a maximum accuracy of about 94.7 % when implementing the Support Vector Machines (SVMs) classifier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are one of the major innovations that characterize the digital revolution of financial markets. Among the expectations created by the digital revolution is the democratization of entrepreneurial finance, defined in terms of the creation of more equality regarding the access to financial resources by categories known to be underrepresented among potential entrepreneurs. Following this line of research, we investigate, through two complementary empirical studies, whether gender, ethnicity, and geography affect the choice of ICOs vs. traditional financing alternatives. Additionally, we assess whether these characteristics increase the amount of money an entrepreneur can raise. In Study I, we compare 390 ICO ventures to a sample of 1,078 VC-backed blockchain ventures, identifying a negative correlation between the choice of an ICO (vs. VC-backing) and a location in an urban area. In Study II, we compare 160 ICO ventures to 163 real estate investment trusts (REITs), reaffirming the results of Study I. The findings show significant participation and likelihood of successful campaigns for ethnical minorities in ICOs, with the latter also being able to collect, ceteris paribus, larger amounts of funding. In contrast, female entrepreneurs do not have higher chances to participate nor raise funds in ICOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With transformative evolution involving crypto-assets, machine learning applications and data-driven finance models, complex regulatory and policy issues are emerging. Inadequate frameworks in FinTech markets create regulatory friction and regulatory fragmentation. These limitations continue to feature when piecemeal regulatory transition occurs. The danger of EU Member States being left behind in the FinTech innovation race if the regulatory landscape is cumbersome or incomplete for new business models is real. Regulatory lag and regulatory friction also act as a 'disenabler' for ease of cross-border FinTech trade in the EU. This article critically engages with the manner in which the regulatory sandbox has rapidly gained critical mass in Member States as a valuable adaptive measure supporting a route to market for FinTech entrepreneurs. Against the backdrop of the European Commission's Digital Finance Strategy, the article further advances scholarship on FinTech in the EU by probing the EU's resulting regulatory dilemma, undertaking a systematic evaluation of the continuum of complex policy options available to the European Union in response to the spreading regulatory sandbox phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is the first to provide systematic evidence regarding investor behaviour in initial coin offerings (ICOs), their investment patterns and their role in the success of campaigns. Using hand-collected data on 472 public token sales over the period of 2013–2017, we advance the ICO literature by demonstrating that some contributors often invest in more than one campaign, and such serial investors contribute earlier. However, they are not more informed and fail to pick better-quality ICOs. Only large serial investors invest more in campaigns that raise more funds, attract more contributors, are more likely to reach their hard caps, and distribute tokens that are listed on crypto exchange. Our findings raise the question of whether regulatory or industry self-regulation agreements on information provision measures are needed to protect smaller retail ICO investors that exhibit naïve reinforcement learning behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are a novel form of funding that has driven billions of dollars into the blockchain ecosystem, potentially challenging traditional funding vehicles such as business angel or venture capital investments. However, little is known of entrepreneurs' rationales for leveraging this emerging form of financing. This article investigates the economic and behavioral factors that motivate entrepreneurs to fund their startup operations with ICOs. By conducting in-depth interviews with C-level managers or founders of ICO-funded startups, our analysis reveals four dimensions that have an impact on the decision: (1) funding, (2) community building, (3) tokenomics, and (4) personal and ideological drivers. Our findings suggest that the entrepreneur's social identity in conjunction with the enabling mechanisms of the blockchain technology shape entrepreneurial pursuits and funding choice. We contribute to the literature on entrepreneurial finance by increasing understanding of ICOs and to the literature on entrepreneurial decision making by providing qualitative insights into the influence of founder identity on key decisions in startups such as financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A defining feature of initial coin offerings (ICOs) is that entrepreneurs bear the full marginal investment cost but profit only partially from the marginal investment payoff. This design may exacerbate agency conflicts inherent in corporate finance. As a consequence, signals of entrepreneurial quality such as CEO loyalty, which is an established concept in social psychology and can easily be linked to potential agency conflicts in corporate settings, might be a first-order determinant of economic outcomes in the ICO market. Consistent with this, I find that loyal CEOs have to offer lower financial incentives to attract investors and are still able to raise more proceeds, conduct ICOs more thoroughly, and are less likely to fail. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that asymmetric information between entrepreneurs and investors entail agency costs that are decreasing in CEO loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain, a decentralized validation protocol in which no one individual entity completely controls the process or information, is labeled both a "techno tour de force" and a "fraud." Austrian School researchers view the blockchain application Bitcoin as an ideal example of currency decentralization while ethics scholars fret about this very lack of control. Given the significant importance of the future of blockchain technology to a range of disciplines and the fragmented knowledge base with little cross-disciplinary integration to fields such as computer science and law, we begin by offering a nontechnical explanation of the basics of blockchain and its applications such as smart contracts, cryptocurrencies, tokens, and initial coin offerings. We systematically review 152 articles in the burgeoning academic literature on blockchain and its applications and synthesize the findings from five parallel lines of enquiry for scholars: computer science, economics, entrepreneurship, and law and governance. Finally, we outline a comprehensive research agenda for scholars of regulation policy and governance, entrepreneurship and sustainability, organization design and theory, and consumer behavior, highlighting promising phenomenon, methodologies, data, and theories. We aim to simplify and explain blockchain for what it is—a valuable tool that is revolutionary, transformational, and critical for scholars to understand and investigate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We empirically examine the initial returns of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and show that ICO underpricing is enormous, which implies that cryptocurrency markets are inefficient. Moreover, we find that having a short offering phase, not holding a presale, a precisely written whitepaper, and the creation of an independent blockchain all have a positive impact on ICOs' initial returns. Our results also suggest that the driving factor behind initial returns is the movement of the cryptocurrency markets, measured by both Bitcoin and Ethereum returns. In addition, whether or not the jurisdiction has cryptocurrency regulations is an influential indicator. ICOs that belong to the high-tech services and platform industries have higher initial returns. Conventional financial assets, such as the stock market and gold, have a positive influence on ICOs' initial returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are an emerging form of fundraising for blockchain-based startups. We examine how ICOs can be leveraged in the context of asset tokenization, whereby firms issue tokens backed by future assets (i.e., inventory) to finance growth. We (i) make suggestions on how to design such "asset-backed" ICOs—including optimal token floating and pricing for both utility and equity tokens (a.k.a. security token offerings)—taking into account moral hazard (cash diversion), product characteristics, and customer demand uncertainty; (ii) make predictions on ICO success/failure; and (iii) discuss implications on firm operating strategy. We show that in unregulated environments, ICOs can lead to significant agency costs, underproduction, and loss of firm value. These inefficiencies, however, fade as product margins and demand characteristics (mean/variance) improve, and they are less severe under equity (rather than utility) token issuance. Importantly, the advantage of equity tokens stems from their inherent ability to better align incentives and thus continues to hold even absent regulation. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) provide a platform to issue tokens to the public. This study analyses the determinants of ICO success and listing day returns using a dataset of 341 executed ICOs. Funds raised under an ICO are negatively related to target funding size and positively related to Cryptocurrency usage and ICO quality. ICO listing day returns are negatively related to the amount raised, the time period of the offer and time delay to listing. In contrast, ICO listing day returns are positively related to Blockchain usage, ICO quality and the ICO success to raise the target level of funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognising the economic value of London hosting 17 of the world's top 50 FinTech firms, HM Treasury's strategy is determined 'to ensure Britain remains the best place in the world to set up and grow a FinTech business.' The Financial Conduct Authority's 'Sandbox' regime has attracted FinTech start-ups from around the world to test their technology and business with supervision and regulatory protections, providing an opportunity to grow into major businesses. The success of the intuitive Sandbox has however led to it being replicated in jurisdictions worldwide, eager to benefit from the growth of FinTech. Competition for high-calibre start-ups means the UK's post-Brexit Sandbox may need to go further than its existing FinTech Sector Strategy to continuing attracting and developing firms helping the City of London to remain the global centre of finance as perceived in the UK's Industrial Strategy. The article examines existing regulations and analyses how the UK can develop an enhanced structure to both further attract and accommodate legitimate high-calibre FinTech entrepreneurs, whilst offering strong client and investor protections to ensure financial stability. It proposes unprecedented legal and policy reforms for the Sandbox structure, including a permissible model to capitalise on funding from amateur private investors worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a shared view among practitioners that the blockchain is a revolutionary, decentralized technology that will have a larger impact than the Internet. Firms are increasingly using blockchains for various applications; the most prominent of which to date are digital currencies. In this article, we aim to increase our theoretical understanding of the driving forces behind the success and volatility of digital currencies. We use a detailed dataset of 345 digital currencies for our explorative analysis and identify some of the key factors that can explain their performance. We find that the success and volatility of digital currencies depend on their business type (i.e., whether they relate to a platform business or not) and on their technology type (i.e., whether they are based on their own specialized blockchain technology or on a third-party standardized platform blockchain). Our findings suggest that, paradoxically, to obtain the promised benefits of this decentralized technology, firms need to centralize part of it to retain control over critical strategic dimensions (data and rules for transaction). We discuss the implications of our discovery for other contexts undergoing digital transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ICOs market has challenged financial regulators in terms of determining fit with existing regimes and consideration for regulatory reform. Regulatory divergences have emerged in a number of jurisdictions and we discuss three dominant approaches in relation to hegemonic, self-regulatory and enabling regimes. These reflect different assumptions and regulators' understandings of the cryptoasset industry, and we argue that the 'terms for competition' in relation to supply and demand side needs are still being discovered and are incomplete. This provides a unique opportunity for regulators to jettison familiar assumptions in relation to corporatized securities issuers or institutional investors in order to discover what governance needs are truly at stake. This may pose challenges for coherence with existing regulation but coherence should not itself be an obstacle for learning and potentially, reform. We also argue that signs of international regulatory coordination in relation to the Libra project are not necessarily reflective of a wider trend for the cryptoasset industry. This is because regulators can apply existing and familiar financial regulation paradigms more easily to the Libra Association, in particular its leading founding member Facebook. The cryptoasset market is still likely to give rise to diversity and should facilitate the discovery of new bases for regulatory thinking and policy, uncoordinated or otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are a rapidly growing phenomenon wherein entrepreneurial ventures raise funds for the development of blockchain-based businesses. Although they have recently sprouted up all over the world, raising millions of dollars for early-stage firms, few empirical studies are available to help understand the emergence of ICOs across countries. Based on the population of 915 ICOs issued in 187 countries between January 2017 and March 2018, our study reveals that ICOs take place more frequently in countries with developed financial systems, public equity markets, and advanced digital technologies. The availability of investment-based crowdfunding platforms is also positively associated with the emergence of ICOs, while debt and private equity markets do not provide similar effects. Countries with ICO-friendly regulations have more ICOs, whereas tax regimes are not clearly related to ICOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the determinants of success for 630 ICOs undertaken from August 2015 up until the end of December 2017, a period in which the market for ICOs grew to an unprecented level. We find evidence that ICOs are more successful in raising funding when they disclose more information to investors (i.e. have a higher profile rating), have a higher quality rating by cryptocurrency experts, have a pre-ICO GitHub repository, organise a presale, refrain from offering bonus schemes, have shorter planned token sale durations and have a larger project team. ICOs that disclose more information to investors and that have a higher quality rating at the time of the campaign show stronger ex-post performance. Longer-term project success is positively impacted by having a pre-ICO GitHub repository, a shorter planned token sale duration and having a larger project team at the time of the ICO, although these results depend on the ex-post success measure used. We conclude that for entrepreneurs it is important to make an ICO as transparent as possible and that profile and expert ratings are a valuable means to overcome the information asymmetry problems associated with token sales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) issued new guidance on its interpretation of anti-money laundering regulation in respect of digital token transfers and new guidelines explaining the regulatory qualification of tokens linked to underlying assets (stable coins), which may also have an impact on Facebook's Libra project. These regulatory novelties shall be at the heart of this legal analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial coin offerings are a new way for blockchain startups to finance project development by issuing coins or tokens in exchange for fiat money or Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. In this article, we start from the current distinction between different types of tokens and argue that it can create confusion and should be at least partially abandoned. We believe that the conceptual difference between a currency token and a tradable utility token is just the dimension of the crypto environment in which the token is spent. More specifically, 'utility tokens' combine the customer payment mechanism with the utility component and, when tradable on a secondary market, the investment one. We argue that they blur the traditional distinctions between currencies, financial assets and consumption goods. Moreover, we stress the increasing importance of online crypto exchanges. Recently some exchanges have also taken up the role of trusted intermediaries and staked their reputation on token offerings, which are termed initial exchange offerings and have gained in popularity. We therefore argue that the crypto market increasingly looks like a segment of the capital market and behaves as such. Given that tokens have a clear investment component, we show that they are tradable securities under the Prospectus Regulation. We compare the European securities regulation with its US counterpart and focus on prospectus exemptions, highlighting the great differences between Europe and the US which make Europe less amicable to blockchain startups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed ledger technology, also known as the blockchain, is gaining traction globally. Blockchain offers a secure validation mechanism and decentralized mass collaboration. Cryptocurrencies make use of this technology as a new asset class for investors worldwide. Cryptocurrencies are being used by companies to raise capital via initial coin offerings (ICOs). The substantial inflow of unregulated capital into a transactional and transnational industry has aroused interest from not just investors, but also national securities and monetary regulatory agencies. In this paper, we review the Security and Exchange Commission's initial statements and subsequent pronouncements on ICO's to illustrate the potential problems with applying an older legal framework to an ever-evolving ecosystem. Recognizing the inability of enforcement within existing regulatory frameworks, we discuss the importance of regulation of the crypto asset class and internal collaboration between government agencies and developers in the establishment of an ecosystem that integrates investor protection and investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the determinants of success of Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) defined as whether the ICO was successful in raising the funds. We look at financial and technical information disclosed by the ICO as well as the information disclosed by third parties about the ICO and the level of legal protection granted. We discover that even if both hard information (financial and technical) and soft information (social media and legal protection) matter, nevertheless a more relevant role is played by the technical information. Based on our analysis, we identify areas that need further investigation in the context of ICOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally agreed that gaps in sustainable and social finance should be met by increased marketization. However, there are significant challenges in galvanising the investment community used to conventional securities and other investment market instruments. Our article proposes using technological innovations in fund-raising, observed in the initial coin offerings (ICOs) market, to transform the asset class of sustainable and social finance in order to achieve greater marketization, creating an integrated form of social-commercial value for a variety of different investors, from conventional to crowdsourced marketplaces. Key to our proposal is the innovation of tokenisation introduced in ICOs. We argue that tokenisation holds transformative potential for restructuring investment opportunities, as assets need not be tied to the expectations and obligations of conventional financial value creation. Tokens can offer different classes of financial and non-financial rights and rewards. We propose that sustainable and social finance can be raised by corporate structures dedicated to sustainable or social purposes, as dual-class offerings. One class of tokens allows holders to commit to the sustainable or social ends and exercise governance rights as part of their investment. Such token-holders are also expected to be long-term investors and subject to lock-in periods, in order to support the ultimate fulfilment of the sustainable or social project. The other class of tokens would carry no governance rights but be immediately tradeable. This class of tokens likely attracts more transient investors but would provide an important source of finance for sustainable and social projects. The success of ICOs reflects the importance of market conditions and liquidity for this class of investors and we make some proposals as to how such markets can be made more robust by appropriate regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ICO is the acronym for initial coin offering which, drawing a parallel with IPO, refers to the offering to the public of tokens created within blockchain platforms. Most jurisdictions have not specifically regulated these new instruments but instead apply their capital market law requirements when tokens are considered securities; in primary markets, prospectus rules. Failure to comply with those requirements may give rise to liability. Given that ICOs are cross-border in nature, issuers act globally by targeting retail investors in any jurisdiction through online channels--the determination of the law applicable to both regulatory and private law issues is key. This contribution aims at analysing investor protection in ICOs from a substantive-law and, in particular, conflict-of-laws perspective, testing traditional connecting factors, mainly market-orientated, in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapidly increasing digitalisation of financial markets also has an impact on the requirements relating to their supervision and regulation. The first issue of the new series of publications by the German regulator, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) "BaFin Perspektives ",' set to be published twice a year, addresses a whole range of issues relating to digitalisation in the financial sector. While the statements made by the regulator in these publications are by no means of a legally binding nature, they do refect a practice-relevant attitude expressed by BaFin which market participants should regard as general tendencies of financial supervisory culture and attitudes which may' ultimately crystallise in legally binding acts. The following legal analysis aims to provide a summary of selected issues relating to digitalisation in the financial sector from a regulatory perspective which are addressed by BaFin in Issue l of the new series. It focuses on how supervisory and regulatory authorities treat big data and artificial intelligence (BDAI) and on the security and regulation of blockchain technology, including how tokens are categorised in the context of regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]