I was young during the dot com boom, but I would like to know from people who weren't: Does the ICO boom resemble the dot com boom? Because this screams bubble like nothing I've seen before.
Not a single one of these ICO-backed companies will be an ongoing endeavor in five years.
Subject being blockchain, I'm pretty sure Ethereum, Augur & MakerDAO are ones of those few rare under-valuated assets. Disclosure: I might own a few coins of each.
this is tulip mania. at least when a stock price shoots up over news, that company is (generally) backed by revenue. a sales channel. assets. something. anything.
a cryptographic signature is only worth something if a group of people all agree it is worth something.
before someone makes the fiat argument -- the USD is worth something because there are a lot of bullets and bombs behind it.
USD is now viewed as obligations of the Government of the United States which gets its revenue from taxing its economy (a function of GDP) and is secured by the bullets and bombs parent writes about.
I think you meant "backed" by gold?
It is also priced/valued against other major sovereign currencies like the euro, renminbi, yen, aud with enough spread for profitable arbitrage across exchanges when trading hours overlap for Sydney, Hong Kong, Beijing, Mumbai, Frankfurt, London and New York.
It also means cryptocurrencies will be bid up in the short to medium term without regard to their fundamentals. Best of luck with your coins.
"It would be able to process millions of transactions per second with no transaction fees."
"...namely transparency, security, process integrity, speed and lower transaction costs"
Which is it? None or lower? And lower than what? Pick one! It's like the old adage "A fool and his money are soon parted." If it sounds to good to be true, it's because it is.