I have an extremely strong association between the words ICO and "scam", but I also recently found out that seed rounds are basically non-existent [1]
If the SEC tacitly allows for "good-faith" ICO's, I would consider it. I don't want to shutter the work of my cofounders and contributors just because the seed-stage startup ecosystem is this broken.
However, I have gone down extremely long rabbit holes and I am very wary.
I would like to raise approximately 300k for a play that is built for an acquisition for a major player (within a small number of years). We got one term sheet for effectively 51% of the company for $17k or so. (That was from a real VC.) There were no other serious offers.
Another (more promising?) alternative would be to bootstrap doing something unrelated. For example we have some expertise on our team in machine learning and perhaps could use it in an unrelated market where the size of the opportunity is pretty small (and it's pretty competitive).
Is ICO worth exploring at this stage? (Bearing in mind that we are built for acquisition.)
We are a "real" startup and don't have anything to do with cryptocurrencies or tokens. I also personally think the SEC does fantastic work that makes the whole startup ecosystem, and indeed investment at all, possible.
There is a reason the United States investment climate is one of the best in the world, if not the best, and I think the SEC and general legal framework is one of these. So I am strongly biased against unregulated ICO's and would be very happy to submit to any oversight that would increase transparency and investor protections.