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RE: ICOs for offline businesses?
Absolutely. My first ever chat with Dan (it seems like years ago...it was years ago!) was about using the blockchain for offchain businesses. It has much broader potential. As for the ICOs, yes, because this is so much simpler and less regulated than traditional securities. Any offering just needs to be done very carefully so it does not run afoul of securities & related laws in various countries.
You're a bonafide veteran! Yes, there's definitely tremendous potential. I'd like to see a platform or service that'll help SMBs navigate the landmine of laws. It seems more or less settled for some nations like the USA, Japan nd EU, but things are very murky elsewhere in the world, and the lawyers simply don't have an answer.
There's also the issue of stakeholder protection. While traditional securities laws are draconian, on the other hand don't want people losing all their money on scam ICOs etc. Well, I suppose that's become the norm, but that doesn't make it right. Hoping EOS has a solution for that with their smart contracts based dispute resolution system!
What about using ether to create local currencies? If you took the credits($1.00 for example ) from a local barter exchange, and replaced them with a token that contained $0.01 worth of ether and maybe $0.24 worth of Silver. Whoever wanted to put up the silver and ether could be put up by investors in exchange for tokens at the ICO. The holders of the barter credits would get to have external value backing their internal currency. If they want to spend their tokens off exchange, they can still get 1/4 of the value of the token (assuming no inflation) or they can trade it on the exchange for $1.00 worth of in kind services.
Sure, however, offline businesses will still incur expenses and earn revenues in fiat currencies.