A couple ICOs
I'm not a cryptocurrency expert, but wanted to share some ICOs (one of which is now in crowdsale mode, but still) I ran across courtesy of the Bad Crypto Podcast (http://badcryptopodcast.com) hosted by Joel Comm and Travis Wright (@teedubya). Two of these are highly interesting to me because of their background while the last one serves a useful function.
The first is https://publica.io/. This aims to disrupt the publishing industry and put it on the blockchain. A side note here: all the summaries I'm giving are going to be curtailed and high level; I only have a little time to post before heading out for family Pokemon Go time. From my experience as a poetry and general moderator on Forward Motion, a website for writers (http://fmwriters.com), as well as conversations with published authors, I know the general rule of thumb is money flows to the author. In the early days of self-publishing, that was a litmus test for if a given opportunity was a scam or not. Now the landscape is very different and the closest thing to a scam is ... traditional publishing.
In traditional publishing, everyone--and I mean EVERYONE--else is paid before the author. The artist. The person approving the art. The editor. The proofreader. The copyeditor. Finally the author, who gets maybe a dollar at most from a $25 hardcover book. And before you say, "But what about the advance," most authors don't get one. And when they do, it's rarely enough.
Plus the author has to do all the marketing.
Publica.io wants to change all that by allowing the author(s) to get all the money. If there's a coauthor, the two authors decide the split, not Publica. Purchases of books reside on the blockchain, preventing issues like what happened fairly recently when everyone's copy of 1984 vanished off their devices. Publica handles the marketing (I'm not entirely clear on that aspect, though; much book marketing currently depends on signings and appearances) and the books are available cross-platform.
There's currently three days and almost five hours left on the pre-sale. To me, it sounds like a much-needed solution and I wish them luck.
The next one is Enjin Coin. https://enjincoin.io/ It aims to solve the problem that keeps me from playing WoW. I dislike the idea of all my in-game items and characters being under the complete control of the game company, only accessible through their servers, for a monthly fee. Enjin Coin wants to create a kind of free market for game items; making them tradeable and sellable. All transactions would be, of course, on the blockchain.
Can you imagine the possibilities that would open up? Second Life had (has? I haven't played in a while, so I don't know if it's still thriving as much) a thriving marketplace of in-game items and services made by creators playing the game. It would be awesome if that kind of marketplace existed in other games.
This ICO ends in nine days, almost 13 hours.
And the last one. Paycent. https://paycent.com/ They are 90% funded already and want to bridge the gap between crypto and fiat. Their wallet will allow users to buy, store, transfer and pay with cryptocurrency transparently via their phones or a physical debit card tied to the Paycent service.
Working off of memory from the interview in the podcast, users can either buy in and have a crypto balance they pay out of, or use fiat to fund their purchase and Paycent converts to crypto or fiat as needed by the merchant.
I don't have quite as much to say about this, as it's less a passion for me than the other two, but I do think it's very much needed and a great idea.
Now for disclaimer. I own no tokens in any of these, though I am signing up for the bounty program for http://paycent.com after I hit 'post.' However, from my understanding, it doesn't matter if you click through or sign up; it's solely based on my posting about it. I am also not advising any specific action; merely bringing these to your attention if you haven't already seen them.