Crypto Academy Season 2: Week 1 || homework post for @imagen || ICO. (Initial Coin Offering)

Hello lovely people,
I thank the leadership of @cryptoacademy and professor @imagen for making it possible to have this tutorial on ICO (Initial Coin Offering)
After going through this week's topic and doing some research, I want to write on what I learned through my homework.

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Initial Coin offering(ICO )

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Initial coin offering (ICO) is a form of capital-raising technique in both cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystems. ICO is normally done to support or back a newly created digital coin, In other words. These raised funds are used to stabilize the coin's finance before it is completed on the blockchain.
Launching new projects, so to get this money company runs ICO to raise money for their project. Those interested in the project buy tokens for a certain price. The prices are most times in Ether (ETH), but some also use more than one digital coin. Those who want to invest in the project send their money in the digital coin(ETH BTC LTC etc.) to the ICO smart contract. Tokens are then sent to the investors based on the amount invested.

ICOs startups have a whitepaper that states the project's purpose, the type of digital coin, and the amount of money needed. Investors become partial owners of the company, and they can use their shares to vote on certain decisions the company is undertaking. Investors receive their benefits based on the amount invested, and they can also sell their shares for profit or loss, depending on how best the company is doing.

Although ICOs normally deal with blockchain or cryptocurrency projects such as Ripple, ICO can also be used in different market sectors. Through ICO, telegram raised an amount to start its "Telegram Open Network," a chat forum.

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Difference between ICO and IEO

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Both ICO and IEO have the same mission to raise money to start up a project. Likewise, they also have differences.

1. With ICO, any person can launch it; this makes it easy to scam people, but with IEO renowned companies are involved, this makes it a bit secure.

2. IEO has a granted coin for listing in the stock exchange market, but that is not so for ICO; it can be listed or not.

3. The legality within ICO is not intensive as compared to IEO. With IEO, the exchange will require an approved KYC from you.

4. It Is compulsory for investors to buy the tokens from the projects team but in IEO, the exchange the same way you would buy any other token from the same exchange.

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Advantages and disadvantages of ICOs

Advantages of ICO

1. ICO uses a decentralized blockchain system; this gives the investors the authority to over their assets.

2. Any person can start if only the person has the experts to manage someone.

3. It is easy to make a profit since there is a continual rise in the price of cryptocurrencies.

4. Any person can invest provided the person has cryptocurrency.

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Disadvantages of ICOs

1. There is a high likelihood that the [project will not succeed. About 80% of ICOs turn out to Scams.

2. The funds gathered may not be enough to set up the project due to a lack of investors.

3. The digital currency may become volatile, making investors lose their money

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Ark ICO

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Ark is one of the most successful ICO projects; Ark was launched in 2017 by Mike Doty, Travis Walker, and Scott McPherson. It was relaunched in 2018 with a much more base code improvement.

Ark aims to create a very flexible and scalable network that people worldwide can easily adopt, and Iaims at creating start-ups, developers, and users that would be linked to blockchain technology in every sector of the financial world.

Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus is used to mine ARK tokens. Node operators have to pay 25 ARK if they want to become forgers. The first forgers and they are the first 51are those who create the blocks; 2 ARK is awarded for a block created. Each block takes approximately 8seconds to create and contains 150 transactions.

Delegates set the transaction costs and are determined by the market rate. ARK tokens are easy to trade, and it is accepted by world variety of cryptocurrencies. ARK trading platforms include Binance, OKEx, Upbit, LiteBit, and many more.
More than $2 million worth of ARK transacted daily.

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Conclusion
Investing in cryptocurrencies and other Initial Coin Offerings ("ICOs") is very risky and speculative, hence it is advisable to consult an expert in cryptocurrency if you don't have any technical know-how.

It was a very interesting and informative tutorial,
Thank you Professor @imagen