ICO Whitepaper Writing: How to Fail

Photo by James Pond on Unsplash.

1. Start with a lengthy explanation of the history and concept of Bitcoin. This is of burning interest to most potential blockchain investors who have certainly never come across the name Satoshi Nakamoto or novel concepts such as proof-of-work.
2. After demonstrating your vast knowledge about Bitcoin, Ethereum and other altcoins, jump directly into a lengthy dissertation about the most obscure features of your own coin. Don’t bother explaining how they are relevant to your business case.
3. In fact, don’t even have a business case. As everyone knows, investors are not at all interested in making a profit.
4. Copy & paste someone else’s legal disclaimer. It doesn’t matter if it was written for a company registered in a different country than yours; nobody is going to read the disclaimer anyway.
5. Forget to change the name of the project in the legal disclaimer.
6. Notice that copy & paste is the quickest way to grow your document to an impressive length. Use your new-found powers to borrow some in-depth articles on your industry of choice on Medium.
7. Forget to change the font of the borrowed text to match the rest of your whitepaper.
8. Ask your brother-in-law (the one who went into design after his landscaping business failed) to draw up a logo for the project. Remember that the logo needs to have dots somewhere that are connected by lines; otherwise, nobody will believe that your project is a legit blockchain project.
9. Put logo on front page.
10. Convert to PDF.
11. And you’re done! \o/

(And remember to carefully keep away from our new whitepaper template and guide. We’re serious.)