CryptoThoughts — Integrity in Running TokenSale

Well this is a small blog post I am writing to quickly voice my opinion, on an event which was very difficult for me to decide. It so happened that on my humble blog I wrote about an ICO and with some twist of fate, my Blog got better SEO which was un-intentional. I had voiced my opinion about the ICO and also written about how in some forums questions were raised about the ICO. While my intention of writing the Blog was not to promote my blog or bring negative publicity to the ICO itself but inadvertently I was approached by one of the founders of the ICO was offered some ETH to take down my post.

Initially I offered to include the opinion of the founders in my blog, but the complete take down was something I did not want to do. Well there were some issues I had with the conversation I had with the founder and here is what I think.

1. A negative post getting high SEO about an ICO should not matter if the integrity of the ICO is strong. Their work and their conduct will reflect for itself.
2. I was offered ETH in return for taking down the ICO. Now my concern is that while it makes perfect business sense to engage with the detractors and also work out a positive deal where a better name is given to a project or ICO, in this particular case where 10–20 and even 100 ETH that was offered to take down the Blog was unfortunate because what I feel is that the money I was being offered was investor money and each satoshi or ETH should be invested in making the project positive rather paying off to detractors like me.

Finally

While I will not name the founder or the project, I wish that all ICO founders take the ICO that they are running seriously and should rather focus on investing time, effort and money they raise through ICOs into making their projects success and bringing value to the community rather wasting the investor money on swaky offices/lifestyle and wasteful expenditures like the above instance.

While most of the ICO founders a following a FOMO approach to cash on the ICO craze now, many of them forget the importance of sustaining this model of venture capital which would not only help them but if developed will help create a sustainable ecosystem for larger pool of projects and innovators. Hence rather than waiting for Regulators to crack down it is better for founders to act responsibly and instead of looking to cash out the funds and then go into thin air, rather handle investor money and the whole ICO process with morality and care.