Making sense of this year’s outrageous ICOs

GUEST: Initial coin offerings (ICOs) have raised a tremendous amount of capital in 2017. Filecoin raised $257 million. Tezos raised $232 million. Bancor raised $153 million. Status raised $108 million. And EOS raised $185 million in the first five days of a year-long ICO.
These numbers seem absolutely absurd for projects that are essentially seed stage investments, but the markets are not completely irrational.
The purpose of doing an ICO for your blockchain project goes beyond just raising mone