 And we are live. What's up guys? Hope you're a weekend. Well, I want to make this quick video for the next 20 minutes because I've had many questions pertaining to this title of this video, our ICO scam. So my hope and my attempt in this video is to talk about where we are currently, how the market views the ICOs and where I believe that we're heading in the next six months and also maybe heading in the next year. Also some house cleaning notes, like always. If you hear me, if my mic's okay, please put it in the chat box. Yes, you can hear me because sometimes these mics don't actually connect properly with YouTube Live for some weird various reasons. So I'm assuming you guys can hear me okay. That's good. Okay, so let me just double check one thing. Okay, we are good. So there's a couple of things I do want to start off this conversation with. A couple of things to take into consideration. Right now, we are probably in the biggest bull run ever in the cryptocurrency landscape. It's, I don't even know, having checked today to tell you the truth. Let's see. I don't want to check numbers on a daily basis. Total, what is it? North of $600 billion, roughly. So we are approaching $600 billion. And we are ending off 2018 within two weeks. I would not, honest to God, I would not be surprised if I got pumped to $1 trillion. That would not shock me. But obviously we're off to a $1 trillion market cap. Some people are saying $2 trillion by February and March. That's a lot of money entering this ecosystem. And there's a lot of issues with that. But we're not going to be talking about just cryptocurrency. I specifically want to focus on ICOs. Because in the last six months, give or take, there has been more than $2 billion raised in ICOs. Now, one of the first, not the first, but one of the first was Ethereum. It raised, I think it was like 18, sorry, it was 18 or 40. I forget the actual figure, but it raised via Bitcoin. This is my takes on ICOs right now. I believe we are in an evolutionary phase, like any technology and like any organism. It has to start somewhere. And right now it's starting off in this very chaotic ecosystem where a lot of new players are coming in and they're viewing the ICO space as just raising capital, which is not. That's not what ICOs are about. It can be, and I will be getting that in a second, talking about the evolutionary stages of ICOs. It can be, but we're not there yet. And the problem today I see in the ICO space are this. Number one, most of these ICOs are claiming their utility token. I've probably only seen two out of, I don't know, hundreds of white papers I've read. That's the first thing. So a lot of them are trying to escape security regulations. At the end of the day, they don't even need a token. So that's the first thing. They're promising to be a utility when they're not. They're just straight security. Number two, they're using a token and they're using blockchain when it's not needed. It's very rare that you actually need a blockchain in your business. That blockchain technology, 10X, 20X, or even 100X is your business. It's really rare. There's rare cases that when you use it, it's a massive amplifier and it maximizes the efficiency of the total network. Blockchains are slow. Blockchains are horrible at storing data. They're horrible at refund policies when it comes to, let's say, e-commerce. They're horrible. A lot of things, a lot of these new, say, dApps or ICOs are saying they want to do by blockchaining it. And that's really troublesome for me because the technology is not meant for that. Number three, there's a huge, huge issue when it comes to actually technical people in the space. Now, best figures put it around 400 to 700 legitimate full-stack blockchain devs around the world. And people who really understand crypto economics, it's probably a handful of people. And now you have all these ICOs who've raised billions of dollars that don't have talent. And we see the blockchains every day. We get emailed every day looking for developers, which are trying to solve the problem by creating online curriculum and helping companies actually fill in those positions for developers. But that's a massive problem when you have all these companies who've raised millions of dollars that have zero human capital, not just developers, people who understand the space. Okay? Next issue is timing. When you look at a bunch of these ICOs, they're kind of a joke to tell you the truth. They're trying to solve this magic problem that doesn't really exist today that nobody really actually wants to, let's say, fix at the end of the day. And their business model is horrendous because they're focusing on speculation. What kind of business model speculation? So there's a lot of issues right now. Massive issues. We can go down the rabbit hole talking about security, who audits their code. We can talk about how the wallets are built. But generally speaking, my biggest issue is, A, 99% of these companies don't need a token. Whatsoever. I know I'm not looking at the camera. The camera's over here. If you guys want me to look, you know, but I like it on the side. Okay. So the issues is, A, they don't need a token. Whatsoever. Like, period. Number two, they're raising an obscene amount of money, which they don't need. Like, even if you look at traditional angel investing, you have a precede round. Then you have a series A, then you have a series B. And within the precede round, you're allocated, let's say, $500,000 to prove your concept, to get, you know, product market fit, to build up your team. And once you have your team in place, eventually raise a series A, which is anywhere between a million and $5 million to go on the next stage. And when you're seeing the companies today raising millions and millions of dollars, they have no, let's say, they have no legal requirements to do anything for you. They have no obligations for you. And pretty much you're giving them money to blow on, let's say, nothing. So there's massive issues. It's ridiculous. Okay. But, you know, this is part of a natural ecosystem. And it's happened with the IPOs back in the 90s. So it's no different. We're shell companies where people have promised all these ridiculous promises and companies. And at the end of the day, well, guess what? They don't deliver because it's bogus. It's vaporware. It's people doing IOU promises. So, you know, it's a massive, massive issue right now in the ICO space. And you see there's ICO saturation. You actually see that a lot of people are getting fed up right now. And in fact, the majority of them right now that have launched haven't even hit their 50% mile mark. So the market is self-regulating and the market is fed up. So those are my issues with it. And obviously there's massive more issues and we can focus on each different issue that I spoke about and go down the rabbit hole on that. Where we'll be going in the future is interesting because a lot of these companies right now, they assume it's for raising money, which is not but it could be. So in the future, I actually see if you really want to do a token, if you really, really want to do a token, number one, if it is a utility token, if it's one of those rare use cases that it is, A, you got to be open source code, mandatory, no private code, mandatory open source code, that's A. B, you have to be very, very close to launch date of your utility token. So it's not one of these ICOs where like I'm going to raise money now in the hopes of in two years we launch this utility token. No. And if you don't have the runway cash currently, then you can do something like a SAFT or raise a small angel round of 500K to give you runway until you actually build up your technology for an ICO. So open source code and very, very close to launching the actual utility before the ICO. Number three is something that Vitalik and Atrubit team was working on is an interactive coin offering, which is very interesting. It creates a very unique dynamic way of raising tokens which are locked up and vetted with the users of that ecosystem. So just say, let's say you do get two, three million dollars raised on the ICO. Well, you don't get it right away. And it's very akin similar to how the series A, B, and C would be where only way you can receive more funds is if the community all votes in favor of if you've accomplished your, let's say, high priority tasks in your roadmap, right? So those are three things. Open source, right? Really close to production ready and interactive coin offering. Now, it's not mandatory interactive coin offering. I think it's one of the best, let's say, models and methods I've seen so far when it comes to an ICO. And then on the flip side, people who are just looking to raise money, let's say, that would be a securities. Don't kid yourself. Listen, don't kid yourself. Your token is not a fucking utility. Your token doesn't do something, especially your app. I mean, the whole idea of forcing a person to use a token inside your ecosystem is insane. Does Facebook force us? Does Twitter force us? We're in YouTube right now. Imagine if YouTube forced you to use a token. It doesn't work that way, right? But token that represents equity or token that represents maybe some royalty rights or token that represents dividends or, let's say, some payout returns in the future. That's a security. And you will go through the proper procedures to get regulated and to register your security and to give optionalities for accredited investors and also angel rounds or angel pools, I would say, for non-accredited people, which is under the JOBS Act. Now, what's great about this, for example, I'm an angel investor and, you know, you've got two ways of exiting a company. Well, three, but two are the most, let's say, what you want. Number one is acquisition, which is obviously really, really rare. And that usually takes five to eight years on average. And number two is an IPO, which is ridiculously rare. Like, it's not going to happen. If it does, you're like one of the unicorns. And number three that I mentioned, which is really rare as well, is you can sell your shares to your partners. But most angel investors invest anywhere between, like, say, $15,000, $35,000. And the actual legal cost of selling your shares to your other shareholders is really costly. And it brings a lot of legality issues when it comes to shareholders agreement. It brings a lot of legality issues for ownership in the corporations and voting rights. Now, imagine having a token that represents equity in a smart contract that just you and your partners have. This isn't in the public. This is private, where your token will increase in value privately based on the revenue and the performance of that company. So let's say this four of us and both all four of us invest $25,000 for a total of $100,000. And that token represents $25,000 of equity that you put in the company. Now, let's fast forward five years. And let's say that $25,000 of your original investment is worth maybe, I don't know, $500,000 based on the increase in the company. Now you have the optionality between your shareholders with the original smart contract agreement to automatically sell them that token instantaneously, which is amazing. This is a win-win relationship for both investor and founders of the company. So that's where I think we're going to eventually go. And we're going to obviously see different iterations and variations of that. But if you are planning on doing ICO as a utility, you must be open source. You must have almost literally right at the finish line production ready ecosystem. And you would have a lockup periods with interactive coin offering. And then we flip that around to iterate again. If it's a token for raising money, it will be equity driven or it will be some type of revenue sharing or royalty right sharing tied up privately speaking, fully regulated as a securities. So those are my initial takes right now. And like I said at the beginning of this video, I really believe that the space right now is going through an evolutionary process. And there's a lot of scams out there. And it's not like they know their scams. It's just they have no idea what they're doing. And they really believe that they're a blockchain token will help their business. And my humble opinion, I literally believe 98.9% of these tokens eventually will go to zero. Zero. They will be worthless very soon. And a lot of these ICOs have raised ridiculous amounts of money that have runway cash for two years will burn their cash within the next year and a half or year. And it will show nothing for it. This is regular startup scene. It happens all the time. But now we're going to have a proliferation of it globally speaking in the ICO scene. So that's where I stand right now. So what I'm going to do right now and take some questions with you guys. And we will start off with, okay, let's see. What is the utility token from Jack Mihoff? Ethereum is a utility token. Zero X project is a utility token. Cosmos is a utility token. Spank chain is utility token. Those are some examples. So Robert, is it necessary to have an ICO to create a currency for a blockchain based game? Or can you just use something like Ether directly? Yeah, that's actually one of my first questions. It's a great question, Robert. One of my first questions to people who want to do an ICO is why can't you just use either Monero or Bitcoin? Why do you need to take your own, create your own token? Why? And 99% of time they can't answer that question. So you know it's all for the money. Do I think most tokens are useless in the long run? Yes. I think 98% of tokens are useless. Yes. I'm very bullish guys on decentralized cryptocurrencies like Monero, like Bitcoin. I know some people say Ethereum is not, but I say Ethereum. It's the server purpose. They have a great dev team. This is really important to pay attention to that. Then what is the security token? So this is from Ironworks. A security token is literally a token you raise for money, nothing else. It's no utility, serves no purpose in the ecosystem. Hence the security. Hence you as an investor have some equity or have some type of promissory payback for your investment, your initial investment. All right. Oh, these questions. Shit, these questions are going fast. Robert, doing an ICO seems like a real pain in watching companies do convoluted. Well, yeah, it is a pain. And mark my word, guys, the securities SEC and OSC here in Ontario and a bunch of other securities commissions around the world will be investigating and arresting a lot of founders in 2018. You see the trouble with Tezos. You see the trouble with all these other ICO people getting arrested and actually going to jail. This will happen 10x in 2018. Mark my words. Guaranteed. Will I do a video comparing Ethereum, EOS and Cardano? Maybe. That's a lot of work for me. Maybe I'll do it. Is there any other platform for ICOs other than Ethereum? Yeah. Bitcoin will have that with Rootstock. You can do it on Waves right now. You can do it on Ethereum Classic right now. You can do it on, I think you can do on, no, Cardano's not ready yet. You can do it on what else? I forget. Those are those on top of my mind right now. Any thoughts on token pay as an ICO token pay? I don't know what that is, so I can't comment on that. I've said this before. What is my prediction for Ethereum 2018? I won't make any prediction for pricing, but they are launching proof of stake. Well, first round's a proof of stake. They'll run parallel chains with proof of work and proof of stake. Then every 100th epoch block will be a proof of stake block in the proof of work block, and then there'll be a hybrid between mainnet and testnet, and then they'll run that for a little bit till fully the proof of stake takes over the proof of work. So they're doing that. Pricing? Who knows? I really don't know. Did I invest in iota? No. What's your opinion on people behind Cardano? Charles Cardano, former founder of Ethereum, the IHOK Foundation in Japan, I believe. They've hired amazing people who have PhD degrees in cryptography, and they are really taking this approach on mathematics and research first before just theory. I want to say theory, but more or less just like marketing. So I wish them all the best. I'm actually paying a really close attention to Cardano, even though the market cap is fucking ridiculous. From Robert, is Truffle the best framework for making Ethereum smart contracts? I'm using Node.js for back-end. Does block geeks intend to focus heavily on providing training? Yeah, we already have it. Robert, if you go to our Ethereum 101 course under the developer option, we do it all there. And we just hired four full-time teachers to continue teaching in crypto-economics Ethereum and other types of languages, whether Haskell for Cardano or maybe even Graphene, or obviously we are focusing on C++ for Bitcoin. Can I talk about Bitcoin Cash? What's the best party win? I've mentioned this a million times. What's that fair capitalism? I'm not against anybody. Let the best party win. Let the market speak. What is the interactive coin offering? Google it. Interactive coin offering, true bit. What does it take on Bitcoin? I'm going to the same questions, guys. It's an open market. Anyone can do anything. Let the best product, the best use case, the best dev team win. That's it. That's it. Simple as that. It's not really more complicated. Quantum, why is it going up? I don't know. Maybe you can inform me why is it going up. I have no idea. How do I know Vitalik's father, which is my business partner? He lives in Toronto and we have a very good entrepreneurial community. I know him way before crypto. Do you expect a crash during 2018, as you said, regulatory problems? I wouldn't call it a crash. I'll call it a self-regulating correction. It's inevitable in any market. It's just going to happen. I just don't know when. What are my thoughts on EOS? Let's see at launch. This is from Connor. Let's see the platform launch. They've raised a ridiculous amount of money. They are running D-Pas, a dedicated proof of stake, which there are some issues I see, but hopefully they have fixed those issues. Voting turnout is one issue. Masternodes, so 21 masternodes, another issue I have. I'm going to find those people and actually you can, let's say, coerce people into doing things if you know who these masternodes are. There's some issues, but I'm pretty sure they're working on it. I like to see it in action. That's it. What about Verge? I don't know anything about Verge, so I can't comment on that. Can I envision a day we'll be able to be a McDonald's with the option to pay in 10 different cryptos? No, not really. Listen, guys, crypto for business is not the best. 99% of the business is not the best at all. It's horrible for auditing. Me hooking up to quick books or fresh books and dealing with the bank and dealing with taxes is horrible. Number two, it has to be instantaneous. Number three, there has to be charge backs. I can't do that in crypto right now, so why would McDonald's do that? This is an interesting question. What is the potential for a coin acquisition and merger and how will that affect coin holders? One thing I've heard before, which is fascinating, is the probability of one blockchain acquiring another blockchain where they actually burn the tokens off. That's actually probability. That'll be interesting. Do I think Bitcoin is ever going to be used as real currency for stores? Not at this given stage. Most people are hoarding it as a store of value as opposed to currency. It's very expensive to transact and it takes a very long time. Now, Lightning Network may solve this, but there's issues with Lightning Network as well. We are a while away before we actually see people use it. I have to see Lightning Network activated and Segwit has to be more than 50% of the network, so we have a lot of work to do. Is Amazon planning to accept cryptos? I've been hearing that for two years. Maybe, maybe not. Could I guide you on trading crypto? No, I don't trade. I don't do stock predictions or people call us fuck. I'm going crazy. I don't do price predictions. I don't do nada stuff. I don't care about prices. I don't care about money and crypto at all. I tell you guys, I really, really don't care. I just care about working on cool technologies and solving real problems in the world. Problems that need solving. Not about I'm going to make you rich. I don't leave a flying fuck about that. Do I think sidechains will be successful? Yes, I think sidechains are very useful and I'm excited to see some go out. Cosmos would be one. Polkadot's another one. Even you can expand to that from not just sidechains, but second layer and third layer infrastructures on rootchains. I'm very excited for those. Given the ICO topic, if you're questioning the ability in the decentralized market what other alternatives that provide open access to you? Given that I don't understand that question, rephrase that question. I really don't get it. What problems do I think blockchain solves the best? Well, one, we still got to figure out remittances. Transfer of value from point A to point B. That's the digital identity, but not identity as your name is Amir or my name is Amir. Identity as all your data. There's 2.1 billion unbanked. I don't care about the unbanked part, I care about controlling their data and utilizing their data for, oh, lights went out. There we go. Utilizing their data for the benefit of themselves. That's massive for me, is controlling your own security data. Those are two big ones, really big ones that need solving. Controlling your data with the blockchain and remittances, so transfer of value from point A to point B still. Everything else will be secondary after that. Name 3 cool dApps. Well, I'm going to talk about one. So crypto kiddies, forget the kiddies for a second. The actual technology, I think it's like the ERC2, I forget what the code was called, but the idea of digitizing a unique, let's say identity online is fascinating because it can be applied to so many things. Take the kiddies for a second away. This can be applied to tickets. So, for example, tickets or ticketmaster have huge issues with fraud, like billion dollars of fraud. Imagine having the option of having a digitized ticket where only you have it. Imagine as an artist, that starving artist that maybe you're getting ripped off on paper or whatever it may be, you can create unique digital, let's say artwork or digital whatever you want to do and sell it to your fans. And only those fans will ever have it. Imagine taking anything in your mind and digitizing it as a store of value or as a store of appreciation or as a store of wonder. And you can now commerce in that and trade with this asset online. So the technology itself is really fucking cool. ERC223. Well, there it is, ERC223. Do I think we'll eventually see virtual countries? Maybe. I know a stone, well, a stone is not a virtual country, but I know they are pushing for digital passports on the blockchain. That'll be interesting too. When will I bring my new top five on the white board? I won't. I'm not doing any of those anymore. I don't care about telling people anymore about what to buy or what I think. Like I said, guys, I'm I have no ambitions of telling people how to make money. No ambitions of predictions. Like money from me and get rich quick and invest in this. Like, that actually makes me sick. So fuck that. What do I think about governments regulating crypto? They will, and I think governments will have their own crypto. I think we'll see RIMMB, Chinese crypto. I think we'll see Russian rubble. I think we'll see a greenback in the future. I don't know if it's in our lifetime. Could be. Probably. But we will see, because it's a perfect tool. You know, imagine you as a citizen using you know, American greenback as a crypto, where they can actually track all your transactions, what you're spending, where you're using it and automatically take taxes. It's perfect. It's the perfect fucking vehicle for the government. From Nicola or Nicola Nicola. Sorry if I butcher the name. Hey, Amir, first of all, thank you so much for contribution. Thank you. In context with ICOs, do you think an investment fund has merit starting off as an ICO? Like blockchain capital where they did it to security, so they did it all legit? Now, why would a fund just need a token? I don't know. If it's just an OPE, I don't see the use for that token. Unless it's securities, which is locked up private, that's a different story. What do I do for a living besides crypto? Spend time with my family, my fiancé, martial arts. A lot of psychedelics. Yeah, a lot of things. Do I think Bitcoin futures will drive the demand for Bitcoin up? Yeah, I think Bitcoin futures might stabilize stuff too. Because of the shorting. It'll be interesting. After the bubble burst, do you think it'll be... No, I actually think corrections are very, very healthy. So if you study Austrian economics, if you study Milton Friedman and Hayek and Thomas Sowell, corrections are good and happens in nature. So more corrections are better. It creates something called, well, we call it a nature homeostatic or homeostasis within a natural ecosystem. Alright guys, I got a call coming up in seven minutes. That's it for now. I will try to do another one of these this week sometime. But if you guys have any questions, leave the comment below this video after it goes live. Okay, peace.