Nowadays, ICOs (or Initial Coin Offerings) are all the rage. Unlike traditional IPOs, ICOs allow startups to streamline the capital-raising process while at the same time enhancing the number of potential investors. While venture capital is still part of the equation, other non-traditional investors and stakeholders are more than welcome to join. How is this possible? Is venture capital being democratized?
By default, blockchain technology (BCT) has built-in financial incentives. In the now-classic case of Bitcoin, such incentive is the generation of a cryptocurrency. Users mining the Bitcoin blockchain to process network transactions get rewarded a certain amount of Bitcoins for their computationally expensive and power-hungry efforts. Without such incentive, Bitcoin network members will