How ICOs are Perceived in the US and Asia

Based on the host country, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) represent something different. For example, in the US, ICOs are about ideas and in the Asian market, they are about returns.

Zhuling Chen, the co-founder of Aelf, a cloud computing startup out of Singapore, told CoinDesk that: “At the very beginning, the information coming from Asia to the US was very limited. We didn’t know what’s really going on.”

The Asian market used the information from the ecosystems around Bitcoin and ethereum to take off. Now, they are very distinct from them. An example is that of the major Asian banks that launched distinct efforts starting in early 2016. As CoinDesk spoke to investors and entrepreneurs during Blockchain Week in New York City, they were able to spot the differences between the two markets.

The only common thing throughout the conversation about Asia is that retail and institutional investors all want returns to realize much more quickly than investors do in the US. This might be the reason why it always has had a strong ecosystem of exchanges.

Jason Fang, the managing partner at Sora Ventures, speaking during Token Summit III said, “Asians love to gamble.”

He told CoinDesk that they want long lockup periods like most western projects. They would like to see tokens get released, listed and realize some of the gains that come from retail investors and market makers buying into a new coin.

The principle of investors in Asia is to get coins listed and sell them as they go up. They are aware o f the fact that there is going to be an uptick after listing as market makers enter new tokens, but his firm avoids exiting to fiat.

He said, “We’re money in, money out in crypto.”