Initial Coin Offerings as a new way to raise money? Investigating risks and opportunities from a consumer perspective

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Business economics - Review of Business Studies, grade: 1.3, LMU Munich, language: English, abstract: The term initial coin offering (ICO) seems to be the new hype of the crypto community. It offers never before seen possibilities for consumers and companies but suffers from draw backs like a lack of regulation. In 2017, an impressive number of 4.6 billion USD was invested in ICOs. Consequently, ICOs are of large public interest. Therefore, it is interesting to determine what influences the behaviour of investors. Accordingly, the aim of this thesis is to investigate how general investment factors change in the disruptive environment of ICOs. Hence, in this context, relevant general investment factor - such as reputation, media coverage, corporate social responsibility, risk and other factors including macroeconomic situation, past performance and technological uncertainty - are considered. The results show that, due to a lack of reliable measures for quantitative factors, qualitative investment factors gain greater importance for ICOs. Furthermore, the highest importance was assigned to media coverage, which is important for investors who want to overcome the high information asymmetries that exist for ICOs.