Initial Coin Offering (ICO)
Also called: ICO, token sale, IEO
An ICO sells newly created tokens to the public to fund a project, typically before any product exists. The 2017 boom raised billions with little more than a whitepaper, and regulators later determined that many were unregistered securities offerings. The mechanism survives under other names, but the era of raising tens of millions from a PDF is legally closed in most major markets.