How I Started My Own ICO - You Can Too!

Hey you, welcome back to the channel. And guys, today we're gonna talk a little bit about why I started my own ICO, but not only why, how I started it. And a lot easier than some people think. One issue though is it's not so much that it's that there's a problem in starting an ICO, The problem lies in getting them listed, uh, in a marketplace, getting them traded on an exchange. That can be a bit more challenging, uh, to get that part done. But we're going to talk a little bit today about how it's done, how I was able to do it, uh, and why I did it. And, uh, guys, this is a lot of information to digest, so this is something that, um, we'll probably do a series of videos on, especially for you guys serious about doing this, because a lot of information you need to take in. But this first video is going to be an overall run-through of how I did it, and the next videos will go more in-depth in details about what you need to do. So first, let's talk about what an ICO is. An ICO stands for initial coin offering, and And ICOs are a bit much like IPOs, which stands for initial public offering. And the difference is an IPO is like when you see a company that's issuing its first shares of stocks, and like Facebook did, like Google at some point. You'll see them open up in various exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange, etc., and they're, you know, putting their shares on the market. And ICOs have a similar feel to them, but instead it's the first issuance of various types of cryptocurrencies or tokens like Bitcoin. And they're— because they're a different animal and because it's all decentralized, they don't fall under the regulations of, you know, what IPOs fall under, which makes them very difficult to do. And there have been some new developments, new SEC rulings, and we'll cover that as well throughout our series of videos to help you understand what these new rulings mean for ICO startups. But You know, basically that's pretty much what they are. You know, this is platforms trying to raise money to get their ideas to better improve the system, the platform, the blockchain technology. It doesn't have to be just for that though. It can also be for other ideas. You can use the coins to start money forests. We'll, you know, talk about that and get into that as well. But the best performing ones have to do with dealing with problems and solutions to the blockchain, you know, making it more, making it faster, making it better, making it more stable. Making it more efficient. And so what those have performed quite well, those have been quite popular and have raised a lot of money. Some people start ICOs in order to have some dream to make a lot of money, and they hear about ICOs raising $50 million, $100 million, and, you know, doing all these wonderful great things. And if you're one of those type of people, yeah, it's possible to start an ICO. Yeah, it's possible for that to happen. But also bear in mind, a lot of these coins that people do start and trade on exchanges don't always perform well. Some of them turn out to be really bad coins, really bad to put your money in. And well, we'll talk about that as well. But let's first talk about why I started my ICO and how I went about it. So we'll, you know, have an idea how to go about it. Unlike some other, you know, people who are companies that started ICOs, maybe dreamed of hitting it big or want to finance some big huge project, my story is a great deal different. My, my, the start of my ICO has to do a lot with necessity. Necessity to facilitate, uh, a situation in virtual 3D worlds that doesn't exist anymore. And, uh, to help you better understand that, uh, I was involved in the world of Second Life. Now, Second Life is probably one of the biggest virtual world experiences, uh, out there, probably the one of the, you know, the, the most successful that performed the best. They bringing millions upon millions of dollars per day that goes back to the end users and the company itself. Uh, and they've just done quite well with the creation of these avatars, clothing these avatars, uh, the appearance of these avatars. So the fashion industry, some real-life big corporate brands have been involved in Second Life. IBM's been involved in Second Life at some point in time. And, you know, it's worked, it's worked quite well, uh, and these brands have been able to kind of expand through Second Life, and some end users have been able to create brands and, uh, you, uh, have some success in that. But where a lot of people made a lot of money in the Second Life world, um, was in what they call the real estate market, which of course you can't really have real estate in a 3D space. However, you can have computers that occupy actual physical real estate someplace. So when you have an avatar in a 3D world, obviously it has to be able to occupy a space somewhere, and that's on a computer. So people— Second Life made a lot of money by renting out these computers letting people buy them, and then they can create these virtual spaces and worlds and these avatars that they clothe and dress. And it's kind of, it's kind of interesting because Second Life was one of the first popular tokens out there. They started back in like 2003, and they had something called the Lending Dollar, which wasn't considered, uh, real money, but it could be traded for real money just like Bitcoin. The only difference is LendingDollars weren't decentralized. You know, of course it was, it's headed up by a corporation that is registered in the United States, and of course it would be under United States jurisdiction to be shut down at any time for whatever reason. So that's where the difference is with Second Life. But the LendingDollar behaved, it had its own exchange and market, much like Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies behave. Behave today as a token, with people using them and finding value within them. But getting back on track to how this is all important, uh, once people figured out that they can have a real estate market within this 3D virtual world, it's called Second Life. That kind of is like an imitation of your first life where people can expand their you know, who they are personality-wise, or kind of create this version of themselves or their personality within these virtual spaces. Then people kind of evolved to, well, why not just have stock exchanges that trade the value of the content we create and the value we create? So Second Life was very, you know, pretty much ahead of its time and creating situations and services like this. So we started these stock exchanges within the world of Second Life where people would make money off of the businesses they conducted in Second Life, whether it be businesses building certain game-like scripting for the avatars to use, or again clothing apparel, you know, which is probably the number one biggest market in Second Life, probably brings in millions of dollars per day. And, uh, you know, Second Life probably brings in close to a billion dollars a year, about half a billion a year in sales and money being exchanged. So very successful, very successful site. But the stock exchanges didn't do as well as the real estate, it didn't do as well as all of the other business ventures. It was being used to raise money for these Second Life users to start businesses that did some of these things that we do in Second Life, like make clothes, make jewelry, make scripting devices, cars, planes, spaceships, whatever the case may be. They didn't do so well because these stock exchanges, because they were created more by the people, they didn't have a budget like, say, the company of Linden Labs, which is Second Life. There were many issues with how they were run. Many, in many cases, they were run by one person. And, you know, as I had one myself and I worked with several other stock exchange creators through Second Life in a time when we had 4 or 5 running at a time. But the issue was because they were only in many cases run by one person, that person could become ill, that person could take a hiatus, that person could just steal all the funds and disappear and never come back. So it was just a number of things happening that couldn't be controlled that would happen time and time again. To the point Second Life finally had to get involved and say, we don't think this is a good idea to have these stock exchanges. Uh, much like the banks, they had banks before. A bank would pop up every other day in Second Life and people would lose money because the competition of people trying to make interest rates to compete against the next bank, they raised interest rates to ridiculous amounts they couldn't pay account depositors, you know, in the Linden tokens. And it just got so bad along with that at the casinos that Second Life finally stepped in and got rid of all that. They had to do that with the stock exchanges too because the stock exchanges started to follow a similar suit. Now the only problem with doing it with the stock exchanges though were you had investors, you had people who had helped a lot of these businesses developed within the world of Second Life, and now their equity was in part, you know, going to be lost or making it very difficult for them to transfer their equity positions within Second Life. And this is all important, guys, because this, this has a lot to do with why I started an ICO, to facilitate a need through a coin to help those investors who had that equity locked up to be able to now trade it. So we're trying to reach out to all those guys to get their equity back within this coin. And you know what that does is it makes our coin usable, it makes it valuable. And there are over 21,000 accounts like that we know of in Second Life, so Our goal is to have those people within our coin using our coin to facilitate that need. Now this is all important too because when you're developing an ICO, it has to fulfill a certain need. And when you're talking about the blockchain, you're talking about cryptocurrency, in many cases they're gonna want that need if you want your coin to be successful, to facilitate a blockchain as well itself, not just a personal project of some sort, but to actually create a solution. So although we never— I didn't start the coin to, you know, be this person that raises a lot of money, raised $50 million, raised $100 $100 million. I created it to protect the equity of investors within these 3D virtual worlds. However, as opportunity has arisen over the blockchain, and I now see a way I can also help the blockchain with this coin, uh, we've opted to include— we'd like to promote and advertise, uh, coins, new coins being developed, and, and ones not performing so well that need recognition, that need people to know that they're out there and what they're doing. And I think that's very important because not only does marketing contribute tremendously to the success of an idea or brand, you know, it's just necessary, and people spend a lot of money on marketing. So we think that a lot of those marketing dollars people spend to promote themselves and their coins can not only come back to our coin, but we'd be able to make deals with a lot of these coins as to, you know, basically, you know, if they can't pay in fiat currency or other type of coins, that we may be able to do a deal where we'll take some of their coins as payment to promote and advertise them and things like that. So we see a lot of potential here and potentially a good deal of money through this, although this wasn't our initial endeavor. Our initial goal was just to protect the equity of end users who've invested in businesses in 3D virtual worlds. Various things like that. So now that we have a backstory about what you need to do when you're starting an ICO, what function you need to— it needs to perform if you want to be successful, let's get into how we actually did it and how you can do it too. So this is just our hub. This is a hub. This is just our site, but you'll see that this is just a kind of a welcoming page. You can do some various things on this little site we have here. We will, with raised funds, be developing a much better website, but you'll see as we hit the register button here— now I'm gonna let that load here— it's gonna take us to the actual platform blockchain technology that we use in order to our coins, to sell our coins on the open market, and, you know, do various things like that that are necessary to have a coin. And what we're using is a company called Proof. Now Proof created this blockchain technology, much just like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the like. And as you can see, what Proof does One of their main, uh, according to the exchange, real estate, right? So they can raise money to buy real life properties all over the world, from England to Korea to the United States. And, uh, when people purchase the coin increases value by having it tied to the real estate market. So that's a great idea, and they actually have a market for their coins, and we're on their system. And so I definitely recommend them because you can get started with Proof and you don't even have to put up any money. But now to get listed on their market, your, your company does have to be approved by them. So So you have to do that, but the approval seems a lot more lenient than I think some other people are. And if you use their platform, you don't have to fund with Bitcoins, Ethereums, and the like. So I'm going to go to my coin just to show you guys some things about the site. And I'm not going to do a tutorial on the proof of stake. Platform here, but I will leave links on how they did it because there's— their tutorials are gonna be a lot better than mine. So I'm just gonna show you how easy I set it up, but then I'm gonna also talk about— and maybe this video and some others we're gonna do, we're gonna talk about basically things you have to know on the legal side, things that you need to be aware of, things you need to do, and especially with the new SEC ruling. If you want to start one of these things, that you can't just— you need to know something about them. You know, background, I've worked for several investment firms, I participated in IPOs, and so I have an understanding of IPOs, which are similar to ICOs, but I also have a great understanding of the legalities that are affiliated with IPOs, what you need to do, especially with this new SEC ruling. So I'll be covering that, uh, you know, as we go through this series. But as you can see, guys, you can buy one of my tokens here for 1 cent. You can see that it's been approved by the Proof Network, and you You can also see all these cool things right here on the right-hand side that can be done, where coins can be transferred, you can issue dividends, create smart contracts. And so we can deliver this to any user on the network, not only just any user on the Proof Network, we can deliver this coin to anyone who's on the Bitcoin or Ethereum network. And we'll leave links on how to do that as well. But, you know, what I think is also going to be very attractive about our offer here is our price is only 1 cent. Now, we do not take payments in any fiat currency. You can take PayPal, but we do not. We only take in Bitcoins at this point, or or Steam Dollars or Linden Dollars, which is the Second World Dollar, because those are 3 tokens that I really believe in, that I like to exchange and I like to trade with. Uh, to me, they're the, the ones that are going to be around, that are going to be some of the strongest. Linden Dollars are already strong. Bitcoins are already strong. Linden Dollars are quite stable, but also Steam Dollars, which I like the opportunity that exists in Steam Pack Dollars right now. So we will be dealing a lot in those and buying quite a bit of those and exchanging for quite a bit of those. So if you got Steam Dollars, you can buy as many of these 1-cent tokens as you wish. If you got Bitcoins or if you got Linden Dollars, also we're going to be giving away about $20 worth of free MECO coin. Uh, for our first 500, our first 500, uh, uh, uh, you know, viewers to this information, all you need to do is go to the buy/sell token page, uh, and, uh, hit request your tokens and hit request 20 tokens. We'll know you you know, answering to the first, you know, you know, our offer here. And it will only be the first 500, you'll receive $20. So make sure you take advantage of that. These coins have real value to people. So this isn't going to be a typical, just any, any ICO starting. As you know, as I said earlier, we have equity already in in the coin from Virtual Worlds in our offering. So it's saying 100 million units here. On the market, it's really only going to be 500,000— I'm sorry, 500 million tokens at 1 cent each. That comes to about $500,000 USD, and that $500,000 USD $50 is— there's a reason we're only raising that much, and we'll get into that as you go through the video series about things you can do when you're dealing with starting ICOs and the SEC rules, specifically if you're in the United States. If you're in other parts of the world, may not even apply to you, but if you're in the United States, there are certain offering you can do that even if the SEC were to step in, you would still fall under a waiver if they consider the tokens to be real tradable cash or equity. I will get into that later. You do need to stay tuned for the video series if you're very serious about starting an ICO. As I was saying earlier, guys, to start this, all you need to do is register here at the Proof Network. You can do it through our website. You can do it going directly to the Proof website. We'll leave links in the description. But yeah, so you can, you can do that. But let's look down here at some, some other things we can do. I'm gonna go to transfer here and show you some, some of what, how it works and why I think this is such a system, but great platform, but also a very, very user-friendly, very user-friendly. So I like, I like how Proof works. And you see here, as a receiver, you can send to whatever address you wish. That could— that means you can send to a Bitcoin or Ethereum address, or you can go send to users, which is going to be free, because that's the great thing to our users. At no cost. Like, you know, what you have at Bitcoin, you got to pay miner fees and all of that. You don't have to do that, and you can send it here to, you know, wherever you want to. So you can select your blockchain here. Here's the Proof blockchain, the drop-down box where— that's the one I'm using. But you, you can, you can use Bitcoin, Ethereum as well. And like I said, we'll talk about that. We'll get into guys in some upcoming videos. So let me go back to the main dashboard here so I can show you all some other cool stuff. But anyway, guys, very easy to get this started. To get on the Proof, to be featured, to be featured on the Proof marketplace like you saw the real estate companies in the beginning You do have to go through a more rigorous process, but to appear in the marketplace, to be searchable in the marketplace like MyCoin is, as I pulled up, it's quite a lenient system, but they do have to review it and approve it. They also have ways you can run your own ICO offering to get people people buying it directly on the system. And, uh, of course the success of that is going to be based on how far your marketing potential and advertising potential can go. Uh, with that, we'll be able to facilitate exchange of tokens on our website, so you'll have— you also have to look into that as well. We'll cover that in upcoming videos. But guys, just wanted to tell you about why I started my ISO, how I did it through the Proof Network. We'll be doing a series of other videos addressing specific things you need to understand and specific things that you need to do. Let me show you all my balance of shares here. That's what I was trying to pull up, trying to show you the issuance of of the 100 million MECO coin. And, uh, remind you all to register, be the first 500 people, and you will receive $20 worth of MECO coin. And once you get these, guys, this is another thing I want to add real quick about why this is so important, especially for the virtual world users that are watching this video and, um, any, and, and just, you know, people who aren't part of virtual worlds but want to get involved in our coin. And that is, once these coins are issued, like the free $20 worth of coins we're giving you, no matter what happens to me, no matter what happens to the Miko's Corporation, the value of that coin, you'll still be able to sell it and market it on this exchange— oh, I'm sorry, on this— in the marketplace here. You'll be able to sell it, uh, you know, uh, for whatever price you wish. Now, of course, the market will determine what the value of the coin is, but the point I'm making, especially with virtual worlds, is that this becomes now this decentralized system where you don't need one guy who's over the exchange and he has to make sure the exchange is up and running and facilitates everybody. With this system, any of that— if something were to happen to me, you guys could still sell, trade your coins, whether I never— and as well as that, we will be leaving a lot of our intellectual content videos. If you read our white paper, you'll see that our content can still make money even if the company's not even functioning. That is because we will be giving permissions for people to upload our content, trade them on systems and sites like Steemit where they can still make money, as long as the money that's generated through the, uh, the, uh, our content and intellectual property is all used to purchase back in Miko's coin, and that those coins do not be sold. And there are many advantages to that because that would mean that the people who, uh, are users of the Miko's coin, they will be able to profit from the company, have value in their coin, even without me being present even without the management team being present. Although there will be a management team— there is a management team that will facilitate doing this as well. But even if something happened to them, just a regular person who has the Miko's Coin, who wanted to keep and see value in their coin, could post our material, still make money off of it, provided they take the money and they invest it back in the MECO coin. Now, you know, of course, in the event we find out they're not doing that, we reserve the right to bring legal action against them. But provided we see— in the event something happens to me or the management team, in the event we see that they did use a good amount or most of the amount of the proceeds to repurchase MECO coin back that weren't sold You know, there would be no legal action taken on our part. We would see that as keeping the coin healthy, keeping the company running. Although no intentions for that to happen, it's good to know there's a failsafe, and I think that makes us unique to any other cryptocurrency out there. So guys, that's all I want to talk about in this video. Be sure to get your free Mikko's Coin, $20. Have any problems? Comment, get in touch with us on our site or wherever you're watching this video. We will help you, uh, as soon as possible. Guys, if you like content like this, don't forget to like and subscribe. If you're watching this on Steemit, don't forget to upvote. Until next time, guys, take care.