What are ICOs?

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are similar to IPOs but they are for the crypto economy. ICO is a way to raise funds for a company that is willing to launch its own currency, D-app, or any other product.

Interested investors can buy the currency during the ICO and be a part of their product. These kinds of investments may be risky(Read about 2017 scams here) but if they turn out well, they will be a multi-bagger.

Fun fact: Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain had an ICO price of 0.3 USD. If you would have held Ether till now, you would have made 10,000% gains. Investing in ICOs is exactly like investing in any other cryptocurrency. You need to:

• Register for the ICO through the project's website
• Exchange fiat currency to buy coins like Ether and Bitcoin (whichever the company accepts)
• Buy the ICO tokens through their website.
• Transfer the tokens to your private wallet for safety.

What are Whitepapers?

Whenever a company is willing to raise funds, they release a whitepaper which is a document consisting of each and every detail of the project. The whitepaper may be technical and hard to understand for some but every new investor must put an effort into understanding the whitepaper before they invest in any coin.

The contents of any whitepaper should include (but not limited to) the following talking points (in no particular order):

• Introduction
• Disclaimer
• Table of contents
• Description of the market and the problem
• Description of the product and how it’s going to solve said problem
• Tokens: how many, why, how, when, and so on
• How the raised funds are going to be used
• The team
• The roadmap