So every once in a while I go through the Altcoins announcement forum on Bitcointalk just to buy up low market cap tokens with hints of simple, good branding. With that, I recently found Good Karma, an ERC-20 token revolving around rewarding consumers that go for socially and environmentally-conscious goods. Well, I don't think the Ethereum is all that ecogreen at the moment so it's quite ironic, but at least the fledgling token's secured by the active and established network.

When you do something good, it will come back to you. That is Good Karma.​

The market is a lowly-traded crapcoin, so I made it moon 364.79% with only ~$200! That got me about 0.02% of the entire supply. The better price at the moment could've actually been 10x lesser than what I paid for, but I just snagged whatever's on the sell book. Note there isn't any ICOs involved in this, and the token is non-inflationary, capped at 888 million GOODs. All said, I might just be wasting some dough on this, but I must admit that I like the package a little too much. Plus, the seemingly experienced founder (Kosmost) claimed to have been the inventor of the ICOs that we know of today, providing the following responses in his FAQ:-

You didn't invent the ICO. Come on!

Somebody did. And it just so happens it was me. I conceived of it in March 2014 for the old Karmacoin (through a new entity called Karmashares) and we launched on April 18, 2014.

Although MaidSafe and Mastercoin both held 'crowdsales' before then, they were not ICOs. Crowdfunding is merely a method of fundraising, whereas an ICO raises coins for both capital and as a representation of ownership interest in an enterprise, like a digital stock certificate. We referred to the new model as POC (proof-of-coin, to secure the coin's economy) and IPOCOs (Initial Public Offerings for COins, for subsidiaries or derivatives). In fact, we even had digital certificates: https://goo.gl/XJ9yVh to go along with our list of owners http://web.archive.org/web/20140626124054/http://karmashares.com:80/explorer-v01 as well as bonus periods for earlybirds. We also reached out to other coins like ReddCoin and the broader cryptocurrency community to consider the same kind of model.

I have been, however, trying to get people to consider the difference between the two terms: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6lbo1v/as_the_guy_who_invented_the_first_true_ico_i

So why isn't this an ICO?

You'll notice that most legitimate ICOs today do not allow anyone that lives or resides in the US to join in the distribution. What's not being considered is that the people running the ICO should not be US residents or citizens, either. It is likely to constitute an “investment contract” by the SEC per the US Securities Act of 1933 as thus fall into the domain of an unregistered security. It is the reason I shut down Karmashares.

Until the SEC changes their guidance on securities and equity derivatives in favor of ICOs, I won't even think about it (and advise others residing in the US or who are US citizens not to, either).

In a way, the concept of the token kind of reminds about my relationship with Steem voting. It might sound very naive, but I like that the token economy is making it easier for goodness to be rewarded. Don't have any idea at all how this project will progress, but I think this seed may have a slim chance of turning into something decent. Or just die and wither, like most startups. Anyway, do your own research! Also please note that this has nothing to do with fellow Steemian @good-karma.

Resources

1. Bitcointalk announcement: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1969334.0

2. Available markets: https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/good-karma/#markets

3. Website: http://goodkarmacoin.com

4. Explore the contract: https://ethplorer.io/address/0xae616e72d3d89e847f74e8ace41ca68bbf56af79

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_{Not to be taken as financial advice.}