Adam Back: Some ICOs Funded Useful Research Despite Being Unethical

Adam Back recently took to Twitter with controversial comments on many of the industry's largest crypto projects - including Ethereum, Cardano, Ripple, and Stellar.

We interviewed Back in order to clarify his position on the matter, starting with questions of how he feels about Satoshi Nakamoto essentially premining over one million Bitcoin.

Back responded that "Bitcoin has no premine", adding that he considers Patoshi research to be "Highly speculative".

In the case of most ICOs, he noted that "It was unknown that bitcoin would bootstrap and have value. It didn't even have an exchange listing for over a year." Though the same could be said about many ICO coins, Back parried by focusing on what he perceives as the unscrupulous nature of ICOs.

In his opinion, the main goal of an ICO is to enrich its creators - Something he believes most would consider unethical.

Back also noted that ICOs offer investors far less in the way of legal protection.

We asked Back if he earnestly believes that no major ICO project will ever deliver anything of note.

With some hesitation, he admitted that a few may have funded useful research.

"Obviously there are exemptions, and some interesting ICO or pre-mined altcoins funded research, or grants to skilled researchers, but the efficiency of capital I think is order of 100x less effective in converting money to secure, robust protocols than lean startups."

Back also supposed that ICO projects are left with second-rate engineers as most top blockchain developers "Would not work for ICOs as a matter of principle".