Token-Based Crowdfunding: Investor Choice and the Optimal Timing of Initial Coin Offerings
研究了不同投资者类型和发行时机对首次代币发行（ICO）企业运营和财务表现的影响，发现机构投资者支持的企业运营更差但财务表现更好，且ICO成功与生命周期时机呈倒U型关系。
This article examines the operating and financial performance of venture firms conducting initial coin offerings (ICOs) with different types of investors and at different points along a venture’s life-cycle. Relative to purely crowdfunded ICO ventures, institutional investor-backed ICO ventures exhibit weaker operating performance and fail earlier. However, conditional on survival, these ventures financially outperform their peers that do not receive institutional investor support. The diverging effects of investor backing on financial and operating performance are consistent with our theory of “certification exploitation” through a new form of a pump-and-dump scheme. Institutional investors exploit their reputation to drive up ICO valuations and quickly exit the venture post-ICO, with the difference in pre- versus post-certification token prices being their exploitation profit in liquid markets for startups. Our findings further indicate that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the financial success of an ICO and the timing along a venture’s life-cycle, with the product piloting phase representing the pivotal point.