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.JEL Codes: G24, G32, K22, L26

中文翻译：

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基于代币的众筹：投资者选择和首次代币发行的最佳时机


本文研究了与不同类型的投资者以及在风险投资生命周期的不同阶段进行首次代币发行 (ICO) 的风险投资公司的运营和财务绩效。相对于纯粹众筹的 ICO 企业，机构投资者支持的 ICO 企业的经营业绩较弱，失败也较早。然而，以生存为条件，这些企业在财务上优于未获得机构投资者支持的同行。投资者支持对财务和运营绩效的不同影响与我们通过新形式的拉高抛售计划进行“认证利用”的理论是一致的。机构投资者利用他们的声誉来推高 ICO 估值，并在 ICO 后迅速退出风险投资，认证前与认证后代币价格的差异就是他们在初创公司流动市场中的剥削利润。我们的研究结果进一步表明，ICO 的财务成功与企业生命周期的时间安排之间存在倒 U 形关系，其中产品试点阶段是关键点。 JEL 代码：G24、G32、K22、L26