# kaal:claim:3409548-014

**Claim.** The 2018 ICO boom exposed a core limitation of blockchain technology: ICOs sold investors decentralized infrastructure products on the assumption that a baseline infrastructure already existed, and that assumption proved false.

**Type.** failure  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- ICO market of 2018
- projects presupposing mature base layer infrastructure

**Source quote.**

> The limitations of blockchain technology became most apparent in the aftermath of the ICO boom of 2018. ICOs promised investors core decentralized infrastructure products that assumed a baseline infrastructure existed. This turned out to be false

**From.** Kaal, *Financial Technology and Hedge Funds* (2019), II.3 Blockchain Technology, page 15

**Cite as.** Kaal, Financial Technology and Hedge Funds (2019). SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3409548

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `74227ab2656b06bfe4a29c942fc2ba26df9f476917e0a9f85ec038b8c3402c40` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Kaal%20-%202019%20-%20Financial%20Technology%20and%20Hedge%20Funds.pdf

**Failure mode.** Missing baseline infrastructure behind ICO promises  (family: cold-start-and-bootstrapping)

**Topics.** securities-law, blockchain, economics

**Keywords.** ico, blockchain, infrastructure, market-failure, ethereum

**Related claims.**

- extended_by: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3808873-025
- extends: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3406323-006
- extended_by: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3808859-040

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.