Keywords: blockchain, cryptocurrencies, ICO, behavioral finance, complexity economics, complex networks, trading signals, market microstructure, market design, trust economics, fields finance.
JEL Classification: G02, L14, E03, D85, C53

> “men err in their productions, there is no deficiency of demand” -David Ricardo

# Introduction

All parties involved in an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) have a strong incentive to trust in the success of the venture. Technologists care about innovation and long-term value, organizers care about maximizing visibility while minimizing regulatory exposure, and retail investors usually favor to get rich quickly and then move to a different venture. Sometimes the real motivation for large investors to get involved is to move money across borders through the path of lowest friction (compared to the alternatives of venture capital, private banking or over-the-counter trading), but even them will have more confidence if they can trust that the founding team has a roadmap to value that is validated by the market.
Algorithm traders of coins and tokens can profit from the volatility premium in a sustained basis only if they are good at pricing risk, and for this, they need to quantify the relative strength among tokens and the changing prospects for reserve currency status of forked coins. But crypto economies are a novel phenomena — there is little clarity on how competition really works and when value is at risk. In the words of an industry observer: How can something divide, and both parts become greater than the whole, especially when network effects are in play? Shouldn’t all non-Bitcoin altcoins that compete for the same use case go to zero? \cite{sokolin}