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Morning Report:聽ICO’s hot run pushes their raised sums above traditional early-stage funding this year.

? The funding vehicles allow crypto-projects to raise huge sums of liquid cryptocurrency to fund the creation of new crypto tokens, currencies, and assets. Give me some ethereum聽or bitcoin today, and you can buy into the next winner, in hopes of future use, sure, but also rapid appreciation in value.

Wish you could get into bitcoin聽years ago? ICOs give the rabidly speculative the chance to get into what might be next.

And ICOs are big business. According to a , sums raised by ICOs have “surpassed early stage venture capital (VC) funding for internet companies for the past two months.” Goldman Sachs may have been first to聽, which is backed up by data sourced from , an ICO database.

Here’s the chart that is circulating around the nerdier sides of the financial internet:

From March to June, ICO-land went absolutely bonkers.

Not to be rude, but here’s what I think: Funding ICOs that are little more than white papers with millions or more is insane. Projects that couldn’t get a meeting with a traditional venture kid are raising hilarious amounts of liquid money with no product.

Sure, a lot of this is likely just crypto enthusiasts plowing paper gains from the early-2017 ethereum聽gains into new gambles, but that doesn’t really excuse the behavior.

The current-cycle habit of chasing increasingly large amounts of short-term risk for above-market gains continues, in other words. To make that point, let’s quote from a recent New York Times piece that sports the following, annoying headline: “:”

Magical internet money, indeed.

From the聽:

Flipkart raises massive SoftBank round

• E-commerce marketplace聽聽has closed a SoftBank-backed funding round that it described as the largest-ever private investment in an Indian technology company. The SoftBank Vision Fund is investing $2.5 billion, according to a Bloomberg聽聽citing unnamed sources, capping off a聽record-setting funding spree.

AI acquisitions hit peak

• In 2017, an average of nine AI startups have been acquired every month, the fastest recorded pace, a聽附近上门 News analysis聽finds. Google, Apple and Microsoft rank as the most active buyers of AI startups.

Game developer Plarium sold for $500M

• Australian gaming technology company Aristrocrat has acquired game developer聽聽for $500 million. Israel-based Plarium offers a roster of games but is best known for developing Vikings: War of Clans.
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