As opposed to an Initial Public Offering (IPO) where a firm going public sold equity in return for cash, an ICO (“Initial Coin Offerings") referred to the sale of a “token” or a “coin” in return for digital cash for a new venture.

So, what's an ICO?

“phenomenon goes beyond just a new way of raising money. It is projects creating their own economic ecosystems [...] In this model there is no central controlling company, and it has shared contributions and ownership by all involved. This business model is uniquely enabled by the combination of the internet and cryptocurrency" (Fred Ehrsam, one of the co-founders of startup Coinbase).

There are a lot of literature out there that will guide you understand the vocabulary behind all the terms, and you may even find an ICO for creating a thesaurus to get around all those nice acronyms.

If you’re past the discovering phase and you are part of THIS ecosystem or an investor, then you will soon find out that traditional investment monitoring for crypto-currency is not ideal…. yet!

If you dabble in crowdfunding or interested in being taken by the crypto-currency tsunami, I will recommend you to have a look at the pending ICO of Blackfol.IO (https://www.blackfol.io/)

Hope this will be of interest to you.