University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law 2019 Coin-Operated Capitalism Shaanan Cohney University of Pennsylvania David A. Hoffman University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Jeremy Sklaroff University of Pennsylvania David A. Wishnick University of Pennsylvania - Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Contracts Commons, Corporate Finance Commons, Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations Commons, Internet Law Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Political Economy Commons, Science and Technology Law Commons, and the Technology and Innovation Commons Repository Citation Cohney, Shaanan; Hoffman, David A.; Sklaroff, Jeremy; and Wishnick, David A., "Coin-Operated Capitalism" (2019). Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law. 2027. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2027 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law by an authorized administrator of Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW VOL. 119 APRIL 2019 NO. 3 ARTICLES COIN-OPERATED CAPITALISM Shaanan Cohney,* David Hoffman,** Jeremy Sklaroff *** & David Wishnick **** This Article presents the legal literature’s first detailed analysis of the inner workings of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). We characterize the ICO as an example of financial innovation, placing it in kinship with venture capital contracting, asset securitization, and (obviously) the IPO. We also take the form seriously as an example of technological innovation, in which promoters are beginning to effectuate their promises to investors through computer code, rather than traditional contract.