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Analyzing Token Sale Models
by ButterflyEffect

    The goal is to create a mechanism where the optimal strategy is simple. First, you personally decide what is the highest valuation you would be willing to buy at (call it V). Then, when the sale starts, you don’t buy in immediately; rather, you wait until the valuation drops to below that level, and then send your transaction.

    There are two possible outcomes:

        The sale closes before the valuation drops to below V. Then, you are happy because you stayed out of what you thought is a bad deal.
        The sale closes after the valuation drops to below V. Then, you sent your transaction, and you are happy because you got into what you thought is a good deal.

    However, many people predicted that because of “fear of missing out” (FOMO), many people would just “irrationally” buy in at the first day, without even looking at the valuation. And this is exactly what happened: the sale finished in a few hours, with the result that the sale reached its cap of $12.5 million when it was only selling about 5% of all tokens that would be in existence - an implied valuation of over $300 million.

    All of this would of course be an excellent piece of confirming evidence for the narrative that markets are totally irrational, people don’t think clearly before throwing in large quantities of money (and often, as a subtext, that the entire space needs to be somehow suppressed to prevent further exuberance) if it weren’t for one inconvenient fact: the traders who bought into the sale were right.