On 15 June in Moscow one could listen to the speech of the famous cryptocurrency investor and blockchain evangelist Ian Balina. The event was organised by CryptoBazar Fund.

Balina started his career in the IBM Corporation but later he focused on his own projects. At present he is a head of a cryptocurrency investment fund that buys a $10 million worth of tokens of promising blockchain startups every year.

The ICO WaBi was one of the first Balina’s projects. He collected $200,000 during the pre-sale and $300,000 more in just two days when it became known that Balina invested in the project. Then WaBi tokens got listed at the exchanges and rose in price eightfold. The ICO Dragonchain was the second token sale where Balina participated. When his investment became known, the project raised $5 million.

Balina spoke about these and other projects to the participants of the Moscow meeting that took place in the Deworkacy Hall of the Krasny Oktyabr building that was absolutely full.

Speaking about his experience of investment, Balina admitted that 90% of current investment in the ICOs is loss-making. The main reason for that is an incorrect approach to the choice of projects that in an ideal scenario should be based on an adequate data analysis. To reach the optimum result, Balina and his team worked out so-called ‘token metrics’ – a list of questions and answers allowing to evaluate one or another project. Balina emphasized that according to his experience, 90% of highly profitable ICOs were launched as projects when the product was already ready, at least at the MVP level. This is the first and the principal criterion of success. The second is the human factor, that is, the project team. According to Balina, a great advantage is having in the team former employees of large IT companies such as Google or Amazon, and developers who participated in the creation of well-known blockchain projects.

Speaking of security and utility tokens, Balina expressed an opinion that in the future tokens equated to securities will be of the greatest interest. However, they need an adequate infrastructure, lacking at the moment. Balina also spoke about the most rational method of fund withdrawal from a project. He said he waits for his investment to grow threefold or fourfold and then withdraws the initial amount of his investment. This allows him to preserve the investment capital that can be used to invest in other projects.

Balina highly evaluated the Russian blockchain project market, even if he confessed never to have invested in a Russian ICO.