ICO

ICOs Initial coin offerings – also called token sales or crowdsales – are an unregulated, fast, high-risk, and commonly Ethereum-based crowdfunding mechanism for early-stage digital asset ventures. In ICOs, funds are raised by offering investors cryptocurrency tokens which act as a kind of voucher that may be traded for some resource or special feature of the venture in the future (e.g. storage space, datasets, etc.), in exchange for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies. ICOs might also sell investors royalties or a right of ownership to the project instead of cryptocurrency.

Immutability

An immutable object (unchangeable object) is an object whose state cannot be modified after it is created. This is in contrast to a mutable object (changeable object), which can be modified after it is created. In some cases, an object is considered immutable even if some internally used attributes change, but the object's state appears unchanging from an external point of view. For example, an object that uses memoization to cache the results of expensive computations could still be considered an immutable object. Strings and other concrete objects are typically expressed as immutable objects to improve readability and runtime efficiency in object-oriented programming. Immutable objects are also useful because they are inherently thread-safe. Other benefits are that they are simpler to understand and reason about and offer higher security than mutable objects.

Inflation

In economics, inflation (or less frequently, price inflation) is a general rise in the price level in an economy over a period of time. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation reflects a reduction in the purchasing power per unit of money – a loss of real value in the medium of exchange and unit of account within the economy. The opposite of inflation is deflation, a sustained decrease in the general price level of goods and services. The common measure of inflation is the inflation rate, the annualised percentage change in a general price index, usually the consumer price index, over time. Economists believe that very high rates of inflation, also known as hyperinflation, are harmful and are caused by an excessive growth of the money supply. Views on which factors determine low to moderate rates of inflation are more varied. Low or moderate inflation may be attributed to fluctuations in real demand for goods and services, or changes in available supplies such as during scarcities. However, the consensus view is that a long sustained period of inflation is caused by money supply growing faster than the rate of economic growth.

Initial Block Download (IBD)

Once a new node joins the network, its first order of business is to download and validate the entire blockchain. This is an integral step to the distributed nature of bitcoin because only by doing this can a node claim that it has independently validated all transactions. As the blockchain grows in size, the time required for IBD increases unless optimizations are made to the code.

Initial Coin Offering (ICO)

An initial coin offering (ICO) or initial currency offering is a type of funding using cryptocurrencies. It is often a form of crowdfunding, however a private ICO which does not seek public investment is also possible. In an ICO, a quantity of cryptocurrency is sold in the form of "tokens" ("coins") to speculators or investors, in exchange for legal tender or other (generally established and more stable) cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. The tokens are promoted as future functional units of currency if or when the ICO's funding goal is met and the project successfully launches. An ICO can be a source of capital for startup companies. ICOs can allow startups to avoid regulations that prevent them from seeking investment directly from the public, and intermediaries such as venture capitalists, banks, and stock exchanges, which may demand greater scrutiny and some percentage of future profits or joint ownership. ICOs may fall outside existing regulations, depending on the nature of the project, or be banned altogether in some jurisdictions, such as China and South Korea. Due to the lack of regulation and enforcement of securities law, ICOs have been the vehicle for scams and fraud.

Intrinsic Value

In finance, intrinsic value of an asset usually refers to a value calculated on simplified assumptions. For example the intrinsic value of an option is based on the current market value of the underlying instrument, ignoring the possibility of future fluctuations and the time value of money.