The Initial Coin Offering (ICO) Process: Regulation and Risks

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is well written but requires some editing. A few of my feedback are as follows to improve the paper. 

1. The abstract should be more concise. At this moment, it is hard to understand. Figures and Tables can be more explained.
2. Introduction may be improved, adding the highlights and the problem statements.
3. Some of the notations are not clear. You can add separate tables for the notation or explain them. Would you please improve the paper formating? You divided all the sections in many paragraphs which is not required.
4. The paper needs proper proofreading to avoid typos. 
5. Review references because some of them are not providing clear, complete information. Format should also be improved. 
6. The difference between your proposal and past literature is not clear, you could to details better. I suggest add a comparative table in ''Related Literature'' to contrast your solution in front of related works.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. 

The corrections have been made according to your comments.

Sincerely yours, Karpenko Oksana and others

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. There are many statements in the work that are not supported by links where this information was taken.
2. The proposed calculation methods are quite controversial, there are other calculation options.
3. The authors should make a comparative analysis with other works in this area.
4. The title of the work does not fully correspond to the text.
5. The structure of the work should be brought to a generally accepted form.
6. It is not clear what the phrase about The Russian Federation should be related to in the conclusions.
7. The conclusions are quite controversial and not substantiated in the text of the work.

Author Response

Thank you vere much for you comments.

We have corrected our article according to your suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The positive side is the presence of a calculation indicating that raising funds through ICO is not yet a significant source of funding. It is desirable that research into the causes of failure to achieve success should continue.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Thank you very much

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors updated the paper as per my previous comments. No more update requires from my side. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. They were very udeful for us.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. There are many statements in the work that are not supported by links where this information was taken. Lines: 22, 41, 47, 143, 155, Table 1, 173, 222
2. Line 181 – the link must be moved to the references?
3. The proposed calculation methods are quite controversial, there are other calculation options.
4. The authors should make a comparative analysis with other works in this area.
5. It is not correct to compare only two countries in the conclusions. In fact, this transfer of geopolitical confrontation in the science paper and looks like an advertisement for one's country, which is unacceptable for a scientific article.
6. The conclusions are quite controversial and not substantiated in the text of the work.
7. The most important point is that this work is self-plagiarism of the published article of the first author in Russian.

file:///C:/Users/WWW/AppData/Local/Temp/reb-tom-4-1-2021.pdf

pp.238-242

Author Response

1. All statements were supported by the links.
2. Reference was added.
3. The calculation method is used according to the research interest.
4. The analysis of the risks of ICO was not connected with lack of law regulation by other authors.  However some researches are connected with risks of ICO. These works are mentioned in the article.
5. The comparison was deleted.
6. The conclusions were changed.
7. It is a development of the research. The article in Russian includes the same data. Title, contents and conclusion are different.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The authors have added only one additional link compared to the previous version of the submitted work.  There are still many  statements in the work unsupported by references. I would like to recommend the authors to be more responsible for the data used and links to the sources of this data.
2. line 51. What is this statement based on?
3. The work used 3 different formats for sources. It should follow the look required by the publisher.
4. The work contains 2 tables, but the text does not contain references to the table 1.
5. The situation with the legal proceedings of the Ripple Foundation and SEC, as well as their importance and implications for the ICO and the cryptocurrency market in general, has not been considered.
6. It is also unclear why the authors analyze only 2016-2019, as it is written in the conclusions. Now is the end of 2021, why is there no analysis in the work of 2020 years and the first half of 2021 year? The blockchain industry is developing very fast and this should be reflected in the work.
7. As for self-plagiarism, since, according to the authors, this work is a continuation of an earlier published work, the authors should say this, and that the part of the data was copied from the already published work with the participation of the authors. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your cooments and for your attention to our article. We tried to do the best in our article.

1. The links were added to the text.
2.  The format of sources was corrected.
3. The reference to the table was added.
4. The data was taken from icobench.com. Today there is only 2019 year. 
5. The authors said that this research is a continuation of the previous research. The article was added to the sources.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 4

Reviewer 2 Report

In general, the authors took into account my comments. The work may be published in the present form.