Are Coins a Legitimate Source of Start-up Financing? Carsten Bienz, 1,4 Nataliya Gerasimova, 2,4 and Walt Pohl 3, 4 This version: December 1, 2018 Preliminary Draft ABSTRACT In this paper we study Initial Coin Offerings as a source of start-up financing. We show that despite their disadvantages relative to venture capital they play a similar role to late-stage venture capital rounds. We also show they broaden the geographical base for funding. JEL Classification Nos.: G24, G32, L26 Keywords: ICOs, Venture Capital, Reverse ICOs, Entrepreneurial Finance 1 Department of Finance, Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), Email: carsten.bienz@nhh.no 2 Department of Finance, Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), Email: nataliya.gerasimova@nhh.no 3 Department of Finance, Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), Email: walter.pohl@nhh.no 4 We thank CrunchBase for sharing their data with us for academic purposes. All remaining errors are our responsibility.