I just finished watching Episode 8 of the Silicon Valley Season 5. Not much of a spoiler here but anyway — in the very final episodes on Season 5 Pied Piper suddenly realized that the computing power that its network provides is, in essence, a great example of digital service that can be traded (bought for current use, or as a reserve).
As usual, this happens by accident, when Laurie Bream trades her “computing credits” elsewhere, then they change hands and end up in some hedge fund, which buys it for purely financial purposes.
This leads the team to a logical decision: tokenize the credits and sell them in a form of ICO. The next scene “after the ICO happened” is Richard and the guys watching the quotation screen, where PiepPiperCoin is stuck at its $0.07 initial price (while the budget requirements need it to be at $68).
On the positive side, the show moves in line with actual day-to-day developments of the market. It is obvious that four years ago there was nothing like ICO in their scripts sketches, and this all is a reflection to the world changes and realities.
On the negative side, we, people familiar with the ICO techniques and procedures, can’t help wondering: how is it possible that the fundraising amount is correlated with the coin price? In case the coin was not in demand during the collection phase, there would be no listing and market price (since no coins would be issued). And once the ICO is happily concluded, the coin market price is, sadly, a worry for investors, not the project.
To stop my spoilers here: the episode ends super positively. I only hope that poor Erlich Bachman is out there alive and in good condition. We would really expect him to come back in Season 6.
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