Initial coin offering: The easiest path to riches on the web

Online fund-raising has made it easier than ever to raise large sums

A new crop of technology entrepreneurs is forgoing the usual routes to raising money. The entrepreneurs are not pitching venture capitalists, selling stock in an initial public offering or using crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter.

Instead, before they even have a working product, they are creating their own digital currencies and selling so-called coins on the web, sometimes raising tens of millions of dollars in a matter of minutes.

The pitch is that once the products are up and running, the currencies — with names like BAT, Mysterium and Siacoin — will be redeemable for services like data storage or anonymous internet access,