Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is a new form of financing instrument for start-up firms. The firm issues tokens (or coins) in the ICO phase to raise capital to build capacity for its project. If the project is successful, the firm will provide product in subsequent periods and this product can only be accessed via tokens which can be traded over an exchange market. In this paper, we propose a model to study the firm’s optimal ICO strategy and the equilibrium token price dynamics when there is a multi-period trading market for tokens. We find that the ICO will be successful if and only if the capacity-cost-to-customer-valuation ratio is low. There may also exist multiple equivalent ICO decisions that yield the same revenue for the firm. We also compared the ICO mechanism with the traditional bank-financing mechanism. We find that when the capacity cost is low, the ICO mechanism is better than the bank-financing mechanism. We also explore the impact of the speculator’s risk attitude on the firm’s profitability. In general, the firm will be better-off when the speculator (those who participates in the ICO and trades tokens) is more risk-seeking.

首次代币发行 (ICO) 是初创公司的一种新型融资工具。该公司在 ICO 阶段发行代币（或代币）以筹集资金以建设其项目的能力。如果项目成功，公司将在后续期间提供产品，并且只能通过可以在交易市场上交易的代币访问该产品。在本文中，我们提出了一个模型来研究公司的最优 ICO 策略和代币多周期交易市场时的均衡代币价格动态。我们发现，当且仅当容量成本与客户估值的比率很低时，ICO 才会成功。也可能存在为公司产生相同收入的多个等效 ICO 决策。我们还将 ICO 机制与传统的银行融资机制进行了比较。我们发现，当容量成本较低时，ICO 机制优于银行融资机制。我们还探讨了投机者的风险态度对公司盈利能力的影响。一般来说，当投机者（参与 ICO 和交易代币的人）更愿意冒险时，公司会更好。