The dark side of initial coin offering: the case of corporate misconduct

ABSTRACT Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is an emerging form of venture capital for startups. But little is known about how ICO affects firms’ tendency to engage in misconducts. Using a hand-collected sample of Chinese startups between 2016 and 2019, we find that ICO-backed firms engage in more corporate misconducts compared with VC-backed firms. Our baseline results are robust after adopting the extent of openness to western countries forced by unequal treaty as an instrument variable. Furthermore, our findings suggest that weak monitoring channel and resource independence channel are the underlying channels for the association between ICO and corporate misconducts. We also find that ICO-backed firms are more likely to go bankrupt compared with VC-backed firms in the future. Overall, our findings shed more lights on the dark side of ICO and indicate that the government should exercise stronger oversight on ICO in emerging countries.