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The \u201cnetwork scam\u201d is therefore offered as a lens for understanding scams in the digital economy more broadly. As a case study, this article documents the 2017 Initial Coin Offering (ICO) Bubble. ICOs were supposed to be a new, radically disruptive way of crowdfunding to finance the development of a new, radically disruptive blockchain technological ecosystem. All told, ICOs raised an estimated $5 billion in 2017 alone. But by all analyses\u2014both from observers and participants, both during the bubble and after\u2014the vast majority of ICO turned out to be scams. This article uses these scams to theorize the \u201cnetwork scam\u201d as a collaborative effort to bring about a shared future, but one that is fundamentally characterized by arbitrage on uneven belief among participants in that future ever coming to pass.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/14614448221099224","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,7,9]],"date-time":"2022-07-09T04:48:13Z","timestamp":1657342093000},"page":"1695-1713","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":33,"title":["Theorizing the 2017 blockchain ICO bubble as a network scam"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"24","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0409-7332","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Lana","family":"Swartz","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Virginia, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,7,9]]},"reference":[{"key":"bibr1-14614448221099224","volume-title":"Charismatic Capitalism: Direct Selling Organizations in America","author":"Biggart NW","year":"1989"},{"key":"bibr2-14614448221099224","first-page":"52","volume-title":"MoneyLab Reader 2: Overcoming the Hype","author":"Brekke JK","year":"2018"},{"key":"bibr3-14614448221099224","volume-title":"Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency","author":"Brunton F","year":"2019"},{"key":"bibr4-14614448221099224","unstructured":"Brunton F (2013) The long, weird history of the Nigerian e-mail scam. 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