Initial coin offerings have come out of nowhere in 2017 to become the talk of Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Q: What is an initial coin offering? A: Coin offerings are a way for startups or online projects to raise money without selling stock or going to venture capitalists — essentially a new form of crowdfunding. The programmers raise money by creating and selling their own virtual currency, generally with rules similar to well-known virtual currencies like bitcoin. The new tokens are usually designed so that they can be used only on a computing service the programmers are building.