ICO's are hot right now - And many of them rely on a standard called ERC20.
This morning I bought in to a new cryptographic token called credo, which will act as a unit of exchange in email communication. After the pre-ICO started, I received a couple of questions from my friends about how to participate. Here is a simplified explanation of how to participate using the wallet that I recommend using:
1. Install or open Mist (which can be downloaded from ethereum.org via the blue download button).
2. If you are opening Mist for the first time, you’ll need to wait for it to sync with the Ethereum blockchain. This may take a few hours, so leave your computer open and return later.
3. Create an account by clicking the Add Account button and entering a password.
4. Either a) send ether/ETH that you already have to the account, or b) purchase some ether. For b), I recommend using the built-in Coinbase buy widget, which you can access by clicking on the Fund with a Credit Card button within an account.
Head back into Mist..
5. Click on the send button.
6. Put the ICO address in the To field (e.g. 0x4E0603e2A27A30480E5e3a4Fe548e29EF12F64bE for the Credo Token).
7. Click the Show More Options button and enter the data specified in the ICO, (in the case of Credo, it's '0xb4427263'), into the custom data field.
8. Specify the amount of ether you want to send for buying credos.
9. Accept the default transaction fee or set a different one.
10. Click the Send button and then enter your password in the confirmation dialog.
11. Click on the Contracts button.
12. Scroll down and click on the Watch Token button.
13. Enter the ICO address (in the case of Credo, its 0x4E0603e2A27A30480E5e3a4Fe548e29EF12F64bE) in the top field and then click ok.
14. Click on the Wallets button and then click on the account you made in step 3.
15. That’s it! You should now be able to the ERC20 tokens you bought in your account.—I expect there to be many more ERC20 ICOs in the next few years.
I am not affiliated with Credo in any way. I am not promoting them, and this is an unbiased article. I simply used their address and data for this demonstration. Please do all of your own research and decision making before even considering purchasing ERC20 tokens.