Abstract:

Crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, crowdinvesting, crowdlending - these are terms that are appearing with increasing frequency in social science, finance literature. They refer to different aspects of human activity, but there is one element common to all of them - the crowd (or rather 'the crowd' - the crowd). A crowd that, thanks to digital solutions, can participate in open innovation, investment, charity, lending. A crowd that has the characteristics of both a strict censor, a well-organised investor, a discoverer of a new idea. The time of the spontaneous development of crowdfunding is over. Alternative finance has become a permanent fixture in the architecture of financial markets, and its intensive development is one of the elements stimulating the development of SMEs, business innovation and the emergence of new start-ups. The importance of this phenomenon is recognised by the governments of both highly developed and developing countries and they try to ensure both the intensive development of this phenomenon and the protection of the parties to the crowdfunding process - investors, entrepreneurs and platforms. To ensure the security, transparency and efficiency of alternative funding sources new institutions are created.