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…Application coin sales (often called “initial coin offerings” or ICOs) are a new form of crowdfunding and some can have as much legal merit as a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign…

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The  Initial Coin Offering phenomenon has started to play a significant role in the crypto-startup world. Lately, more and more experts are looking to decentralized crowd-funding methods with interest.

But, the absence of legal guidelines in the operation of these ICOs has resulted in more than a few scams. This is hardly abnormal for an entirely new, unregulated field; but, would-be investors, nonetheless, find it difficult to discern potential opportunities from grab-the-money-and-run schemes.

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If you look at lists of recent  Initial Coin Offering campaigns it is really hard to come up with any sort of reasonable filter. There’s so much to be obviously skeptical of in this space that wealthier and experienced investors won’t even consider it — with good reason.

http://blockgeeks.com/how-not-to-be-scammed-by-a-initial-coin-offering/

Simple, don't buy into them.

The temptation is to high to resist,but if you are going to buy this Ico ,always remember to only invest what you can afford to lose.And you should always comfortable with the coin you're investing.

This.  They're all just garbage, and none of them have any innovations that give them any advantage over the 1000s of shitcoins that are already clogging up the plumbing.  It would be laughable if it weren't so exhausting.   Buying any of these ico coins--or post-ico coons--is straight up gambling, and you ought to expect to lose whatever you invest.

Title of this post should be renamed to "How to not be stupid"

That is the most stupid advice I have ever heard. You are saying that only invest what you can afford to lose? So meaning you are still allowing yourself to be scammed. The best advice is do not invest in them to avoid getting scammed unless you are so sure that the price will go up if it gets listed in an exchange and you sell right away. But it is still a risk that is not worth taking.

good suggestion sir and we should thinking about another choice beside to buy an ICO, because we don't know that coins will exist or not after the launch and what is the long term from the dev.

New investors have a hard time identify features that make a coin sell.
Right now the trend is: Anonymous, POS or POW with block size not less than 4mb
Alts with one or two of these features fare well in the market (even if it's for a short time e.g Zcash)

If you're a small time investors with less than 1 BTC then it's usually better to wait and see how it all plays out. Remember, you can always buy the same coin on the exchange later on.

If you are a big time investor with 100 BTC or more then ICOs are a dream come true. It gives you a chance to actually get into a coin at a set price.

ICO is similar to VC investing. You take on huge risk with the possibility of huge returns. You have to do your due diligence and that can take a really long time.


I've done extremely well with ICOs. I don't buy many though. I've a background in software development which helps me out. The only ICOs that I put significant money into were $ETH, $SJCX, $BCY, $AMP and $FCT. I could easily tell that those projects were good ideas and the people involved were quality. I find a lot of the ICOs lately to be mediocre and do not buy them. I instead don't put in as much money and only pick them up for cheap on the exchanges like I did with $SNGLS, $WAVES, $RISE, $STRAT, $VOX, $DGD and others.

Before investing in any ICO, lets do some research or observation of the
project. When investing in ICO, I do not buy more, I just buy little.
Then sell when relased in the exchange if I gain profit already.

It is better to wait and buy them in exchange as most scams fall apart after collecting the funds or even before listing. So wait till the coins are released into exchanges.

The guy has a point,there are some successful Ico in the past and traders will always invest in ICO check out to see for yourself on Yobit what he means is do not invest everything you had and do diligent research,if there is no money on Ico then why we always have 3 to 5 Ico every month ..

+1 although some were giving a great answer like some answer above me. ;D
But this way just for minimizing the fund will get snatch by scammer like decloud. The general thing to remember if a lot of them is a shit coin.
It had made me bright about not to get scam by them .

The best way not to get scammed would simply be by not investing.

It's the same as inventors requesting a patent for their product. 999 out of 1,000 new inventions fail to be successfull and don't reach the market at all.

Amen.

But there is a sure way not to get scammed by an ICO: issue one yourself :)

So if you have a decent amount of money to burn, you should just give it to some random anon dude in exchange for some pretty pictures and empty promises.

I'm sorry but that's possibly the dumbest advice I have ever read not just about ICOs, but in general on this forum.


While I fail to see the tempation, I do agree with the second part of your sentence. But the same advice stands true for gambling - which is exactly what ICOs are - except when it comes to gambling the rules are clear.

Nonsense. Good way to make profit also some projects like Nxt are here for really long-run. Every potential player (it isn't really investing) should consider to carefully choose strategy. Is there +EV strategies? So far my — one of them

It is a nice suggestion you have given here. I feel that new users should discuss about ICOs before jumping in and should take efforts to understand the risks involved.

The coins you got into should have made a great amount of wealth for you. Hats off to you for finding them quite early in the game and buying into them. What do think about ICOs like vDice, Janus and Wings DAO?  and which existing projects will do well in the coming years?

You can avoid being scammed by an initial coin offering or ICO if you do research first about the dev or the team behind of that coin that you are interested to invest in, Its all about researching, If you found that the dev have a great records then it is a + point for the coin then if the dev was a new one then don't invest all you money, just invest what you can afford to lose.

Here's a chart of the 118 altcoins that have achieved $250k average market cap for a year (the red line is BTC, the other stray is GAME)

http://woobull.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/altcoin-price-history-250k.png

Broken down into years

http://woobull.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/altcoin-price-history-by-year-250k.png

from http://woobull.com/data-visualisation-118-coins-plotted-over-time-this-is-why-hodl-alt-coin-indexes-dont-work/

Moral: If you're going to hodl, hodl BTC.

Alt coin ICO's aren't dissimilar to penny stocks, everybody looking thru the 99% of shit, chasing the 1% nugget.

It is also horrible since it makes things very difficult for legit ICO to take place after so many people have been burned in the past it ruins it for legit business. Which is not fair. So its not fair to think all ICO is a scam. But it is good to  expect them to all be a scam until otherwise proven.

If you're going to participate in an ICO, don't fall for the shiny images and fancy videos.
In my experience, take a look at the Whitepaper, evaluate the business plan/model, does the team behind the project look credible and are they able to execute on the plan.
Don't fall for projects that say you should buy their coin now because later on it will be worth x times more.

This study is interesting, but misleading, if one takes it as support for "bitcoin is real, and altcoins are shit".

The initial period of bitcoin can show tremendeous value increase, because bitcoin was the very first crypto currency, and initially, nobody thought that the CONCEPT of a crypto currency could even work, so it started out as essentially worth NOTHING.   The rise from "nothing" to "something" is in fact infinite, and it is because the curve for bitcoin doesn't actually start at "nothing" that you can even put bitcoin on the chart.

But one can only discover ONCE that crypto currencies can function and get value.  That was bitcoin.  No crypto currency EVER after will start at "nothing".  People now KNOW that it can obtain serious market caps.  So no other crypto currency can display a rise from essentially nothing to something, showing several orders of magnitude increase like bitcoin can in its first years of existence.

But EVEN BITCOIN will not have such value increase any more.  These crazy rises are over.  Only the first one could display that, not because it went HIGH, but because it started SO LOW.

Like the other thread said: "nobody's buying pizza for 10 000 coins any more".

So the study should be done over, but taken as a starting point for bitcoin, not its starting point which was UNIQUE as being the very first crypto currency, worth nothing, but rather, say, when there were already a lot of coins around, and we can compare bitcoin to the rest with equal knowledge.  Say, beginning of 2013 or something.

An altcoin can never start out like bitcoin started out, because when an altcoin starts out, there is already the knowledge that crypto currencies can have value, and one expects the altcoin to have already a market cap.

It would be interesting to plot the bitcoin line, but taking its "starting point" as 1/1/2013, and compare it to the others.  I'm sure bitcoin still beats many, but it wouldn't be that spectacular.

Escrow, not that it actually helps because only after launch you could rely on selling into exchanges with some profit.
Look and research what it is you are trying to invest, meaning what it is they are initially offering to you, would it bring any value to the deal?
Think few times before investing, there might be a similar ICO already and you could just investing on clones.
Seek easy money with high risk else where dude, this stuff is not made for you.

Thank you for the link and the charts, info. This is what the people in this community should see. The hard facts and the numbers that back it up. Also if those developers who claim that their platforms or projects are such a good idea then why don't they pitch them to venture capitalists? Why organize an ICO and take money from the newbies? We already know what the answer is to that one. ;)

Again, those plots are misleading.  They only indicate the obvious: bitcoin was the first, and rose from essentially NOTHING to something, which allows for a HUGE rise.  Altcoins don't have the ambition to start from "nothing".  If ICO's were at the same level of value as bitcoin was in the beginning, it would mean that the whole market cap would be, say, $10,- or so.  And yes, I'm pretty sure that an ICO with a total market cap of $10,- can also display huge rising numbers: if the market cap rises to $1M, then a factor of 100 000 is reached, better than bitcoin on that plot.

The point is, nobody starts out at $10,- market cap as an alt coin, because now, people KNOW that crypto can carry some value.  When bitcoin came out, that was an open question.  Most people thought that something like that could NEVER carry some real world value for strangers (amongst friends, yes, you can pretend...).

This is why, to be fair, in comparing bitcoin to the others on that plot, you should take a starting point of bitcoin when knowledge that it could hold value was known widely, and when competition existed already, which is why I propose beginning of 2013.  Then bitcoin's curve is not so exceptional.

Bitcoin was exceptional when it was the pioneer.  Nobody can be a pioneer after the first pioneer.  That's what those plots indicate.

I get your point, but don't think it's a particularly strong one to bear repeating.
The second chart especially just shows what a shit investment the altcoin world is, irrespective of bitcoin. If you want to redraw them with different time frames, feel free.
What wasn't a calculated scam from the getgo would have been quite happy living in a sandbox somewhere, but the mania to monetize everything trivializes and cheapens the whole environment.

Still thinking about those three. I really don't like trading much and don't like to support PoW-based projects (obsolescence of that Proof-of type), so I'm taking part in a few projects and...

...the greatest bounding factor is not having enough time to deep-analyse. Too many details for me to make such prediction. I play with educated guesses. Look at community, look at dev's goals (raise money or raise awareness), and u'll get basic idea

In my educated guesses, just look at all of the three if they were becoming fail pennies.


Deep-analyse will look all of the parts of ico, Which means was more detailed about ico.  ;)

Not all ICOs are scam, though the rate has increased recently, people need to realise that no risk no reward. What you need to do is research, research the team members, market potential of the project, do video interview with the team and the most important thing invest in project with trusted Escrow.

Yes, this is the simplest method - do not buy into them.  Often times you can give a new coin a chance to be out for awhile and still get a good price.

you must choice is good dev and much team
and must use escrow, without escrow don't buy

99.7 % of all ICO's are scams (with a statistical error of +0.3%).

This week alone one Ico has generated over 90 bitcoin in it's first two hours,the projects looks very good and the dev shows transparency of course we will not know only after all the projects are set up and it is being traded on exchanges,if the price continue to be higher after two months then this is a successful ICO but it's rare could be an exception.

Indeed.  Most ICO's nowadays are just scams because devs tend to run off all investors money when they saw they accumulated enough thats the thing why im hesitating to invest into these things because of these happenings.Before you intend to invest or put money on be sure to choose the good one and have really transparency and a good road map and devs are not anonymous  because this indicates chances of scam on little percentage only but doesnt guarantee that their coin will be succesful.