Bitcoin Forum

Do you know that most of the ICO's are scam .

Well if you don't here are some reasons behind it :-

1.) Most of these ICO's have no business model  >:(
2.) Most of these ICO's would never be profitable  :(
3.) High Market cap for a project / ICO with no development , code or any past experiences  :P
4.) Most of them have a 1 year roadmap which means no vision  ???
5.) 5 months of hard work and for that they get Millions in funding  :-\
6.) Dumb people running the shitshow  ;D
7.) Behind the scenes it is all about Money


What makes an ICO legit ?
1.) Working product
2.) Practical Use case
3.) Legit Team
4.) Limited Funding ( Based upon Fair Market valuation )


Why are these days ICO raising so much money ?  :o
Answer :- People are dumb and greedy they want to invest in the next ETH , STRATIS , WINGS , EDG , IOTA , XEL but they do not understand that Stratis had less than 1000 contributors and most of these ICO's happened during bear season when most of the people were not active in the scene .

Should I invest in ICO's ?  ???
Yes , some ICO's are legit and can be good investments such as MobileGo , Edgeless ,  Civic etc which can yield you good ROI in long term but then always due diligence is important .

Should I invest in ICO's with high marketcap ?  ::)
No , High marketcap means a lot of people have invested in an ICO seeking for quick buck or the ICO team has been dependent on marketing to get more investors which makes a lot of weak hands so when the marketcap is not able to sustain the demand and supply the price will likely go down . When the price goes down is the time to invest but not during the ICO .

I fomo like a noob during ICO as I don't want to miss it .  :'(
Well then you are a fuking sheep who want to buy in today and be a millionaire tomorrow well it does not work that way , you can always buy after it hits the exchange . Always have a good risk management system in place where you are able to manage your risk/reward ratio according to your portfolio .  

Always :- Ask tough questions to the team and you will know the reality  

Best Regards ,
VerthagOG

Because many people buy coin through a beautiful website, create waves in a short time but practically nothing, invest in the crowd.

Because there are succesful ICO's in the past and so scammers sees this field as money opportunity.
simple as that.

because it is easy money. where there is easy money there will be scammers.

People are stupid and don't read or understand what they are buying. Some people don't even understand the language and buy or whales that buy any coin in small amounts with no research.

ICO scammers getting more sophisticated creating fake accounts and other means to hype up the ICO on forums like this one. And those who can see the scams are not doing much to expose them or there is no good vehicle that reaches most.

Look at this scam RECoin. Their little post here is filled with fake accounts commenting good things.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2014062
 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2014062)

i agree with you, people are impetuous， they just want to invest 1 dollar today and 10 return tomorrow, then if a project looks good appears, they swarmed, but mostly they can not get the profit they want, they begin to curse, but it has nothing to do, only when they lose lots of money, they begin to close hand and quit from the market  

There are just too many ICOs for a person to focus on thoroughly reviewing the flaws on a part time basis.  The community should organize in groups that focus that focus on a single ICO and review in detail.

Because many people think short, they can not wait to work hard and eventually make a project scam. The best way to avoid scam is to look at the concepts and discussions in this forum especially the advice of trust members.

Because most of the ICO just came here to collect money nothing else and people here are to much greedy and have lack of knowledge so because of that people invest money into their scam and the ICO take the money and gone. That is why I always recommend to everyone that if you really want to invest in any ICO first research about them that do they really have good development team, do they have future plan, do they have proper road map and all the required important thing and if you really think and are confident that this ICO will really work then only invest in that no need to invest without research because most of the time you will loose money like that.

Everyone is trying to take advantage of the momentum right now. My strategy is the same for all investments whether cryptocurrency, stocks, and startups.

First and foremost:

• Team
• Traction
• Idea / Concept

Team
First and foremost, I invest in people. The questions I ask are:

• Are these individuals I can trust and share the same values with?
• What experience does the team have in this space?

Traction
Traction enables me to understand someone's passion, hustle, and results over a period of time. The question I ask here is:

• What traction has the team achieved over the past quarter, six months, etc?

Idea / Concept
It's never about the idea. It's always about the execution. Hence why this ranks lower than traction. The questions I ask are:

• What problem does this solve?
• Is this an idea that I'm passionate about and care offer value to?
• Is the idea / concept aligned with my values?

The answers to all of these questions give me a good sense on whether or not I should invest.  While it is still possible to make money from momentum investing, I recommend everyone employing due diligence and ask the same questions above prior to making an investment.

They are turning into scam because they don't have a good team behind that coin and if they have a good team then it will serve as a great foundation for the project and a lot of people will trust their project and they will attract or get a lot of investor so i think the team of the project is one of the most important piece of different ICOs so they will not turn into a scam.

yeah, but to identify the point you mentioned, it's not easy for common people.

Are you know a type make money very easy as ICOs? Just need invest and waiting, you will have profit x2 in short time. Sometime, not stop with x2 profit, it will x10 as PTOY. But not have type make money easy can still alive in long time, HYIP and Ponzi project are type make money from invest and are good place for scammer.

You gave the answer in your topic.

No regulation at all in the crypto markets, so it is a heaven for scammers, as long there are people that are scammable, if I can say.

Added it to the Post

I absolutely do not share your opinion. In fact most of the recent ICOs, if not all of them, have been profitable for the investors, and I do not even talk about those you got bonuses.

Today there are a lot of ICO organized by the developers ,, but surely there are parties who take advantage at times like this. Holding ICOs with promising programs, but once the investors are interested and start putting funds into them then they just disappear
You should first carefully developer policies and programs before making a decision to include funds

not all ico are scam, sometimes those who are have a small supporters has higher value in the market when ico is over. we need to be careful on what we are joining so that we cannot be fooled by other and we cannot waste our time on them.

Simple and clear post, great stuff Verthag

Short term profitability does not indicate legitimacy and long term results

There are many ICO opening now but its hard for newbie like me who want to choose a trust coin to invest, so I think there should be a team/group that help people now which is should!

Because people are all over the idea of becoming millionaires from their cents in very short time, and ICOs show them they magical thing just one step away and hence... they don't think enough from their brains and get conned.

You want trusted people in the community to review ICOs in an organised fashion? I don't think putting an endorsement or seal of approval on something from a supposed position of authority would ever be wise, if something goes tits up they'd get a lot of flak.

At best maybe some people could take it upon themselves to root out scams and things which look shady, trying to investigate as deeply as they can into a project, trawl code, look at who commits and what else they have committed, etc, and report their findings. But if someone is inclined to do that, aren't they doing that already? Maybe some users are doing that here to some degree, I know there are youtubers talking about upcoming ICOs to some extent (usually just jumping on a hype train but not always), maybe there are specialised websites and blogs that try to deal with this.

How about you try to consume as much third party media about ICOs as you can stomach, filter out what you don't find trustworthy, and start following those you do. Don't trust just the first party account of an ICO, research into prospective ICOs yourself, and take into account what the third parties you trust say.

While i agree with you that many of these projects are shady and some of them even straight up scams, i feel crypto in general has been playing the labeling game for far too long.

As per your points.

1.) Most of these ICO's have no business model  - So ? They describe what their plan is (be it via whitepaper or other documentation - some even have partial or working products). Giving a shot at something experimental or sometimes even outright stupid does not mean that the project is a scam. They let you know what amount they want and what they plan to do. If people wish to support that idea they are free to do so.

2.) Most of these ICO's would never be profitable - They do not have to be. People seem to be under assumptions that only profitable projects may exist, that however is not the case. Many good projects run at net negative, that does not mean they are a scam however.

3.) High Market cap for a project / ICO with no development , code or any past experiences  - Depending on the ICO, if they promise development (high or low marketcap has no difference here) and they do not deliver then it is a scam. Lack of past experience does not mean it is a scam, maybe they are starting fresh and want to get into the crypto sphere. For it to be a scam, they would need to actually scam.

4.) Most of them have a 1 year roadmap which means no vision  ??? - Vision and direction can be shaped over the course of the year. This does not automatically mean it is a scam.

5.) 5 months of hard work and for that they get Millions in funding  - This does not mean it is a scam, it is THEIR choice how much they want for their projects funding. They set their own goals, be them what they may, and if people think those goals are justified they will give them the funds.

6.) Dumb people running the shitshow  - stupidity and ignorance does not make anything a scam.

7.) Behind the scenes it is all about Money - Tell me me one business that is not after money.

While i agree that there is a lot of money grabbing and outright scamming going on, i think it is time to stop labeling everything as a scam. Its been a plague that has been infesting the whole crypto sphere for way too long and people need to grow the fuck up if we ever want to be taken seriously.

ROI does not prove that the coin is legit LOL

I agree with you . Here I am comparing ICO's with Startups .
ICO's are 5 months work and Startups are built over years based on hard work .
Most of these ICO's will run on the money they have raised which will make them burn out of funds one day or the other .
Behind the scenes as I understand it is all about money and exit .

The scam ICO coins left the good ICO coins in the mud.

Great post, definitely agreed. Most ICOs are crapshoot.

I'm annoyed of seeing the same advisors in different project when they didnt even succed in the first one. I dont know how much they get to put their face there.  ;D

I am trying to uncover a ScamCoin ICO on this thread after they blocked me on their FB page, but don't see anybody else on any site questioning it. It is like no matter what you do, these ICO scammers have it their way

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2014062.120  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2014062.120)

Also most ICOs are done by newbies. Why newbies do ICOs? because they want to hide their identities and collect quick money. If they had intentions to do something, they will not use newbie to start ICO.

So all newbie started ICOs are almost guaranteeed to be crap.

By newbies you mean accounts i assume. By your post it seems you assume this forum is the alpha and omega of crypto which is pretty insane of a statement in itself.

The reason why projects are started by newbs is a) as you said they do not want to share who they are and b) They simply did not have an account here. It is as simple as that.You really think everyone who is joining crypto has an account here immediately ? lol

It is just a forum. It used to be "the place" but as new crowd comes in, this place serves more as a place to post some information while main discussion and information sharing takes place in other places.

Nothing is easy to earn money, except stealing. As happened in coindash. Very concerned. Investors lose a lot of money in a few hours.
For learning to identify potential ICOs or not. more thoroughly.

a lot of bounties during ICO - indicator of probable scam.
There's always free cheese in the mouse traps.

Because at first we can see that it is really paying at look belivable as it is but it is not. And when the distribution of alk bounties is on going. They will find every reason dor them not to send their bounty. But I think karma will return on them also.

The opportunity to get a 1000% profit exceeds all risks.

Most of the ICOs I participated are not scam and I have not scam in investing ICOs even once in my life.
I think that only depends on a certain investors, if we will make a thorough research before investing then we can avoid that
in happening to us, this kind of investment requires us to be smart all the time.

Yeah , totally true , All.of us we need to see over the scene that is happening behind the ICOs . Usually we invest our money in the ico tocken with the news and promotions of the particular coins but when we get lost our money then we trying to see what was the reason .
So before invest in ico , we should consider following points in mind and also need to analyse them .
(1) Economical background & support .
(2) Technology behind the coin algorithm and stability expectations .
(3) Technical support , how much impactful and also look of the official site that how much is better and what we can estimate according to the look of the site of that ico .
(4) See the reason why we should buy , any particular reason that can result into bulk profit for us.

1 of 100, 10 of 1000... Don't stop believing  :D :D :D

Becouse people love money very much,create fake ico is most safe way to be rich fast,people are buying any hype,non regulated market,no watchdogs no scrutinity,make nice ico get 20mln$ and go away,nice i think

do you know why !!! Because many experience programmers found it easy to create ICO with a nice graphic and logos using ETH or WAVE blockchain so no hard-work required to crate a project like before with owned blockchain.

Great analysis and after trying my hand at an ICO a couple days ago (CoinDash) I believe I learned my lesson. Should've done way more research. What ICO's do you have your eyes on?

Any one who falls in the hands of scammers really have himself to blame although one cannot be totally careful because there have been some projects that possesses the characteristics op explained and still turned scam but only few would rn out that way. But with proper understanding and basis of what the project is to rely upon, I don't think anyone should be blame other than me if I just put my money is something blindly simply because I saw the ICO ANN thread nicely designed.

actually ICO's was crowd funding. It is upto you if you will invest or not but they are showcasing their project and ideas to the people and conductiong ICO was their main fund for the projejct or ideas they want. It is up to the investors if they will support the project or just get invole on the crowdsale to get some bonuses and just sell it after the ICO.

A fool and his money are easily parted. I don't blame the scammy ICO's, I blame the public that buy into these scams. Any reasonable investor worth his salt would do a thorough background check, before giving their money to total strangers on the internet. Some of these ICO's have nothing to tangible to show, their management teams non - existent but yet people give them money because some stranger on the bitcointalk says it is okay to.

Bitcointalk is the right place to look behind ICO projects to see, which backgrounds and innovations are served with the new currencies. Also to look, how big the community already is and to see, if their are only anonyms or real persons.

Most of the investor knows how to play the game. They play the ICOs like a trading platform. Investing huge money and will cashout in the beginning of exchange with their 20% to 40% profits, leaving the newbies hold their coins forever. All activity in the forum are risky not just ICOs. We have to be smarter than the scammers.

Most icos are not scams. I disagree with you strongly here. If you know the team, project and road map, it will never turn into a scam. It will only take some time to make a working product, as expected.

That’s usually how it is with fast money. I won’t invest in an ICO unless there was a point to it. If I really wanted to use the project and what it offers has something that I want in the near future then I would try to help the coin out. That is the only time I would join an ICO, if I really wanted to get rich then I would have to make a bunch of money then join every one of the top 100 coins and wait a few years.

Thank you for your post ,it's really helpful in understanding the market.
But don't you contradict yourself saying that you should invest in good projects like $MGO (5th biggest ico I think) and then saying don't invest in inflated cap ico's ?

It is easy now for people to pull the money out of their pockets.
Many Ico were great. And now many think it will also be good. And the deceivers know that. In addition, the greed for money comes with the people. This turns off the brain.
And the scammers know that. And nothing will happen to them because no one knows where they are in reality

It's a quick way to earn money with a few people and a laptop and some good photos. And the world is so stupid and believes everything without knowing the people
And afterwards they all mess around like many ICO like SONM, Polybius and many more. And many will follow because there are still many stupid people

Agree, easy money no projects, just make coin, list in exchanger and earn million US in a or two months. That's crazy.  I think there will be legit project in the future. Stay away from dump and pump ICOs from greedy fake developers. They know nothing about coding but act like professionals cryptocurrency coders. 1 or 2 years roadmap to make pay per click adnetwork website? That stupid developers with million dollars .

Yes thats right. But if we only keep to be wise and good enough to find an ico that is good well it is an advantage for us. So be wise so that we cannot be fooled easily.

ICO's are dangerous becasue they turned into a way to exploit other's capital. Here, others indicating contributors. Invest only in trusted projects.

The problem is not only the lack of a working product at the beginning of crowdfunding, maybe the biggest problem is unrealistic plans, things that, if done, would take years to be ready for real world use.

Well... I have to agree, many icos are scams... Coindash, golem e.t.c But there are still some gems like Veritaseum, Monkey Capital Hedge fund. They have awesome CEO's that are very active and answer all the questions regarding their project.

Yeah i guess it is just the starting point of that coins when they are trying to get or funding there projcect that the investor could easily be get scam i guess that big amount of money make the dev to scam the funds of the coin and ran away they could easily do that.

Its very easy money to make an ICO, all you need is a nice concept whether its realistic or not and a bit of work designing it to make it look professional. Then after a successful funding there is no accountability as to how the funds are used, you can pay yourself high fees and call it development money and deliver some vaporware to appease the masses or just disappear.

Easy to get funded, no accountability, no recourse even if you declare it a scam.

Coz most of the people investing on ICOs neverunderstand what they are doing. Most of them are baited into big profit scheme which is if you really think of it, it's not really true. Most of them are in rush to be rich so there they are end up bankcrupt blaming the ICOs there scame yes thats given but there are lots of promising ICOs there you just have to choose wisely.

That nice concept is something that is hard to do and eventually when its possible, its only for the gullible ones to put their money without understanding the basis of what they are putting it. Not all ICOs are bad and not all of them are successful but the issue of concern is how they all flood the forum with those who no serious agenda creating a vendetta for those who are serious about raising funds for a viable project.

Most of the ICO are scams because the developer just want a quick money and like to lure people with unrealistic project and sweet promise, and I like how OP teach us how to spot a good and bad ICO, ICO supposed to be giving us a better coin to invest, but most of the developer scammed the people and giving ICO a bad reputation

It's the temptation, when an ICO already collected a lot of investors fund from their project they are tempted to run the funds. Because it's an easy money already and they can just reproduce and recreate a project that can easily rebrand it, change their names and they will just come back. This is what I've seen base on my observation.

yes you are right this ICO thing has been the target scheme of this scammers so sad so us that rely our income on bitcoins should be wise on our judging in supporting this ICOS
some get scammed bcoz of being too greedy that it overlooks their judgement
so guys lets be more realistic in our judgement with this ICO projects to lessen the risk of being scam

I really like the points presented on the opening of the thread. I always look at the teams first and then if the product makes sense. Those two factors are crucial. A team must be known and with a track record. Unknown teams are dangerous/risky.

Who even told you ico are scams they are 2 types of ico one is legit ico where they actually raise millions and other one is when they are able to raise only some thousands but they show it as millions without any proof. ICO surely have no business model i totally agree with you but if you see any successful ico who listed their coins on exchange people normally sold their coins 2-5 times the price than initial ico which is all that matters for most of investors.

Thanks for adding that, I didn't considered the possible hacking incidents because I wasn't able to witness the ICO's to become scam because of hackers. As I mostly see ICO's that are starting to become scam when the developers are backing up and erasing their trace once they are ready to run away from their investors.

We've seen some very succesful ICO in the past. Some of us feel that they have missed the train so they are looking for new ICO to invest. But I believe it is a bit too late to invest now. Too many scams, hacks, greedy dev team, etc.

No even some obvious scams raise millions as well, its just a bigger scam than those that raise only thousands. The problem is that investors here are too gullible and need to understand the value of research and demanding a working product before money is raised.

If those devs will scammed people and ruined the reputations of the ICO he will be liable for his mess. I don't thinks most of ICO really scams people but in a specific manner those devs just did the unrighteous acts which made the ico reputations with bad impressions,  due to theit greediness of money. Hopefully this will not be over yet and morr will be gaining trust on different ico again,  because profit is really been having good impact to crypto currencies economy.

This picture that "all ICOs are scams" is a lot dangerous to the future of the technology. I truly believe that we are living in a transition time where all kinds of business are beeing migrated to the blockchain in a way we can benefit from the descentralized way of services. The technology has a lot to evolve yet, Ethereum, solidity, smart contracts...all of this still need so much to do, but if scammers kill this opportunity and take off the incentives of the real good projects all the community has a lot to loose. What we can do is research, and research, and a bit more of research. Invest not because of the speculation, but because we found that group of people that has a lot to add to this whole thing. With time will be always more difficult to be a scammer, I believe.

Because icos are the simplest way to trick on people. They can just create a fake images fake site fake names fake photos and convince people that they are real. It is easy and even if they find 10 20 investors that is mostly enough for them.  ;D

Cause they have a scammy distribution model, and not most, but all of them! All of them have a scammy distribution level that's why they are scams.

Legit looking projects can easily turn into scams. They be legit at the beginning then scam people. Check populous, polybius, onplace, and some others, you'll see what I mean.

So in fact we have to find good projects with a low marketcap.

Good projects that are not good at marketing  :D

How do you all feel about token distribution?  I've seen some concerned if a company's token sale is greater than 60% of the available tokens. 

We are thinking about this differently for our upcoming ICO.  For example, the following.

• ICO Reserve - 30%
• Future Reserve - 30%
• Ecosystem Development and Partnerships - 20%
• Employee and Advisor Option Pool - 20%

Primarily because this industry / market are still young and the uncertainties around it.  We feel that not having a future reserve poses risk to the company (and coin / token) in the event that was an unforseen circumstance such as hack during the ICO, etc.  Lastly, it allows for future sales or injections into the market exchanges to help with managing price fluctuations, etc.  Would the distribution above concern you?

For reference, Civic had the following model:

• ICO Reserve - 33%
• Partnerships - 33%
• Company Reserve - 33%
• Token Sale Expenses - 1%

Thanks.

in the first place op did not state that every ico are scams, theres the word most on it which indicates that the greater part of it tend to be as scams but obviously not all of them

there are certainly legit and successful ones. but yeah legit looking doesn't mean its legit and even if it collected million funds doesn't also mean its legit so  if you're gonna

invest. don't invest an amount you can't afford to lose. bottomline is there is no way to find out if the compaign will be successful but if its legit and the devs are serious there is a

way. if they are transparent e.g. show the faces of their team, transaprent addresses etc. but some are also hiding it for privacy and security.

I still trust ICO's it will only depend on how we choose it. We gained on them so we better trust them. We can know whether their scam or not by knowing their goal if seems realistic and having a good team support.

ICOs are good and it only depend to us if we will invest in scams or not, today most ICOs are successful so let's stop believing
that the past will repeat. Actually it has help the entire crypto market to improve and people are now eager to be part of the history if it will be big in the future.

I can't argue with you more on "7) Behind the scenes it is all about Money". Bitcoin was a great idea and it lead the cryptocurrency to an unimaginable extent.When that happen i was expesting more interesting technologies and ideas but all we got is scammers that wants a little more.It's actually sad.

Maybe, in some points, you're right but this doesn't change the ico craziness. Let's have a look at the altcoin announcement forum and you'll see what I mean. This is just crazy to see 20+ new ico every day.

I agree with you.  It's really ridiculous to see all of these announcements with no website or product.  However, I have seen a trend of these companies having a hard time getting crowdfunded.  Some are barely meeting their min cap or not getting any support at all.  For example, TribeToken opened their ICO up yesterday and received 2 ETH their first day.  Looks like people are getting smarter with their investments as well.

There had been lots of successful ICO in the past and as we all know in this world scammers are all around taking advantage of everything that can benefit themselves. Since scammers know more people are attracted and making  investment on lots of ICOs so they use this opportunity as well to fool investors and run their money. We just need to be keen observer and make really good decision before entering any investment so we don't end up losing our money for scams.

Agreed. A working prototype along with feasible idea, good team is what that matters.

A little more common sense and technical knowledge would be enough for anyone to determine whenever it was SCAM or not

we are responsible for this circumstance..
we need to be aware when we invest our money.

Most ICOs I have seen are sold at a higher price than the coins or tokens will be sold for. How will you know you won't be scammed afterall? They want to take your money. Why? For development? Most big and real coins did not need to do a pre-sale to be able to develop and work for the coin. There are over 810 currencies at the moment, I think this thing has to stop... The creation of cryptocurrencies. Too many aren't good, because the community will be splitting up in too many coins.. but we cannot do anything to stop them. Scams are all around us and this should be an eye opener for all of us.

Let me share with you something about my view on ICOs. The biggest problem I see, what do I get out of it. Do I invest merely on greed and prediction something will rise? No. I want something in return for my coins, for my money. And there is where most of Icos fail. They offer a part of a project, they offer an investment, they offer a speculation. BUT what is behind the story. Most of it is crap and they rely on your greed. Can I see the Coin I just bought still valid in few years. Can I see this coin making some value in time? Can I see a ROI on my investment beside speculation. Can I see a demand for this coin in the future?

So at the end, you have to decide a few things. Entering an Ico or even Preico with a total hope for speculation and easy money, or entering with all the right reasons supporting your decision. We all se coins growing 100, 200 and even 300% in a short period of time, we all want to be on that train, but take a look et ETH or Bitcoin. They are still here, they made much more percentage in a long run and they are nowhere near the end. AND this my friends, what I seek for. Because with shitcoins the game is always against me. Did I catch the right moment to enter, did I catch the right exit strategy, Am I  in just for a short time, what do I get in return? People on crypto and Forex markets act the same. All looking for easy money and a quick way to make some. But at the end, a lot of them stop because they lost it all. Don't be that one. Make smart decisions and move with smart money. IF you don't trade smart, the odds are against you big time, you just don't realize it yet.

My 2C for starters…

it is easy to know why most ICO now are just scam, first, ICO is just a way the project call for cryptos investment from investors, but the problem is that the cryptocurrency is anonymous, so it is easy to scam people without being traced, second, the amount of money that project raised too much that the more greedy the company becomes, and third, investors are too careless that they didn't do any research about the ICO that they about to invest.

I cannot agree that all ICO's are scam. Yes, there are some, but most of the time it is obvious that the ICO is scam. Inrealistic project, limited team, the project is not profitable. You need just to read the whitepaper and you will see this in 10 min. There are other ICO's that are good and realisitc, also the team have what it takes to make the project. For example, for me, wepower is one of those ICO's.

many people who want to get big profits plus the incessant promotion they do with the lure of the ICO coin prices will soar 10 to 100 times the ICO price.
and plus newbie people who got tricked by the promotion of their Coin ICO SCAM.

Any company or organization that has the ability to create a coin can also make capital calls through the ICO. This is also a weakness that many individuals, organizations take advantage of, making coin worthless, cheat investors to their equity and of course a coin worthless, this project will not To the end, these organizations will clean up the money of the private and high run away.

Most but not all you gotta be selective on what ico you are going to invest cause a lot are just into the money ( ICO FUNDS ) so you gotta choose the team that are capable for long term gains / dependable

scammer will find their way on scamming money in any industry regardlessly.

I don't know but the ground is available for this. HSHC (hashcard) it was an example. 20k dollars was garbage. first time I got ripped off. they screwed me =(

I invested in some ico during the 2017 and all of them have gone from rich to rugs.  funds gathered from ico gives the developer team big temptation to run away with the money, specially when the team members' identities are unknown to the public.  many projects are purposely built just to scam people.  tactics include giving huge discount for ico investors and promises of very high return.  others also come up with unrealistic visions and unreachable goals.

I agree to you mate because based on my own experience one of the reason why the project that have ICO is a scam because of the people who behind it or the team of the project. Some of the ICO being extend because of the team want to more money then gone when they gather many funds to the investors then the coin will just a dump coin.

ho ho)
quite often projects have a good base for work, team, product. Collect their given capital. pay the first some income and even start work (or imitation of work) and then collapse. perhaps because of one or two "black sheep" in the herd, and perhaps this is how it all just shows.
I am leading to this, that you should not equate all. among the obvious scam projects, good ones stand out as well as among the good ones - fraudulent ones

Not most of the "scam" you think are actually scam. I have seen a talk in some of the discords of big "scam" coins that failed and mainly cost almost everyone their money, I was involved in some marketing and talked with higher ups of the coin and you can be certain that there are a lot of coins that came out to become a legit great coin and get funding and create the most beautiful coin out there even considering taking bitcoins seat.

However, those same coins when faced with challenges and hackers and all kinds of problems started to fail with the bear market on top of all this they started to realize they paid a lot of money as ICO funding whereas they now have a lot less money to achieve those promises, they pay their workers decent amount of it and usually left with nothing.

They try to do as much as they can but after certain amount of tries they give up which makes the coin go to worthlessness and called as scam even when they are not.

Because people want to make easy money on gullible people and rest the rest of their lives. Izi

The skeptical investor doesn't need to look far in order to see this in practice. In fact, the scam-filled nature of ICOs is so widely known that the SEC created a fake ICO just to warn people away from them.

I think that at a minimum you need to understand and focus on the features of the project, how it differs from others, and not to jump into the first ICO on the long-battered topic... And yes, now there are a lot of banal "money collectors".

The problem is that people just love easy money. I'm talking about the creators of scam who do not want to do something useful and just cheat, and about investors who do not understand what to invest.

Both are looking to take quick earnings without dealing with real projects that will progress after some time, investors need to be more furious about projects that they will invest their money while developers needs to prove that project is reliable and have a good future outcome, ico scammers are very tricky as they can really attract people to invest even there's no possible progress they just provide promises that very attractive and unnoticeable with
newcomers and grab their money very quickly.

I am totally disagreeing with this subject because I can confidently say that in myself that most ICO are not scam. Maybe youre in out of luck but ive experienced it myself joining bounty signature campaign and luckily the most of the ICOs ive joined have a succesful journey and I got so much money from that.

A large number of people became interested in the blockchain and very many began to master the work on this technology, so I hope that the situation as a whole will be very, very transparent with time, but so far I see that nothing good happens

I don’t invest in ISO, but I think that many shit koin are very useful - for those who know how to use them, of course, you can make very good money on them if you can trade.

Because it's still unregulated and easy to scam. Both investors and charlatans want to make a quick buck and anyone can hide behind a pretty website and promising ideas. Illusions are powerful things.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

I totally disagree with this opinion. Of course, there is scam among ICO, but that doesn’t mean that all ICO are scam. There are a lot of good and promising ICO, you just need to learn more about the campaigns.

It should be noted that this topic started in mid-2017. Since then, almost 1.5 years have passed. Nothing changes, and for all this period they talk about bad ICO. I think ICO will develop. As the saying goes: the dog barks, the caravan moves on.

If ICO's just told people to buy bitcoin, then they wouldnt be so shady.

Saying is good :) i read a review about the icos in 2018. Its written that the %80 percent of icos are scam in 2018. I might add if we add the failed icos to this math, successful icos in 2018 is only a handful. Its bad.

Currently, almost all ICO projects are fraudulent, accounting for 90% of phishing projects, but if we have experience and choice of projects then they probably will never exist. Poor quality, they cheat in the ICO project so they are very quickly rich, and the scam pattern is increasingly widespread.

Yes, it is very sad, but practically all ICO is SCAM. Swindlers don't want to do the projects, they want to deceive only the investors and to disappear. Because of it at ordinary people the trust to cryptocurrency is lost. Therefore it is necessary to be very attentive at ICO choice.

I am very much upset by a situation with ICO in the market of cryptocurrency. Many developers of projects deceive the investors for receiving money from them. They just steal investments and disappear. As the cryptocurrency isn't lawful yet, nobody can help investors. Probably to all fault human greed. She forces deceive people around.

At the early stage where regulation is not that clear, you can expect lots of scam but this market will survive and we will eliminate scams over time.
We do not need to pressure the government to make regulations because they will be the one who are willing as they see big money in crypto.
The best we can do to be safe is to be smart and that is making ourselves of the risk in crypto.

With the rise of so much scam project/ICO that really making everyone sick of it. That affecting the trust on every investors to put their investment in cryptocurrency. Thus making hard for any new project to retrieve the desired amount of investment.

I think the reason is that it's a big difference between an idea and realization of the idea

While that is correct a huge reason is that people keep falling for the same scam over and over again, if they were scammed once and then they learned their lesson the market of icos will decrease significantly to the point that scammers will leave the market but since that is not the case we have a market full of scammers.

You'll never know if that idea will be realize, that is why we are betting on the team and we feel will and can deliver.
There is no guarantee as well that the reputable team or the company would deliver because the risk is here and we don't see the future.

Because the ICO market is so easy to fool, they create an ICO with a lot of fraudulent schemes to take advantage of other people's assets, so they have a tremendous source of income. It's a shame if you choose the wrong project.

Most ICO projects are fraudulent because this activity allows you to collect huge amounts of money, anyone can conduct ICO, and this activity is not regulated by the states. Apparently, until this activity is regulated, the percentage of fraud will remain large.

Because there are no laws currently in place for ICOs, so people who are proficient in electronic money are always looking for ways to create fraudulent ICOs to appropriately dispose of someone else's property. So they will soon be rich and probably become millionaires

According to me there is  must be a change in the development of crypto in the future, for example when a project wants to use a platform to start ico then it is as good as having a platform to select first and investigate so that it will be prevent to born of ico scams.

If the true ico works for good projects, greedy fraudsters work for scam, but they can do scam jobs to get rich in short.

as scamming getting easy than before you can create a professional site easy and also you can pay and get professional whitepaper so
many people dream with January 2017 profit

That is a good analysis you completely detailed the many loopholes in ICO but soon there will come a time that only legit and good ICO will win the market, investors and the community are getting wiser, they have learn from all these mistakes, all of us have been victimized by these scammers one time or another.

It's true. Many people are planning to create scam ico to earn money and they want to earn some big money by scammed others. Such scam ico is constantly increasing.

In my opinion most ICOS campaigns are now scams because they can make the quickest and the richest. Besides, I think when the crypto market gets bad and it has not recovered the capital mobilization is hard. Just as they take advantage of the trust of investors to make a lot of money by joining ICOS.

No, I do not agree that most of the ICOs are fake but few are fake. Most you are talking because they have not a proper business model or the business didn't run for longer. As, it is a very unregulated market some of the project which doesn't have a serious project can also bring the ICO. But the ICO managing body whether it be a private it also scrutinize the company regulate the ICOs for the investors sake. If, the ICO do not achieve a minimum investment which is called as soft cap then the money return back to the investors.

Great information. I hope most of the questions about how to choose a project will disappear. Newbies often ask such questions.

Just a lot of people and investors have not learned to distinguish good projects from fraud. Need to entrust this to professionals. I think sooner or later there will be some kind of regulator that will conduct the verification of the developers and to monitor the spending of collected funds.

Holding ICOs with promising programs, however once the investors have an interest and begin golf shot funds into them then they simply disappear
You should initial rigorously developer policies and programs before creating a call to incorporate funds

You stated the obvious, but the reason why it was so can easily be tied to people's need to make money fast.

Trying to make money fast is what results in people not been able to take the pain in going through the white paper and business model critically. There is even the need of conducting checks on the projects social media, reaching out to verify the legitimacy of the teams and many more as may have been listed.

With the urge to speed up profitability drive, without the accompanying meticulous approach; Scam projects will keep thriving.

My advice:
Engage in thorough research and fact findings of the projects, to get rid of scam projects.

Many ICOs turning out to be a scam as after fundraising and they are not doing any development
and they not fulfilling their promises. This is why we need strict regulations on OCOs.

Yes it happened to me a lot of times during this year, i did not invest a little money, either a huge amount, but it is difficult to accept a lose.

I do not understand why those ICOs still exist, why there aren't many regulations against them yet?

I do not know why the law isn't doing anything too.

Undoubtedly - most of the projects are scam, so projects that really make a profit are rarely found. For example, I was lucky that I invested in ETHEERA. ETA token shows good growth momentum even in a falling market. And I think in half a year he will bring me x10 while if I invested in Bitcoin, I could earn a maximum of +50 percent during this time. Choose the right coins and you will not have any problems with earnings!

What ICO projects do with our money is a mystery. This market is called a market of beliefs. If you have no faith, you will not be able to earn huge profits here. So I do not think investing in ICO will be profitable for you, but you need to have good project analysis skills.

Now it is more than relevant I think, I think it's all about the usual human greed, everyone wants to make a lot of money without doing anything , and after give them to those scammers who promise mountains of gold

because scammer can easily scam people that is why they create a lot of scam ICOs. for the past years there are many successful ICOs and scammer see it as an opportunity to earn easy money because they know there will be a lot of investor.

Why they have a lot of ICO's are scam or most them because they will get more money and mostly they got is millions dollars every ICO so the scammer are happy to create more ICO's with unknown team and that is time we need to be aware if we going to invest check every details to make sure the ICO is safe and legi.

absolutely right. at least of the many ICO which appeared in this time, just a well-deserved ICO will be able to survive and succeed. Smart investors will certainly be selective in choosing the ICO and not only see this as a short term only. the scam that too many investors are demanding to do a good analysis to make it could generate for them.

They are not scam. Due to the market conditions the most projects cannot collect the funds that they need. If an ICO collected 1 million USD instead of 5 million USD, they won't continue their duties, because it won't be enough.

yes,, i agree with this point. those who join scam projects only want big profits quickly achieved without thinking about the long term, what they do is only attract investors to get into their projects and after they get a profit the project will soon be abandoned

I totally disagree with this opinion. ICO has a lot of good projects. Not all ICOs are frauds. There are many good and promising ICO. Spend more time searching and analyzing, just need to learn more about projects.

Projects that are created in a falling market are very closed and inactive, which is why investors begin to think that they have invested in scams.

I think that most of the ICO projects have been authentic and reliable at the beginning. Due to various factors in the later period, the project has not developed, and finally the project identified by investors as a scam. So good projects must have a good team to operate.

because there is a lot of money. which they collected from many inventors. they want to get instant benefits with short term. so for that they made a form of ICO project which ended in Scam

Lol, I still don’t agree with that. None of them who does that are legit, they are just a cryptocurrency exit scam. Most of these ICOs you see that seems to be legit are exit scam. They pretend to be legit and keep running their cryptocurrency or ICOs and once they have gotten money from investors, they will quickly disappear, leaving investors lurching from wall to wall, Lol.

In 2017, 80 percent of the ICOs conducted were scam, and I know it’s likely to be the same thing with this year: majority of the ICOs are just scammers. And according what I read on Cointelegraph, total funding was $11.9 billion and 11 percent went to scammers ($1.34 billion).

But is there ways you can avoid them? Yes there are many ways you can avoid scam ICOs. But since you have already stated the reasons, maybe I should just drop a link for those that wants to know more. Check out Investopedia, the site really helped me a lot in telling which ICOs/cryptocurrencies are scam and which ones are not, https://www.investopedia.com/tech/how-identify-cryptocurrency-and-ico-scams/

No regulation is possible, the governments may try to create regulation for icos but like always the problem is how are they going to apply those regulations in a market that was a specifically designed to avoid being subject to the regulations of the governments? So in my opinion even if there is a regulation nothing will come out of it.

There are too many ICOs on the market that we can not manage. So ICO scam is absolutely possible.
So when you join an ICO you should do it with reputable people and consult people on the forum, check regular Telegram.

Most ICOs are scam because most of the investors didn't take much time on reading their whitepaper and even researching the team if its legit or not. They all care about the hype of the project, that's why many investors get scammed of this projects because the lack of knowledge on how to choose a legit project and to distinguish if the product has a real use-case in the future.

Because they aren't regulated....So its free money for the creators and noone will hunt them down if they pull an exit scam.

IMO the other things that can make ICO are turned into scam are because some  past investor are just like a little bit disappointment with how the project are performing after ICO. The hype on the last years on ICO things was very crazy, but the result are so imbalance compared to the their roadmap.

That is a useful information you give here. I believe it would be good for everyone to know about that scam ICO and legit ICO.
It should be able to reduce any scam ICO to be created, cause many people aware about it and will be able to avoid to join into any Scam ICO.

Your post is very clear about the reason why most ICO are scam. Thank you for deep analysis. From my point of view, there are more and more scam ICO because it is really easy to create fake ICO with fake team, fake, roadmap,...

Because now there is such a situation in the market that you have to deceive someone, or deceive you. If you are not happy with both directions, now it is better to be out of the market.

All this scammers see ICO  as an easy way to scam people of their hard earned money. They create fake project, hype and advertise it and believe me, people start investing in it. Over the years a lot of ICO have turned out be scam. Extreme caution is needed before investing in a project.

Because creating an ICO for fraudulent investors is so easy they always try to create them. to cheat young and inexperienced investors.

Because many of them are being setup as self-enrichment tools.
Even the fairness of the intentions is doubtable.

The principle behind an ICO is something I still support only the executions are very poor.

And some extremely succesful ICO's that have been supported in the past are just delusional projects.

The emergence of ICO has changed the world of investment. The market volume and the abundance of inexperienced users make cryptocurrency an attractive target for hackers and scammers.

Guys, how do you differ scam projects?

Speaking about scam ICO seems no end to it. Those scam keep on appearing, In my opinion that is because someone wanting to get an easy money without doing so much effort, and doing a Scam ICO is a simple thing to do and there are still no regulation about it, and it's hard to track it, making all the bad people has their way to do that.

Because most of them just want to get the money of the investor's,
There are so many scam project because there are also many lazy investor's who aren't reviewing or doig some background check at the team and the project.

There are a lot of criteria by which you can check scam projects. These are the team, hardcap, code, and more. If you are new to this, you can hardly figure it out right away.

You can choose the project, analyze it, and then compare with reports of famous experts.

Because all want to be enriched and to do nothing, and so it is very much a Scam, sometimes it's just not a working product, and sometimes the team is not able to realize such a project!

There are no guarantees that the report was not made for money. So you should look at reports from different experts and compare their opinions and yours. You can have a table where you will virtually “invest” in projects and then watch roi. In the future, with success, you can start a real investment.

Every normal expert usually has a spreadsheet, where they indicate their investments and final achievements on a separate tab. So you can determine whether to trust a particular analyst.

You can also see the statistics of project scores for all top experts. For example, it's quite conveniently on http://topexperts.io. If the individual estimates fall out - it's a reason to think.

I think that most ICO's are scams, because ICO is a very easy way to make money on fool peoples, which dont understand what is cryptocurrency at all

The situation is that nowadays we can easily find the scam ICO among good projects, so I do not agree with the statement that most ICOs are scam.

Why most of the IcO project are scam?Because there are many stupid people here thats willing to become a victim,this is why this damn scammers are continuously creating project that has only one purpose,and thats to victimized investors and campaign participants.maybe this is the main reason for this rampant scams happening around the crypt community

There are fraudsters in any field of business. Where there is money, unfortunately there will be scammers. And ICO is unfortunately not an exception.

Yes i think you are little-bit correct. There are too many ICOs in market and people are misguided every time with wrong information. So they feel hesitation in which ICOs they will invest. On the other hand qualified team are not engaged with ICOs so that they can not know how a ICO would have to be succeed. Lastly present market condition is also responsible to unsuccessful an ICO. Investors are in fear of their money so that ICOs are going SCAM.

Scam happiens because a lot of peoples still believe in fast money. They are still on the wave of 2017 (in their minds). Those who create scam ICO projects just want a fast money and they create a one day project's which expires also in one day.

You explain too much why many ICO scams, but I only agree from all of your opinions there is only one goal, namely money, it's all about money and greed, human nature that is very dominant today.

Everything is very simple. There is no idea and future, everything is simply copied from more successful projects and investors are not driven to it. So most projects do not even collect soft cap. And most likely at least some collected funds are not returned to investors.

very soon the model of ICO will change. there is already a lot of news about what SEC seriously wahtching on new ico projects. in the future there will be much less scam

I agree with you people's intention and interest need to be changed as they don't have faith in ICO's these days as a lot of people in this forum made ICO's as a false source. Like posting such stuffs on the above. All they want to see is atleast they need to reach the soft cap.

I am not actually agreeing with this. Because I still believe there are so many ICOs succeed even if the market is down as of now as you can see the market itself you will see how the market really dump. Still it is in a matter of choice whether you like the ICO or not. Youre the one should gather information about that ICO.

Most of the projects earn and make up a project development plan in order to collect money from investors and sell useless tokens that will not be developed in any way in the future.

Thank you that painted , but of course most projects do not have a product and they want to make money quickly, so few people want to develop the project

I believe in the immense value of the ICO market. In the past, there really were a lot of useful and truly successful projects with profitable investment opportunities. But now the situation has changed dramatically - there are too many scammers, so many investors do not trust this market.

I think that is not only the reason, one major reason why ICO has decline is because major currencies are dumping.
When it's dumping, less people are only buying, causing lack of investment opportunity for ICO, but I am still optimistic market will recover and ICO will be great again.

many devious and mischievous developers who want to earn money by cheating, this is a crime in the ico project, and we must be really mature when investing in ico.

Of course, many investors are really disappointed with the current situation in the crypto market. After all, different developers are cheating investors, they are only thinking about getting money. They just want to get investment and do not think about the development of the project. But even in such market conditions there are opportunities to find profitable ICOs with excellent potential for development and success.

Of course, all this comes only from the fact that in many countries today there is no legislative basis for the proper regulation of cryptocurrencies, because today cryptocurrencies and operations with cryptocurrencies in a neutral state. I think this is all for this reason.

I continue to believe that today the ICO market is really of great importance for cryptography and the entire digital society. Therefore, I continue to regularly invest part of my money here. Not all projects here are scammers, there are really useful and promising technologies.

Shortly: because they can easily and quickly collect enough money without any punishment. There is no buyer protection, no regulations, completely free market.

Please, suggest me some good ICOs passed analysis according to topicstarter list.
I can list just 5 projects at the moment and as for bounties,situation is even worse.

I fully agree with this statement. In fact, it is strange to see that many projects are trying to get investment and develop without even offering a website or some kind of finished product. I really hope that over time, investors will become smarter, they will not give a chance to scammers.

That's quite a serious topic to discuss. Long story short, both fraudulent ICOs and incompetent investors are the result of such losses. The first should know why and what for they need every single $ raised during ICO; also, they should be probably professionals if they want to succeed. The second (investors) should pay more attention to the research and details such as team background, experience, business model and other stuff, and finally invest. I mean, of course, there are many initially scam teams but it's always investors responsibility to properly do and analyze the research.

Speaking of legit ICOs I wanted to add MobileGo as an example, but topic starter already included it tho. Have a good luck with your investments guys!

And as far as I know today, even the SEC cannot do anything about it, there was also a lot of information on the forum about how to work with projects correctly and how to make a choice, but still this is a matter of chance.

The most difficult aspect to comprehend for a significant number of investors is that most icos do not turn into a scam, most icos were created from the very beginning with the intention of scamming the investors, developers never had any intention of delivering on any of the promises that they made on the white paper, their website or in any other communication channel that they opened.

I think that the main reason that stands behind this is that people are blindly investing in every project. They do not want to check anything, they just want to gain profit. There are projects that are using this to make money.

There are a lot of scams on the cryptocurrency market because they are very difficult to track down and punish. In order not to fall for their tricks and not to lose money, it is necessary to carefully analyze projects, communicate with the team and monitor their development.

The more scams of projects, the less is believed in good projects with a conscientious team. Bad projects remember longer than good ones.

The legal framework is unlikely to control the quality of ICO. The maximum is the control of cash transfers when withdrawing money from exchanges.

Because they can.
People throw their money at them without doing research.
Of course scammers will take advantage.
I'm actually shocked at the amount of HONEST ICO-s considering how easy it is to scam crypto speculators.

At least one project that is good for everyone, you know. This one whose signature he wears.

yes you are right, investors' trust in investing in the ico project will be reduced if many ico continue to scam. but smart investors also will not arbitrarily choose ico for investment. one way to succeed when investing in ico is to look at sales and roadmap. ico is good luck, the cryptocurrency is likely to be a huge scam, so be careful.

I think smart investor even in 2017 saw obvious scam and not invest.
Only good projects deserve money.
And there is good projects.
With less money to give, I think ICO will become better in 2019

Actually, I don't want to recognize these, but, this is unfortunately the fact. We may avoid this condition, but seeing the projects so far, many of them are being like this. We can see how many ICOs that extend their projects or failed, although they are not scams, but they are failed. I think that they need to make more interesting concept before creating an ICO.

Unfortunately, the percentage of such ICOS that turn out to be scams is growing every day. Now perhaps he more than 65%. I don't like it, but you can't get away with it.

I think now on the contrary Scam in ico about 95, very few projects that really do something, most want to just make money and go into the shadows , and it certainly deters many to invest in ico !