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I 've been trying to find out all the things that would lead me to spot the wining ICO, meaning an ICO that will not just enter a the platforms to make a quick buck.

An ICO I can really HODL.

I FOUND A VERY GOOD ICO: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2367245 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2367245)

I have gathered the below up to now:

• The founders are working on something great, with details on their design and their roadmap.
• The founders are not worried with deadlines, but are making changes when necessary to ensure the safety of their project.
• The founders know their project of by heart. They can answer logical questions. They love it when people ask them about their project and the details of the development.
• The founders could be promising the world, but not tomorrow. If they are promising you to become rich tomorrow, something looks bad.

New points from other members:

• Competent development team is the most important rule. Ideas are not enough. There should be good devs to build around those ideas. That is main rule.
• ICO's with a low or reasonable market cap and ICO's that have set a max cap.
• [it could apply sometimes] The winning icos will be having a large of the communities that will always try to monitoring the development process of the project that was including about the crowdsale too.
• Truly wining ICO gets a news coverage on the media.
• The ICO softcap is fulfilled ahead of time.
• If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
• Projects with an existing product, could look more promising, but people could be less likely to invest. It all has to do, at which stage their project is running and where they want to take it.
• The project is transparent, as the founders are transparent.

Looking forward to enhance my list. I will add your ideas to the above list.

I agree with this opinion because the developer must understand the project, It also adds that public figures can make an ICO a success.

It is very hard task. But I think I can give tips even if I am not very successful. Competent development team is the most important rule. Ideas are not enough. There should be good devs to build around those ideas. That is main rule.

Agree with all of the above, I also tend to invest in ICO's with a low market cap and ICO's that have set a max cap.

A winning ICO can be getting in on the pump and sell before the dump it. Why must one hodl?

ICO's that are clear in their target with a hard cap logical to the build of their project. It could be in tens of millions, is not about the number, but about the need.

has been added to the list, since the development team is important, although is hard to evaluated, with all those fake profiles out there.

Added
Agree, that the market cap should be logical.

This is true because success lies in the team and the decision sometimes taken during the hard time. It is important to have the right kind of balance among the management team which have the clear vision and focus of future. Else even if the coin has potential may fail due to lack of execution by the team.

If you can't HODL, then why bother with a long shot ICO. Most people got their earnings from holding in projects such as bitcoin and ethereum. Not from daily pumps and dumps.

So far you've collected a good list of things that you should remember in order to spot a winning ICO. This will help a lot of newbies out there that are looking for the right ICO to invest on. Hope this list gets updated.

The list of things are good, but we would appreciate the community opinion, as this will help us then identify these projects.

First and foremost, it is very useful to tell a scam from a legit ICO. Once you’ve decided take a closer look, consider taking the time to read the technical whitepaper to understand how it works (please don’t decide to invest only based on the pretty website or flashy buzzwords). The papers can sometimes be dense but the understanding of the details is very well worth it. Also, you may find it helpful to join the Slack group to ask questions and see what other peoples’ concerns are.

Its kind of like a situation wherein the developers and the whole team is hyped at the very beginning of the project but the same enthusiasm isn't carried forward after the ICO stage. I've come across many such ICOs who have a great ideology but never follow through with putting everything up as planned on the roadmap because as soon as they see the money flowing from the ICO, they tend to become lazier with stuff.
Only a few tokens have actually made on time progress with their roadmap and these are the real winning ones in my eyes.

The winning icos will be having a large of the communities that will always try to monitoring the development process of the project that was including about the crowdsale too.
There is a lot of people already made very huge money from the winning ico just like knc token.

Is basically the point said above, ensuring that founders know their project and understand what they wrote.. obviously you read the whitepaper.

It is difficult in this current climate with so many ICOs going on to determine which ones will work out and which ones are no good, but the same as it has been with many of the altcoins, it is all about doing a decent amount of research, check out the community behind the coin, see what the opinions are on this forum and use a bit of your own instinct.

It sounds logical, but sometimes hype and people following it means nothing, like electroneum and enjin have a lot of followers, but it doesn't mean they are in it for the whole run.

Hyped ones are the most dangerous ones. As far as I remember from bancor ico, their Project was a hype. It was consisting of only 50 lines of code or something. But they made their marketing well as a hyped one.

I personally invest their legal status and white paper before invest money in it.

Since most ICO's are decentralised, meaning they don't even have an address or legal entity, how to you check their status?

Some of them do have while some of them don't. An ICO for a decentralized exchange might not have an address but an ICO for mining farm, or green energy production do have an address and some sort of licencing.

Powerledger has a great whitepaper. I would consider loading up on Powerledger. The ICO is running now and it is super cheap. Check it out here (https://bounty.powerledger.io/btctalk/?hash=UN2H4claZer0n1cG)

Lets keep the topic on the same line, without mentioning other ICO, unless you can relate them to this conversation.

I also look for ICOs that will burn unsold tokens. Most make that offer, but some do not.

I would take a look at their developers, and see what projects they have worked on in the past. Having a wireframe/prototype out before their sale also helps a lot too.

Truly wining ICO gets a news coverage on the media, the ICO softcap is fulfilled ahead of time.
Because ICO is all about colllecting fund, the one that collects better wins.

Investing in ICO's to profit from pump isn't that hard, because most of them get pumped, but spotting an ICO that can be successful in the long term can be very difficult, because there's so many things that can go wrong even on projects that are legit. Good idea on opening this topic. I hope it becomes very useful and informative. :)

I agree about the founders/developers but it's impossible to know how good they are and if they do it by heart if you don't know them personally or are reknowned people that already made several known successful projects. And it's not just developers that should be good, but they should have good marketing too.

My list would be:
- Ask yourself what's the main idea of the project. What problem does it solve. Does it have any competitors. How is the idea better than competitors. Are their potential customers that would find use for the idea.
- Check the team. Are there real names posted on their website with their real photos. Google for team members. Check if they already worked on some successful projects. Do pictures and information on the website correspond to what you find on their profiles on social networks like Facebook.
- Check the website. Does it look professional. Are there many spelling errors. Serious projects will pay someone to design and lecture their website properly. Is there a whitepaper on the website (it's a must obviously) and roadmap. Is the website translated into any other language than English. Translations especially to Chinese, Japanese and Korean are a big plus.
- Check the whitepaper. Is it just a few pages of simple text written in poor English. That's bad sign for sure. Or is it about 100 pages of very technical and legal language noone really understands. If whitepaper is too complicated, it might be written this way on purpose so it would make the project seem good. Or the project might really be good, but there's possibility it won't get many investors, because not many potential investors would understand it. And if ICO doesn't get enough investors, they may not collect enough funds to work on the project. Whitepaper document should be just about right. Written without any errors, properly formatted, easily understandable but must still answer most of the questions you as investors want to know.
- Check the roadmap. What have they done already. The more the better. A working product you can try out is best. Just white paper with nothing else done is very risky.
- Check the code if they publish it on github. Are there a lot of commits every working day. This should like they're working hard on the project. But be careful if the code is forked from another project. Many of the activity might be there from the previous project.
- What's the amount they're trying to raise. Is the amount reasonable for what they're trying to achieve. Are there any cost estimates that explain what the collected funds will be used for. Is there a hard and/or soft cap for the ICO. Do you know exactly how much will you pay per token. Team that doesn't even know the estimate of their expenses can't be serious on the project. And if there's no cap, it shows they're at least greedy if not scammers. And if you can't tell how much will you pay per token this is gambling not investing.
- What's the model of token distribution. What percentage of tokens will be sold to investors and what percentage will stay with the team. Anything more than 49% of tokens staying with the team is a bad sign.
- How many tokens will be in circulation. Are they inflating, limited supply, deflating. Are there any competitive projects on the market. Compare potential token price to them in case the project reached same marketcap. What profit would you make at this marketcap. Is it worth the risk.
- What's the use of the token. Will flow of the tokens in the system drive the demand for tokens up and create buying pressure in the market.
- Check the community. Is there a lot of activity in the threads on this and other online forums and social networks. Do members of the team communicate a lot.
- Check marketing. Do you spot adds for the project, a lot of news about the ICO on different media sites, do they publish videos on youtube, send newsletters and write blogs regulary,...
- How long will it take after ICO to hit exchanges. Which exchanges on what dates.

Probably no ICO project will be perfect according to above checks. But the more checks it passes the better. And I probably also forgot some important checks, it's just what I wrote from the top of my head.

if there are a way to spot a winning ico, no one will tell you here  ;D

Both added. Good points.. media coverage is logical, especially when is not from press releases (paid)

If you want a win with ICO in short term then consider this factor:
Hype, Hype, Hype
The ICOs which are over hyped can give you profit in a short span of time. That is by dumping it on the day it hit exchanges. Once everything went normal it will be traded below the ICO price and now if you are interested in the project you may consider yourself buying some.

The number one thing I look for is a business case that makes sense. You can do all kinds of things with blockchain, but that doesn't necessarily mean you should. If a problem can better be solved with a SQL database, then their ICO is clearly a money grab. Services for the cryptocurrency community are the most natural fits. That's why I really like finance ICOs and gambling ICOs (e.g. the HERO ICO that I'm currently rep'ing in my sig).

After that, I'm looking for red flags. Promises of great riches, development timelines that are ludicrously ambitious, small to nonexistent teams... basically once I like the business concept, I'm looking for reasons NOT to invest. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

will add: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

If you are looking for short term profit (flip).  Really the only thing you need to look for is massive hype.  One where demand is much much more than supply.  Like Kyber / Chainlink, etc.

Long term hold ico is tougher to identify and need to consider a lot more things.

First of all I check how well the founders explain their whitepaper. If the whitepaper doesn't explain me well where I'm going to invest my money, I won't invest at all.
If the whitepaper meet my standards then I will hold only if I see the progress of the team, not just promises and chit chat, I want to watch the team work and develop the product. Transparency is something very important to me.
I give extra credit when the team is looking for more programmers after the ICO, this is a good sign that the team is real and want to develop something good and in time.

1. Good project, breakthrough idea
2. Roadmap with steps how they will make the project
3. Report any difficulties they have and keep investors in the light
4. They don't promise that will do everything, they develop what is on the whitepaper
5. And I would hold only if the project would be scalable, not an app and that's it

I prefer ICO with live services, it is more realistic than buying ICO token from 2018 project deployment. 2018 isn't short time, When time goes by who cares if the project isn't real when the token has been listed in the market. I bought coss. Coss is live exchanger now, and the price is pump now.

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yes agree with you it is more realistic if choosing the ICO with live services couse that was I do also choosing some that was existing for now.

Hyped ones are dangerous, as included in our list.

For me the winning combination would be - A great idea which has real life use case added with a great team with proven track record with VC backing and reputed names associated as advisors. Most importantly, a realistic hardcap.

Agree with the team, track record and hard cap etc ... but VC backing is good but not a must. That is my opinion.

This is a very good pointers to have, like me I'm a newbie in this trading and stuff . This list will help me a lot on seeing what the ico is good . Thanks on sharing about this . Ill see if the Ico I'm investing with have this qualities .

Thank you for this list OP, really helpfull! I think indeed the community backing the coin is an important indicator, not only how many people and how involved they are, but also how realistic their expectations are.

it is the most difficult task, because surely all bounty hunters or investors would also want to know which ico project to be successful, which can be viewed from an ico project is a team profile idea, and their marketing and promotional strategy

It's impossible to make the only one decision. In my opinion ICO investor should choose 5-10 promising ICO on their choice, and invest in it. If one of them will fly to 10x you will got your rewards. Or give work to team of professional investors to choose some for you. See my signature Finshi is one of them

I personally like the ICOs with existing running business. Because in this case, you can check their profit and loss and business model to judge yourself if there is a future or not. The problem is this kind of ICO is usually less "attractive" because they promise less than those who has nothing in hand.

Indeed it has it's prons, if you look at it this way. I will add it, but also keep a notice, that this may not go all the way.

There are alot of flaws with ICO information. As an 20 Year+ Tech Investor, Startup and Entrepreneur the ICO market lacks the fundamentals. Financial projections, and the basic stuff like income statements, balance sheets, cash flows.

The core of it stems from most ICO's are not back by a security, so the basis of the sales is Income to the company. Most pre-seed ICO's don't address this distinction and are definitely frauds.

The problem I see is that ICO's are only focused ideas and moreover the grandiosity of these ideas are not connected to any reality. To me that permeates the fraud/failure potentials.

I recently integrated the crypto revenue from my token and ongoing token operations into my financials and its miraculous. This is the potential to really make ICO's and Crypto work as a viable business. Back to the problem of IDEAS vs Substance its a dilemma here in cryptoland.. and like my old boss said.. "Ideas are like assholes everyone has one, you need to make your idea reality. "

Although we dont talk about financial projections in public ie- Whitepaper, we do have this information on hand for pitches. We think this is the right way to launch and ICO. Anyway check out our plan here https://spacium.io/ any feedback would be great.

Hmm maybe I will post a crypto integrated financial statement???

Cheers!! ;D ;D ;D ;

Yes, I agree. if an ICO is already in business instead of just starting today.

(It takes a lot of time, effort and energy to start a new business)

I agree with everything you stated OP. And thats how I have been going about determining my own investments within the ICO world. But on another note, I'm curious if any of you guys have had success with investments on sleeper ICOs. Solid team, idea, market cap, etc but a low level of hype going onto the exchange release. This may be a key to the most realized gain over the many hyped and over valued ICOs we keep seeing today.

Money in high volumes does not always lead to a successful project. There's many projects on here that listed then withered away over time.

Just like stratis was strating with some hundreds million dollar and in this time the total market cap already touched billion dollar, that was a successful project in this time with low amount of the investment.

Useful information. Trying to get my head around ICOs

Thanks

In my opinion if the ICO idea is good and the project team has got enough bucks in their pocket to promote it, then definitely that ICO will be a success. The  project  should be based on a realistic idea. Recently I came across a wonderful ICO - sentry chain. Its for developing own blockchain with just a click , just like creating tokens with waves.

Good tips dude, i will take note of this.
Too many ICO today so some tips from forum user like this one is good for those who want to invest to an ICO project, it is getting hard to trust some ICO because there are too many popping up right now and most of them has small difference or even no difference with their platforms.

There have been many projects that fit your description and have not delivered.  Here are only a few examples:

EOS raised $230 million and said that they were going to release something by end of summer.  Nothing yet. With $230 million, EOS should have solved world hunger by now.

Gnosis raised $12.5 million and their website says that they are releasing their game by first half of 2017. Nothing yet.

Qtum raised $15.6 million. I don't see anything produced on Qtum's website.

After raising $50 million, Cosmos's website is still pitching its white paper. Come on. What have they produced with that $50 million?

MobileGo raised $53 million. Here's the roadmap from their white paper:


However, I don't see any of that on their website. They're mainly bragging about how their token is on exchanges. What are they doing? Day-trading their own token?

The only way to know if a team is capable of building something is if they have already built something for you to run now. EVERYTHING ELSE IS USELESS, including team, fancy pretentious titles, references, roadmap, video, fancy animations, escrow, blogs, Slack, Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and white paper.

By no means am I a pro at this, but I always look for a strong dev team, an active community and following and most importantly real world applications that I would picture myself and other using/adopting.

Wow that's an excellent guideline, another thing I would add, although it may not be so important but for me it is, it's the lenght of the Whitepaper. I've seen really good Whitepapers where they comprise everything in just 20 pages, and I've also seen Whitepapers of 50 pages that are just pure crap haha

Powerledger has a great whitepaper. I would consider loading up on Powerledger. The ICO is running now and it is super cheap. Check it out here (https://bounty.powerledger.io/btctalk/?hash=UN2H4claZer0n1cG)

I completely agree. For me it's about the founders/team, backers, idea, proof of concept, and press coverage doesn't hurt. It's so hard to find ICO's that fulfill all of these categories. One that's ending this month has really impressed me. UnikoinGold by Unikrn is an ICO for legal esports betting and tournaments. A very interesting idea that is more of a long-term game or if you're someone that participates in gaming/betting. They even do fiat betting in the UK and want to be the standard crypto in the esports space.

Definitely check them out because they have a solid team and are backed by Mark Cuban, Ashton Kutcher, Pantera Capital, and their advisor is Anthony Di Lorio, co-founder of ethereum.

https://unikoingold.com/

I'd be interested to here more about this too. Got into it because of Divi, they have a really interesting development project.

i think what's going to happen to unsold tokens is very important. if they are going to burn them or distribute them to the ico investors, that's a big plus.

I could't agree more with this^. Never forget the whitepaper. Always read it and do your due diligence. I stumbled upon UnikoinGold's thread an they filled all the criteria for me. I threw in 300 ETH just a few days ago.

also, it's important to check what happened before the ico. if a token was sold a lot cheaper on the presale than the ico price, then i wouldn't invest on that ico.

Having a white paper well written that covers all the details is very important, without that and ICO may fail before it even starts. I think that's the best way to spot a scam.

I think you must prioritize first is the VISION and FEASIBILITY of this project, and also check out the DEVELOPMENT them and their social media accounts ( they should have) and also the people involved ( it should be clear that this people are involved) a lot of photos of "development team" "Coaches" "counselors" have been edited and just got from image hosting sites.

I just want to add that even only just one person of the team has been part or done successful projects in the pasts and I'm confident that the ICO will also be successful. I'm very strict with ICO now, once I see a mispelled word in any of their ann,whitpaper or roadmap then that is definitely not to be trusted.

Red Pulse is one of a good ICO

Their company operates since 2015

with 50,+++ subscribers already

1st ICO under NEO.

Great backers and developers

KYC and Crowdsale capping at 51,000 USD per client

15 Million USD Capital

What can you wish for?


https://coin.red-pulse.com/

UnikoinGold is definitely worth a look for everyone. ICO meets the esports industry is going to be big $$$$$$ in the next few years.

https://news.unikrn.com/article/UnikoinGold-Sets-Records-Becoming-Universal-Esports-and-Gaming-Token

I think one should focus on a long-term perspective and take part in an ICO which has actual utility and value. That's number 1 thing you keep when you make in invest, right?

I agree. When you imagine yourself using that then maybe other might too.
I think it's a plus when the product of ICO is timely and very useful in the community and for the future. Also the developer and the team that supported it is a big factor. Their white paper and the roadmap is a must read when eyeing an ICO.

Thanks for this, mate. I know this will be very helpful to the people here, especially the investors. And most especially to the newbies and beginners, this is a very precious note. I hope they will come over to this page. ICO investment is not for everyone, especially to those who do not even want to exert some effort to even check the project's website.

But what if they want to build something, but they don't have the funds, yet. If I'm to invest in someone who already accomplished the thing he is promoting, why should I back-him up? He would be better off running an IPO, with real investors, rather than coming here.

SO you are saying is not the length, but the quality of the whitepaper.

What do you mean, that if the tokens are burned is not a good thing?

An ICO is an idea of a future project, so in order to hold the idea must be very good and be able to watch the progress of the project. 

Helpful, thanks

I am new to this ICOs fad, but to this date since the new ICOs are today required some legalities like SEC requirements, KYC and AMLC compliant or investor friendly ICOs. This is not just their white papers, road mad, dev teams, marketing , long term goals that i am looking for but also how are ICOs abiding the rules and regulations in order to secure the investors money. The good example of this ICO is the ICON ico, this are the most successful ico this month because they comply the government policy for legality and sustainability.During their ICO launching it takes less than 24 hours to sold out all the coins.

If the investment is not worth the storing for a few weeks then it is not the right investment to have. Gambling is the next step to that.

You forgot to check the background of the team. It is one of the important thing that you need to know. Maybe the dev had a history of abandoned projects before. One of the team may take part on a scam before.

Winning ICO, at the moment you won't find anything. 1000+ ICOs and nothing that is promised to change lifes or make something really revolutionary, is like people are our of ideas and recycle the same ideas.
I would invest and hold in an ICO which would be revolutionary, with a well planed whitepaper (not another shitpaper with lot of nonsense) , good team communication, a good promotion - marketing (because a team which doesn't care to make its project popular means it doesn't care much) and finally progress , I want to be informed about the progress of the project and see some actual results in a short time.

There never has been a "winning" ICO  ::)

What you meant was "how to spot an ICO scam that will go up high in price in real money cash fiat dollars"

Hell Ethereum is an ICO scam coin that accomplished nothing and THAT is your metric / benchmark for "success"  :D

Sad & pathetic.
Never mind the "FUD" by the "Troll" though.. go shovel real money at "pre-sale" ICO "startups"  ;)
This is Crypto-Kickstarter and i got mah mouth to feed dammit !!!!!11111ONE

An ICO you can really hold... hold your money and wait  ;D , I think at the moment nothing is promised.
The characteristics of an ICO I would hold and invest will be
1. Good idea, that's mean a good whitepaper also, because is whitepaper is not good, two things means, scam, or bad team.
2. Good team
3. Progress

When you buy a scratch & win lottery ticket there is terms and conditions and odds of winning.
In other words there is an agreement made between you and the provider.

In crypto you are morons buying "coinz" for profit on govt compliant "exchangers"  :D
You are not "investing" in fuck all nor do you have any agreements.

Since when do "startups" get a blank check from investors with no accountability oversight or agreement ?
..in crypto i guess.  :D

Study the ico first before you join in. Then criticize them by their platforms, strategy and management. If you think that the ico has the potential then you can take part of its success one day.

It is not to easy to spot a winning ICO. You have to study the project report completely. Study the White paper along with the investor benefits.
now look at the developer team members profile. after all if you find that the project is very good. team is very strong than you can spot a winning ICO.

As discussed in posts at the beginning of this threat, some team members could just have fake or have changed their background so much, to appear the top of what they do. And because this is a new industry, is just early to tell the good and the bad.

There is only one thing that should be taken care of, and that's ICO developer should not run in between of the projects leaving everything incomplete. They should not leave us scammed and our investments dissolved into their own pockets.


That's all is need to have a winning ICO


The points you listed up there are followed by every dam ICO developer, manager and all the people involved.


But in the later stage they do whatever they always wanted to do. That's spamming the ICO project itself. So it's not about the start really, it's about the end!

I agree with all points. There is really a big factor when the founders know the project very well and how it will go in the end. The details anf the possible outcome of the project. The team as a whole must have update as well with what's going on or the current situation of the project. I guess, there must be transparency between the team and the investors.

In addition to the list, a winning ICO has a goal to make its subscriber be in a composed position and a winning ICO shows transparency. These are important aspects of a good ICO for we know that our own sentiments, worries or troubled mind is also their concern.

Will add now, especially about the transparency.

Indeed this is important!

Not only about the transparency but the developers or the team should made special report about the development progress, The transparency about the fund will be appreciated in my opinion.
Because the investors need to know about what already happened with it.

strong command, hardcap size, whitepaper, how many percent of tokens go to the team, discounts on presale, etc.

Actually, it is really hard to spot a winning ICO cause no matter what you do or no matter how many research you make still it depends on the developer’s motive. What we  only know is the developers goal and not their motive so it is really kind of hard to determine.

Absolutely agree that there are projects that can make a cool project with a small budget, and on the contrary money is huge and the project is bad

Big money for startup is even harmful than their absence I suppose. Many projects will die because of feeling rich and doing nothing by the team. What is the point to do something if you are already rich?! If you do not have ambitions, of course.

Read thread on ICO as questions are raised and answered will tell if its a scam.Look at the size of its community and activity on social media .This will give you an insight into the project.Look at the token distribution of the team members . If it is high it means that they are a greedy and need to be careful. Also look at the ICO's marketing team.They need to be relevant and in the market for an investor to make profit.

Yeah it's true, some ICO make their project look attractive by having a huge budget.
This is to deceive investors that they have a budget for this and that they can make it to be a successful one.
Well of course, all flowery words will say to investors to build trust to them. Then at the end of ICO they'll tell alibies that these and those happens and the transparency will lost.

As a matter of first importance, it is exceptionally helpful to tell a trick from a genuine ICO. Once you've chosen investigate, consider setting aside the opportunity to peruse the specialized whitepaper to see how it functions . The papers can once in a while be thick yet the comprehension of the points of interest is extremely well justified, despite all the trouble. Additionally, you may think that its supportive to join the Slack gathering to make inquiries and see what other people groups' worries are. It is troublesome in this momentum atmosphere with such a large number of ICOs going ahead to figure out which ones will work out and which ones are no great, yet the same as it has been with a significant number of the altcoins, it is tied in with doing a respectable measure of research, look at the group behind the coin, see what the assessments are on this gathering and utilize your very own touch sense.

the industry is so unpredictable now, that all we can check are people who are behind the project if they had past projects, well-known areas, publications

It is really hard to determine whether the advertised projects are true ,one thing we have to understand is it really possible for a development team to do two projects and if so could we trust them as they are not fulfilling with their first project ,most of the ICO are collecting funds in millions and what we have to think is that whether these projects are fulfilling what they are promising and doing their work for the funds they are collecting.

Supporting an ICO is simple. Just hold your tokens or coins. The biggest support for an ICO is not dumping.
Too many dumps killing Tokens checkout EOS price chart

i agree to your list im sure some of members will avoid the scam ico , i always pick interesting ico's before investing on them and doing some research about the developers about the project if nothing came up i will not invest their project because of the possibility of scam.

Good ico =

-small max cap
-great team
-big advisors
-big exchange.

Take a look for Pally ICO (15th october), EtherDelta confirmed listing ;) Advisors from HSBC, JP Morgan, small cap.

ICO's sell their tokens for other tokens, usually ETH or BTC. And they fund the project with those ETH or BTC they received, not with the ICO tokens. So the price of ICO tokens doesn't have any impact on funding the project. They might get in trouble if ETH or BTC price dropped too much. That's why in some way I understand most ICO's collet more ETH or BTC that they really need. This wa they can protect themselves in case price of collected token falls.

ICO tokens aren't usually traded during ICO's. EOS is a bit special in that matter, because their tokens are being traded during the ICO, so if price gets dumped that influences the amount of ETH they receive every day. But it's perfectly normal if 2 million new tokens are added in circulation every day the inflation is so huge, the price will fall eventually. So it's not the dumpers who made the price fall, but strange model of ICO EOS has. And I wouldn't worry about EOS running out of funds. They've already collected much more than they need. I would be more worried if they are capable of delivering what they promised. First testing environment should should have been done by the end of the summer, but it still not done. Missing deadlines from the roadmap won't make the price rise for sure. And I've also read some rumors Bitshares' supposed to have some major security issues. I can't find the link right now to prove it, but if it's true - EOS is based on Bitshres source code.

Agree with all of the above you list help me in spotting good icos

there No guarantees of WINNING ICO all you need is to do some research about the dev team if the are proven to be effective to achieving. and you should read about the whitepaper it will make you understand about the idea the ico is bringing. good luck finding one.

Why do you say small max cap? Some projects need a large cap to accomplish what they say. I would re-type your suggestion to: Appropriate cap according to the deliverable's of the project.

But how would you know this before hand?

There are various website provides reports about ICO. but these may be viced. So study Project Report, Road map,  White paper, Team details. By study these points you may spot  a winning ICO.

Indeed! I have studied trade.io (https://trade.io), and especially the concept with the liquidity pool! It seems something that will pick-up very fast in the upcoming days!

Also here is the ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2367245

Yes, this is a really nice project, thank you very much for showing it to us. I will follow him.

I believe there are many factors to spotting a winning ICO but the one that stands out the most for me would be:
The development team plays a big role in how successful an ICO will be.
Looking at their board of members and advisory team, and checking their profiles.

Having said this, ive looked at trade.io  (https://trade.io)and it looks like something I would be interested in, I have a question..
Will this be a utility or a security token?

Research is the key here. Just like any investment knowing the business, the industry and where they are going is vital. Here are a few things i look for in an ICO

- Strong team - Both in development team and also the CEO's / marketing (no point having a great team to create something, if nobody can advertsie it and push the startup in the right direction.
- Realistic vision - not aiming too high or if they do not reach their target everyone who invested will be disappointed
- Solid whitepaper - Well thought out, shows realistic goals, a strong good vision and a plan of action
- Strong social media presence - A social media that shows they are connected with everyone
- Good customer support - Shows they care, and they have invested time and money into making sure the average investor can ask questions
- Good website - A business who is willing to throw time and effort into a good website are less likely to be a scam
- finite supply - ICO's with no cap can be dangerous and can simply just damage their own coin by releasing more for more investment.
-Market they are getting involved with - Is this a new market? or a dying one? who controls the market?

Also here is an interesting article comparing ICO's with a working product vs a vision.

https://medium.com/@crowdholding/mvps-pocs-and-ideas-which-icos-should-i-better-invest-in-and-which-will-let-me-down-369bf1ffae2

Hope this helps and happy investing!

Like with trade.io upcoming ICO they announcement a collaboration with Modules (those guys who help Google, Nasdaq)

http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/tradeio-announces-strategic-technical-alliance-with-financial-technology-giant-modulus-in-support-of-656606423.html


For bounty visit: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2370663

I also try to run from hyped ICOs.

A good due diligence on the company behind, should answer the following questions ?
   1) Is the team real ? Checking the LinkedIn profiles
   2) Is there a active GitHub ?
   3) Is the brand / comma popular in Google Trends ?

For instance, if you look to a future ICO like AppCoins, in the 3 company research points:
   1) Team: https://appcoins.io -> in the section "Team", you have the LinkedIn account
   2) The AppCoins github is active with hundreds of commits: https://github.com/Aptoide/AppCoins-ethereumj
   3) If you go to Google trends, you can compare with other teams projects: https://trends.google.pt/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=Ethereum,Aptoide,Kik

Always do your due diligence / company research.

First and foremost, it is very useful to tell a scam from a legit ICO. Once you’ve decided take a closer look, consider taking the time to read the technical whitepaper to understand how it works (please don’t decide to invest only based on the pretty website or flashy buzzwords). The papers can sometimes be dense but the understanding of the details is very well worth it. Also, you may find it helpful to join the Slack group to ask questions and see what other peoples’ concerns are.

Though most ICO's are fake, scams but I don't believe that all ICO devs have bad motives. A good ICO can help us making free money just by following the rules indicated on how to join their bounty campaign that's why before joining any ICO one should investigate at first very carefully.

You can see the reviews of bloggers about the IRS, and participate in the recommended or ask the opinion of literate traders.

I my opinion if the progect has a week bounty campaign or not agressive marketing is not defenetly
means that it's a scam. For some reason everyone thinks that big budget on marketing means good idea and
the other way around. Look what happend to tezos and it's just the beggining. I recon that  spring will bring us
unfortunatly huge fall of ICO market.

If anyone is looking to invest in an ICO I highly recommend checking out Propthereum.io. They are an asset backed cryptocurrency on the blockchain and are expecting a 1566% coin appreciation in a short period of time. All proceeds raised from their ICO will be used to purchase A-grade property worldwide. This will generate a rental income and underlying value for the PTC token holder. The great thing about this concept is that the coin will always increase in value. They launch 20 November and I will be investing so I would love to know all of your opinions. Give their whitepaper a read and let me know what you think.

Yes, a good and strong team for any ICO is a serious indication of a winning ICO however a well define and achievable concept is necessary for the overall success of the ICO. Thanks your suggestions are very sound for reading.

Yes i can agree with your Post, you have mentioned that the founders overall seemed like a serious bunch of people that take there ICO very seriously, by constantly working with determination for the successful completion of their project.
I have seen that too over the past few weeks of participating in some of trade.io programs. It's imperative to have a team that will support and maintain its ICO, and their community!