Bitcoin Forum

There are lots of projects doing ICO.
As an investor of cryptocurrency, you might have some critical points of determination on you will go into ICO or not. What's the most important factor you decide to participate on ICO? And how do you judge the scam?
Please share your opinions. :)

You can't really judge an ICO if it is a scam. You need to look at who is behind the project. Are they trusted? Do the people involved is shady? How about the white paper? Is it professional written? What's their roadmap? How is the token divided amongst in investors? There are a lot of factors that you really need to look at if you are going to invest in a ICO. You have to be careful before giving them out your money.

Now, scammers use ICOs to get money from the people. No matter how good management they have, good strategy or even a promising visions, they can  still steal money from the people. So even if you do the study or a research on that ICO, you'll never know when you will be victimize.

If there is something you feel wrong about the ICO or campaign,find a way to discover what is happening,just have a deep research and think about the history and read articles,Info's,and more for you to secure that it is not a scam.Be careful and alert of what you are joining because this can help you a lot to prevent unescessary things,by that you can determine whether it is a scam or legit.

It is impossible to determine whether the ICO Scam or not without having to take part in it. I am always guided by the feedback of my friends who I trust. But to be honest I generally try to avoid too risky investments. For me it is better not to earn than to lose.

But there are signs that point towards a scam, no website, no team info, no details regarding identity, topics full of newbie accounts, only cloned features (no devs with skills) etc.

right exactly even scammers are too smart so we are now too difficult to know whether if this ICO is scam or not cause there is a money related they are  careful too just to never know that they are scam. Careful and give all your best to research and before you invest is the thing that you can do.

When i selecting an ICO i should choose ICO that was manage by reputable managers by checking  their reputation, positive trust rating and ranks because some managers are newbie rank in which it is hard for me to be convince that they can handle a sensitive job, i proposed it should be a hero or legendary rank. I believed reputable managers as well are strictly reviewing the ICO that they will going to handle because their reputation is at stakes.

I have a little checklist to analyze project. I'm checking each team member and their previous projects and those projects' success. another important check point is which investors are in playfor that project, so which investors believe in them and what are the other projects that those investors invested, what is the current situation for all those projects etc. then I decide if I'm gonna be in or not.

Well the main thing I look at is the team behind the project and what they have done in the past. Then I look at the project, and decide if I like it, or not. Always read the white paper and check the roadmap, so you can decide to invest short or long therm. Hope that helps!

Scammers now a days are really talented. You will not know who is the real scammer or not. You need to be extra carefull. I think you can notice it by doing a research first about their company. Know their profile and all. Don't trust immediately.

Well... that's a really tough question as I usually fail to detect a really good opportunity and sometimes confuse the good and the bad once, though I'd like to cover those points, which I personally do find really crucial before investing:

1) The idea:

For ICO idea is everything, so it should be both perfectly clear and absolutely appealing to you as an investor. It's perfect if you understand how you personally will be able to make use of the following product and why would you go on using this tokens.

2) The team:

There are many attitudes towards judging the team, but I'd say that there are sings of good ICO. First you have to ensure that those people presented on the list of the team/advisors/investors are real and are indeed involved in making this ICO happen. Second thing is tougher: you have to see whether they are suitable for the job. If they lack experience or (which is by far more important) will to accomplish whatever they plan the ICO won't happen.

3) The token:

You have to clearly see the point of the token and the reason why it cannot be replaced by either ETH/BTC or Fiat Money- other wise the token is useless in the long run.

4) Bounty campaign and activity:

The better Bounty campaign is organized the more successful the ICO is. Though don't let them trick you: if they are having more retweets or as many as  likes this means that account is fake

5) Trust yourself:

Nobody knows better than you what the best ICO is, so if you like the project and team you can try, but always keep in mind that there might be a certain risk.

There are quite a few answers already here. I will just add only one, concerning choosing an ICO among those represented on bitcointalk. When I see that there are a lot of smiles or other signs in the title of the announcement, I just scroll it down. May be I'm wrong, but in my opinion a good project wouldn't promote itself in this way...

The first judgemental factor is team. You must access team of project thoroughly before putting any penny in project. If project is scam-born, it will never share team details or share fake details.
Secondly access willingness of project. If project's whole marketing is stake-based then it is clear that project is just a gamble. It may or may not succeed and team is not serious what it pledges. The serious project does spend some bucks from its own pocket.
Thirdly access feasibility of project. You must see to it that the whole project on which money is being demanded is at all possible or it is just an imaginary sweet dream.
You must aware of the fact thar person can't sell you White House by just standing in front of it.

First of all I don't trust poor sites and whitepapers. Also sometimes team members may look like scammers

I think most of the ICO's will run for the duration of at least 2 months, in this case, we can easily research as many details as possible because without knowing about the project it is completely waste investing into it.

Best way is not to invest in the initial stage , very few people have this talented brain , but ordinary can have look at its trade if it is  showing some strength against a strong concurrency i.e. bitcoin,  it is stable, initial stage is hard to predict

I assume ALL ICO's are a scam nowadays and won't even begin researching a coin until it's been traded for about three months. Then you can see the past, future and viability so much better. Right now I'm about even on my bags. The only thing I have to worry about from my teams is getting beat to the marketplace by a better mousetrap. Patience grasshoppers.

The most important point that I look into an ICO is the team response. How quick and legit they are in responding to investors queries. This can tell a lot of things. Moreover, one can easily know about fake projects by going through whitepaper and digging more about team members. Some even use Google images for team members. Also before investing I tend to wait for a week to see the growth of ICO. If company fails to get decent amount in first week. I don't invest myself.

To a little observation I have  gathered, an ICO start showing as a scam when there is first a disunity in the management board of the ICO, and at most times, there is a warning that will be sent to the Ann thread to all participants in the ICO.

You need to do some research and investigation to avoid scam. Check if there are visible office and if there are directory you can simply call it. if it is in the building google the desk information of the specific building if there is an office or company that rent there. Check the background of the developer and its team if they have a history of god or bad reputation. What problem are they gong to solve to contribute in the future using blockchain technology.

If I wanted to make a couple of milions I would invest 50k and get all that. A building where to rent an office, a crew, a nerd do write a nice pdf and then buy the technology from a dark russian forum. Come on, it is impossible to avoid these "smart guys" who want just to take our hard earned money...

You should read a lot white  paper,after that You need chek information about team and advisors , then chek location and post adress. and roject must be promising. That's rules I'm using now. But afterall you cant say "tha's ICO not a scam 100%".

Yes, it is really true. We need to be extra careful when joining or investing something because there are a lot of scammers nowadays. They will just get some of your information and use it for their scam business and sometimes, they will get the money first before they will block you as a member so you can't contact them again if you will ask about the benefits you can get after they will receive the payment for investment. Sad to say it's not easy to determine if it is a scam or not so what we can do is not to trust easily even to people you know for a long time because sometimes they will also deceive other people just to earn or get back the money they had invested in the scam site.

   
I think before invest you will have to try to talk with the team members, ask questions about the project, looking for a community supporting this project etc...just be carefull

To talk with the team member will be useless, just try to get the fact from their github code, or try to find another pro coder to collect the fate from the project's code. If that was just copying other project and that was a bullshit project as far as i know that.

First I checked who are managed this ICO. If this project manages to my known person and any reputable person then I choose that ICO. And I always avoid any red trust user. I always check White paper, ANN thread, People opinion about that project in social media. And then I decide to invest in ICO.

Reviewing campaign managers.

Read the white paper and the team, make sure to do enough research before investing in any ICO good luck!

My criteria if it is a scam: First is if the announcement and bounty threads looks really crappy. Second, if the manager is a newbie and doesn't hire a trusted manager. Third, many wrong spellings and lastly is they don't reply to anyone.

It is always not the case because we have some cops here that they try to question and legitimize some of these ICO's. Even some small mistake in the details is not easy debate even though the ICO has perfect plan. And sometimes even veteran traders could get scammed because as bitcoin is innovating, scammers are also improving. I'm not saying all ICO's are scams but since it is a long term project, it is hard to tell if they will be successful upon releasing their coin to the market.

investing with ico is really risky we can't or it so hard to determine which is which that got the real project or real innovations since it will just relied
on how dev will succeed, even there's a good white paper or even there's a good information there's still a risk that it wont succeed without support
from the investors and traders.

I think you just being sarcastic, by investing into a project, we're not relying on the success of dev, we can choose on our own the best and promising project instead of the poorest one, so we can still determine real project or real innovations by what they offer, their past product or else. if you invest into a reputable people, you will seem to get a good outcome.

Conduct a reading before making a deal. You better examine the system or program that they are offering first . Most scam has poor security features and not commited to protect investors money. Just be vigillant always. Its better to think twice or more before you agree or invest.

If you are going to invest in an ICO, first look at their team. The most important thing for me is what kind of team you have. If you have a good team, my thoughts will be positive and I will invest.

i think its hard to tell if the ico is legit or not, but in my case i usually check their team composition if they are profesional enough to run a project also i check who is the manager that manages the campaign if he is a reputable and trusted member ( atleast senior rank and up ) and lastly i check their website and other infos like contact numbers and email  if that is really true and not fake.

Not easy to determine its scam or not, scammers nowdays have huge budgets before launching ICO, they are hiring a team, make videos and hire app developer to make people assume this is a awesome project mostly of them just dev make profits not investor

I am not an investor of cryptocurrency yet, but I would like to include the views and opinions of my colleagues or any closely related companion who has already experienced investing in ICO. In this way, my doubts or worries would lessen as I participate in any ICO they recommend since they already have a first hand experienced on it.

one should do due diligence in doing personal research on the roadmap and white paper if they are professionally written, the dev behind the scene if they are credible or not. above all, all ICO's are risky so one should only invest with an amount of money that won't hurt you.

These days its really hard to determine wether the ico is legit or scam. That's a plus point doing some research their project and roadmap and their marketing strategy. Yes invest only on what you can afford to risks.

People still think Bitcoin is a scam, even though POW is not a scam but people are sometimes idiots. ICO has no POW algo and everything is up to the team if they develop the project well, it's not a scam but if they don't develop it then it's a scam. there is no way to know, all you have is your trust in the team.