Bitcoin Forum

What are the top 5 things you absolutely HATE about ICOs?

until now i don't hate an ICO because this is just another word from IPO, but only for Coins/Tokens offering
but, if you want to make an investments on ICO you should do a long research before put your money in.

If Ico can't collect minimum amount,
Project can be canceled, risk can be almost all.
We need to research well.
E.g; Leviarcoin ( couldn't collect enough investment.)

The most bothersome thing about icos is simply the hype, a project can be good and all of that but I always see the same marketing, this coins is the new bitcoin or the new Ethereum and that is not going to happen besides why I want a new bitcoin the old bitcoin is more established and has the trust of the people.

Stupidly high soft/hard caps
Issuing massive amount of bounty rewards which devalues it for the next couple of months due to dumps
Poor communications from team prior or immediately afterwards
ICOs that don't take security serious and end up getting hacked or leaking private data like email addresses
Meme based ICOs

My top 5 are:

-  Seeing exaggerated claims and seeing people believing them
- The constant shill posts after the ICO inevitably is released and falls below ICO price
- The immense communication and niceness of DEVs pre ico and then their change of character after ICO is over
- No info on where the money collected will be spent
- Watching people lose money on scam ICOs

Like gambling, some ICOs promise profits. and partly just creating junk coins.
no follow-up is generated unless they sell it quickly then the missing coin is worthless.

This is a good list, I would add pre-mine and pre-ico distributions.

I do not think ICO is a matter of hate or love. Initial coin offers are to introduce new coin into crypto market. But their frame wotk may be good or bad. After study of project report, whiter paper, roadmap, team profile and experience. It may be decide ICO is good or not.

Investing carries risks and what is the point of hating those risks? Hate or love is not the matter!

lol, you say you don't like meme based ICO's but you are the guy behind Goatse Coin.  You persuaded me to invest 8BTC only last week.

Till a month ago there was absolutely nothing that i hated about ICO. But things have changed now a bit. There are some ICO teams that have/portray a great idea and raise huge amounts of money at ICO's and then just disappear.

The distribution of bounties in their coin is a big mistake on their part, they need to give bitcoin instead, and the reason for that is that most people do not believe in the coin and as such when the coin hits the exchanges everyone is going to sell as fast as they can crashing the price of the coin.

Bounty is only 1-3 percent of cap. They can't do nothing. But big bonuses for 'strategic' investors when they dump at first possible moment all tokens at price lower then ICO price is worst.

I) Huge price difference between PreIco and ICO rates
II) Many projects are listing their coins at ICO prices
III) Risk of fraud by Company is always there
IV) Many people are using ICOs to raise money without having real intention to deliver what they have committed in their whitepaper
V) ICOs covering long duration, such as EOS, is real bad thing. If you invest on day 1 of and ICO which will continue for over 365 days, but still there is not guarantee.

I suppose the worst thing in ICO and what I hate in it (and you may not even mention the rest four of its cons) is that almost each ICO is a kind of a pyramid. Those ones, who were the first, always win and get their profit, while the others may become losers. I mean bonuses for first dates of token sale.

I'll share what comes to mind.
I dont like an ICO being Hyped too much and ends up being total rubbish or simply a scam.
Delays or postponing of PRE-ICO and ICO launch/end dates.
Project promises and Team support with no follow up.
ICO's that give you an idea and make it seem real & turns into air (its here now, then its gone).

I don't hate ICOs, I make huge amount of money from ICO, that is insane 200 btc.

But some disadvantages of ICOs are:
1. the team is greedy to ask too much money like Bancor, the price is only going down after ICO.
2. never keeps the promise, like Etherparty scam, they said they don't be active to seek exchanges.
3. fake roadmap or delayed roadmap.

Huge coin supply.
too long time.
no maximum contribution cap.
no working product.
inactive dev team.

1. There are too many of them.
2. No innovation, just copy/paste code and a new name.
3. Long road map, asking for a bit too much in the investment period, very risky.
4. High volume in coin supply
5. Delayed development