Bitcoin Forum

Reviewing ICO projects is becoming a challenge because we have tens of them per week with their crowdsales starting. Some projects are making investors life harder because their websites ar not explaining how real they are and what they are really doing: using hype around cryptocurrency or trying to do the project.

The reasons why ICO teams are not trusted:
1. They have not links to social profiles of their members on facebook or linkedin.
2. There is no dedicated person that answers emails or in social media.
3. Communication is not personalized. You chat or email with a person with no name or a name you can not check is true.
4. You have to wait several days to get the answer from the team.

this is my solution, ignore the ico project that does not include their linkedn link, simple.

All the point you have raised is what characterized open source, decentralized idea! Majority of us are not here for celebrity status that is why if you are buying to ICO, you mustdoyour own research and accept the risk you are willing to take!

Agree with you. At least, it avoid you to dive into an ICO that doesn't worth it. I see what you mentionned like clues to evaluate the potential and the seriousness of the project (aside others factors of course)

It is really hard to chose a good ICO for investment, cause of many projects are without violable. Many experts are saying that 99% of all ICO projects are scam and only 1% are going to succeed. Today it is very easy to cover such weak projects under the mask of a successful one,  such marketplace as Fiverr have been offering ICO whitepapers for less than $100.
You can read here everything more particularly: https://cointelegraph.com/news/experts-caution-investors-against-cash-grab-icos-buterin-speaks-out

hmm yes i could definately fix this, but many ico projects are beeing targeted by their countries "authorities" or shall i say the money printing elite,

so they cant be public at all, was bitcoin public? did they avoided anonymity? even if you answer question many people dont understand them, or simply the managment causes so many costs that you cant focus on the yield generating work,

neither way, the distrust will also kill kryptoeconomics and bitcoin & co. because there is no one realizing economic values.

regards

most especially this lending coin ico. they dont want to reveal them self..

At the moment, even communication with team will not save you from fraud of any kind. Main thing you need to recognize - Does the idea brings added value to the industry or not, than you'll decide to invest or not. This is not 100% guarantee too, but who wants to kill the working business?)

Yes. Team can ban in chats if you ask them questions they do not like and answer only questions that they want to see. That happens all the time.

In any field this is so, not only in the ICO.

Unfortunately this positive development is also offset by the emergence of various negative projects aimed at scam or fraud, who ride the booming world of cryptocurrency and make use of public  and lack layman of info about this new technology.

I add one point that I understand:
-Hype marketing,,
 Alert to all kinds of marketing hype, promotional types that use fantastic words and phrases and also try to exaggerate the potential of a project without clear evidence,

Yeah! All points discussed were correct! Anyone should be wise in joining any campaign. Such campaign with low credibility should be avoided. I think it is mostly important that a campaign must have a good personalized communication. A set of team is assigned for the overall campaign. PR is quite relevant for the success of a certain campaign and if one has not supported it with good PR back like what is stated in the forum, neither no designated person to answer all queries or if there is but will took a while to answer, then maybe it is the red signal that this campaign should be avoided.

and there are way too many of them out there right now. It makes evaluation really difficult for inexperienced and even expererienced investors. It's not easy to just go through thousands of projects as a noob and pick a descent one, especially when you have no idea of the overal blockchain trends and how they might affect the future. It's tricky, I know, but if you manage to find this one project out of these thousands that will make it, then you definitely will be rewarded handsomely, most of the better projects are not even known all that much and they will explode when people start learning about their use-cases and potential future use. There is so much potential but unfortunately so many people taking advantage of it.

I guess this one should not be included! Because, the team are always too busy to answer all question being asked everyday.

But I totally agree on the rest of your reasons, especially no. 3, because it makes everything more suspicious. I hope it soon got implemented on some good suspicious ICO's, but all we can do now is to choose properly those trusted ones without your 4 reasons to make a sure profit.

added value?

hmm did bitcoin brought added value or redistributed it away from the established financial system?

secondly added value is possible no problem, but then you have to look for efficiency,

Thank you for this guide. With this, ICOs should be regulated to prevent scams. Yes, linkedIn profile helps but I wonder if how can victims track or catch suspects and bring them to prison. Too bad nowadays some ICO where merely fly-by-night, no one goes to jail if ever they screw up investors.

My 4 reasons would be as follows (but not in any particular order):

1. Project/Concept cannot be achieved, no basis for it to work now or in the long run.

2. Too expensive, soft caps/hard caps, token value also.

3. The board of members and advisory team are not solid, inexperienced, no knowledge, no feedback.

4. ICO website doesn't exist or not descriptive, No groups/channels for community and no communication between team and community.

Of course it's a risk, as buying the ico, you will not be able to exchange it to sell it at least for the same price that was previously...

Well I agree with the first three points you mentioned but taking time to reply doesn't make someone fraudulent, it might be because they are getting too many mails or some other reason as far as you are getting a reply I don't think it should be a problem.

sorry im a newbie, can you please tell me why the board of members is a reason?

The projects I follow will not be trusted when it has no clear and fresh idea, the Dev stamp team does not reveal or have scammers, no community of interest, no roadmap and whitepaper. Here are some reasons I often overlook ICO projects.

what..for a second I think I have been reading about poloniex.

Joke aside, there are already some alts that have a function for predicting some ICO like WINGs for example, you can get the alternate view about an ICO with them tbh.

A team or board of members MUST be solid and have very good experience! By checking their profiles and checking their background and work experience, you will know if they have the capabilities of supporting this project and you will also see if they will be able to "troubleshoot" any given issues and at the same time be able to help the community with any enquiries they might have.
That is why you should join their Telegram channels or groups - in those groups you will be able to receive information about the ICO and keep up to date with anything about the ICO.

If team members are unknown, there is even no need to look at project. Because I like most projects but I can't see any team who can execute it. So team does matter.

The ICO teams getting unprofessional day by day, there are some serious team with serious efforts
But there a lot of fake unprofessional team, I mean A LOT
They just want to collect money as much as they can by bluffing as much as they can

I think Team is important too, if the team cannot be trusted by their profiles, then you have no reason to follow or invest in this ICO.

Sure, that's a real points. Team that doesn't exist on Linked In, or that does't reply is strange and not trustful.

Very good points, I think nobody can disagree. In fact, I would even say numbers 4, 3, 2, then 1 are the priority. But to be honest, these are simply basic customer support that is very important to all start ups, all services, not just ICOs.

The smart ICOs now already take care of 1. Everyone has that. They even have 2 or 3 done easily now through Slack and Telegram and even here.

That said, the best ICOs invest a lot of money in promotion and bounty. so 3-4 are hired people from here and freelancers. So not necessarily the best solution.

Good projects recruit and train the support staff first. Then they launch.

Yes at least they are not foreigners and can be recognized in a professional, educational background of quality.
Easier you can check them in linkedin.

Support is important indeed.
Also, my number  5 is legal -  how much resources founders spent trying to make an ICO legally viable? If the IC is legal and regulated, it can eliminate many issues from number 1-4, since you need to get through a lot of checks while doing a legally correct ICO.

You can research independent sites that do a deep analysis of the team and the project idea itself

Thanks for this information, this information helpfull how to find good ICO. I can add one more thing, to decide that good or bad project is depend on the team founder and their community. If the founder already known in publik and has good team work then they will succes. And also the purpose of the project really interesting so many people and investor will be jump it.

1. Existence of more ico programs which initiates a confusion in prediction of the good and the bad.
2. Some trusted ico projects going as a scam creates a panic among the users.
3. Fake pumping groups that try to manipulate the moves of the project.
4. Above all, people never try to understand it better going through the different sources provided. When one reads it thoroughly automatically can predict the worthiness of the ICO.

I absolutely agree! I think these subtle cues speak volumes about the types of people running these ICOs. If the founding team is doing this for all the right reasons they are likely to be well prepared and have made significant stride in other aspects of the project e.g. product.

Most of the developers are not publishing their linkdn and that can be considered as ico with unknown developers. Just stay away from there.
The second they are starting with limited person. But for some ico with a lot of the people in there and they can build strong cs.

But some ico already made ontime communication with the investors.

This kind of projects doesn't worth that time you are spend to study them. I'm trying to avoid them. First of all any project should be communicative and responsible.

I agree with everything except 4. If there are too many messages, the team will not be able to respond to them too quickly. You also need to pay attention to the experience of the team enough to make a useful project

we need too foreknow the ico project before we diving it. Also the ico teams we need to pay attention to know how to make a project and the useful of their projects. Other way to stay in an ico projects we need to know the number of members who response to a good projects. More participants = good project.

To add another point to your list:

- They don't have a working product or even a demo to show as proof of concept before asking for severel million dollars.

Just read about one such example "Confido"

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/exit-scam-confido-startup-vanishes-after-raising-375k-in-ico/

These scammers are a shame to the community creating bad blood and distrust with the entire ICO concept.

We should definetly come with a solution that will help everybody to avoid scammers like that.

Your advice and recommendations are good, but it seems to me that this list can be further increased, since there are other items to consider when choosing ICO.

Yes, I agree with you about your point of views, Therefore, the most important thing before investing in ICOs is that connect with the team. We have to understand clearly with people who will use our money

I agree with point 1 but regarding the rest I understand as someone who is holding an ICO. If you are a small team it is impossible to get back to hundreds of requests. For me the bigger concern is the incentive problem.

If there was a industry standard and secure DAO that gives governance rights to token holders that would be great. It would be as secure as investing in traditional tech startups!

Thanks for your post. It is usful for me.

I would add the following feature to the list:
1) the company offers the following products: MLM, pyramid or ponzi scheme, cloud mining.
2) No white paper
3) ICO is not available on ICO rated sites

I always do full research before joining any ICO because as of now daily many new ICO are coming and most of them are only here to scam people so it's not worth to waste time and money on them so I select ICO very wisely by reading their Whipatper and concept of the project and the team also.

I agree with your points too, its very important that the team can explain their project further on the whitepaper. Sometime you just catch a copy/past of the ANN thread, that's not serious... we have to find more details on the document.

I think this can help when it comes to trusting a project, but also there is a lot more.

1) The team - Do they know what they are doing?

2) No product - I personally like ICOs that have a product as they are not just in it to make a quick bit of cash and disappear.

Many of the ICO projects allocate a large share of the aquıred ınvestment from ICO to the advısors and founders of the fırm, many develop good technolgıes but the roadmap ındıcates that that techologıes wıll take a lot of tıme to ımplement, Many are only a replıcatıon of prevıously exısıtıng crytpocurrenıes successful ın the same category.

I found most of the ICO, it is difficult for us to contact the ICO team directly, and most of the ICO project is not open source, it makes me very worry, because it appears that most of the ICO project is just for the sake of money, they don't have any innovation.

Wonder! Where do such amazing people who do not bother to ask about the project in which they invest their money? It is simple, takes little time, there are many checkers and simple instructions. If people are more responsible there will be less Scam?

Most? All of the ICOs are for the sake of money. Don't ever forget that. And ALL of the people who invest in ICOs are also in it for the money. Don't ever forget that. Everyone can pretend other things, but money is the prime and only motivator for ICOs.

People who say otherwise are lying. IF people really didn't care about money, all they'd do is work on non-ICO projects, and contribute and build on them. ICOs by definition means money and everyone connected to it is interested only in this. That's the plain, simple truth.

Unfortunately, now there are high-level scammers who make fake profiles of famous people to raise more money. Now it becomes more difficult to check the ICO in which you can invest.     

Making an investment in an ICO can indeed be a minefield but if you get it right it is certainly worth the time and effort.
1. Check out the project thoroughly, don't just invest because some guy on Youtube told you to.
2. Read the whitepaper does it actually make any sense or is it just padded with useless information (Naviaddress spent about 10 pages just describing what addresses were!)
3. Previous experience of the developers and business management skills of the CEO and CTO

Well, while most ICO projects like what you explained, there are also some ICO projects which managed by well known members.
For me, I will only invest after I have a thorough learning the information about the projects and looking at the whitepaper, and also the team behind it

very true, and some of them do not have a clear outline of their projects, their target groups and what problems they seek to solve. makes an ICO look very suspicious especially in this scam and cash-grab era.

Basically, the project is all dependent to the development team. They were the ones who actually make things possible, thia only mean that the primary factor why a ptoject fails is the team. If there were no legit people behind the project, that would possibly be a scam. A good project has a well known personalities related to it. Before getting in to it,  do check the background information about the team, look at the previous project they have work out. Therr actually good reviews about each project available in the internet, this would help you determine the future of your prospect ICO.

That's why somehow the team matters too, but we should focus more on the project perspective, will it be useful and still applicable in the future? will it have a proper roadmap and keep on being updated no matter what, That's why I prefer investing only when the project already succeed or when it have already a developing product. It's more good if the project really seems pleasing with their team itself.

I think there's only one reason why i don't trust ICO at all: the code isn't open source.
Because many ICO projects are only in the early stages, they are not open source for the ICO project.

what is the obvious reason that tells that ICO is a scam? sometimes it is hard to define the fraudulent one...

It is actually not that easy to know if it is really not trusted or scam. But what  I can say is just do a further research about them and it is not really convincing like lack of information about their team and their project well you can that it is not trusted. But you can check out this new ICO which is called Daneel. This ICO has been backed up by IBM and was shown by trusted websites like yahoo,etc. You will see how trustworthy this ICO be.

Precisely you wrote this probably the simplest ways to avoid scam projects. From simple things - even see the site itself, how it works, how much we visit, try to write in an online chat, how quickly the answer comes, and also look at the ratings of projects.

Everything in the list are actually true. I would like to add up.
1. Since they are just starting you should expect that it was not only win-win. You should expect they might fail.
2. You should remember that donations is from the heart. It was not being asked. In that term it was also suspicious.
3. Donation is different from mandatory payment, if you want to donate then you can but it is not mandatory to donate.
4. If they ask for you to pay the fee scan first and search for their legitimacy sometimes it is reasonable because of the high gas fee or transfer fee.
Most of all, be careful and be vigilant.

And that after communication you will be sure that the project is good and you can invest without fear. You are a naive person, the most important thing in ICO is their other competition, their advantages over other similar ones and how much the team is aware of.

Linkedin really seem can be faked though. Someone else might link their scammy ICO project to someone else's profile unbeknown by the real owners, this case has been happened in several ocassions.
Just be sure to check everything up, also see whether there's live interview with the developer team, if there's not, you're putting your money in an untrusted team.

Some ico sites have published their staff with linkedin profiles .

I think if the ICO does not have feedback, there is no social (live) page, which not only announces information related to the project, but also responds to letters, it is most likely scammers. You have identified important criteria when choosing ICO. But this is not the whole list. I think soon will develop a system that will verify the ICO and ensure the safety of investors' money.

It's not a fact that those ICO who don't  have these negative points will turn out to be real projects, now they can hide everything and make a site cool and the manager is active, and as a result scam

Honestly, even if those points still stand, the ICO might still be a scam.

It's really hard to tell because at the end of the day, they might simply pull the plug and run away with your money, even if their site and everything looks legit.

All of those information could be fake as a cheater is good at win ur trust.
Know more about the project, especially the code in the GitHub.