Bitcoin Forum

I’ve been investing in the exchanges for a while now. And, I wabnt to get my feet wet in ICO investing. My plan is to start investing in 1 ICO every 2 weeks starting January of next year. So, with that said, I am gonna start small and only invest maybe $200 max per ICO (mostly from the interest gained with my other investments in Crypto; I am gonna try to avoid paying out of pocket as much as possible initially until I have more experience).

With that said, I am not quite sure where to start. Usually, I invest in coins trading in the cents on exchanges based on the folkowing criteria:
- purpose: Why does the coin exist?)
- White paper: What’s the plan and vision for this coin?)
- Team: Who are the guys behind it? What’s theircexpertise?
- Roadmap: Wgat’s the roadmap for this coin?
- Community: does the coin have a decent community?
- Do I understand it: Do I understand what I am investing in?

Pretty standard stuff, I know. But what do I have to look at when deciding whether to invest in an ICO (that I didn’t mention)?

Thanks for the info :)

You pretty much got your criteria spot on.

Just to add, on your "team" criteria, also take into consideration if the team members are actually real people or just random names and random faces added on to the coin's website.

Also:
 - How active the devs are: Check their GitHub repository and take a look at the "commits". It's probably been months since they updated the code.
 - Percentage of coins the devs hold: On some coins, the devs actually hold a huge percentage of the overall coins(sometimes even more than 70% of the total supply. yep). I'm looking at you, Gnosis

+1 on checking the team out. Do they really exist?
If the project has a website check how long that site exists.
A big red warning sign for me are price predictions posted on their site.
You could also try to search their whitepaper to see if they just copied anotherone (recently happened with Apoub and RegalCoin).

Can you use copyscape to verify if the white paper was plagiarized?

There are some ranking websites that you should look at and study how to they get the best ratings. Cross information and see those that appear more in the top spots.

You should also consider only ICOS that have lending. This will be the ones that in average will guarantee the bigger raises in coin/token values.

Finally, pray to get an order. IN the past 2 days, i've always been out ordered in a matter of seconds.

I think most of the lending will turn out to be a scam in the end. returns they offer are unsustainable, once the money flow has ended, they gotta go

Kind of a noob question, but what do you mean by coins having lending?  Like, I lend them coins for an interest?

And good catch. Will definitely keep this in mind.

Yes this is a good question i have it too. Can someone give a heads up ?

Check team, check vision of project, hope for the best
.

I would like to add that i also watch the ico's proposed buy respectable youtubers.

Keep in mind though that there are many paid presentations so an ico become more known

I would start with the whitepaper and read it thoroughly. Besides that, look at the team, get into their TG group, see if the general idea of that particular ICO gets you.

Team and their business experience. If they're in the business for a few months and call themselves experts, probably not a good idea.
Community engagement on social channels, are they active, is the team active?
The vision of the product they're developring and the roadmap.
Patents, if existing, pilot projects, technology explained.

Hope it helps.

I agree. My friend once told me to invest in a lending ico but they run away with my btc not withdraw. Even if they have good investor relations if the team will really scam you in the first place you can't do something about it

Do we have a recommended site for ICOs that is very reliable because any token can pay to have a positive reviews?

I'm scared to invest in ICOs since even big and popular ones are scam in the end. Either they manage poorly or really intended to be one.

Better to do research first, yes some of the new ICOs are scams but not all of them. I think you need to examine first if they have a fully structured white paper.

There are so many icos and I'm confused which to participate. Who can recommend some good icos and Airdrops for me?

Do some research first, take a look at their white paper there are many ICO's turned out to be a scam. See to it that it is structured well. Airdrops I think is not reliable way to earn, since your not sure whether they will have a value to the market at the end of their ICO.

Totally agree! Also may check linkedin accounts of team and read information about them carefully!

Whom do you mean by "respectable youtubers" ?

Yes, you buy the coins and then you can make lending out of them.

All lendings are ponzi scams. You just need to check one that has high demand, buy some at the beginning, check if the hype is good and withdraw as soon as you can.

Some have compound interests but for me its only a way of them to retain your money for longer and eventually you are going to loose it.

Yes they are, you just need to keep attention to take your money out in the right time.

Concerning ICOs you should check the hype, youtubers and rating sites that can be found here in the forum, in the altcoins sub forum.

90% are scams, so don't put all your eggs in one basket. Check the ones that have an higher demand (hype) and research for them in the web and here in the forum. Check youtubers and number of videos.

The big idea here is to apply for the ones with the higher demand, as this would be the ones that have the probability to have lesser risk involved.

IMO whitepapers, teams, website, etc can all be forged, so pay more attention to what expert market players are advising and split your investment in 5 or 6.

If one ICO becomes legit, you should have money to have all ICOs payed and some profit, but it's always a risk.

Look for Airdrops!
That may be helpful to you

I would like to speak and suggest that you first should have eth ot bitcoin so that you can get your payment on the ICO you joined.

In other option of you got a bitcoin ATM at your country or a shop that accepts bitcoin exchanged to money well go there and get bitcoins for fees and get your higher payment that you earned in this ICO

Its very easy to do a quick background check on the team. especially if they are on linkedin. You should make sure that the core members are working fulltime on the project and the CTO has verifiable blockchain experience. The next thing I do is try to answer the question "What will this token be used for?". If you can't basically answer that question, you should be very weary of the project. Thing is there are so many ICOs out there, you don't want to be reading every single whitepaper. Being able to quickly identify common red flags is a very useful skill for managing your time and sanity ;)

If you are interested in refining your due diligence methods, you might find our community Discord channel interesting (https://discord.gg/j8RBAwB). We are a community sourced due diligence platform for ICO research and discovery. I go by SeveralQ if you have any more questions I would be happy to answer them over there.

Thanks for the info..... it helps beginners like us. I have learnt a lot reading comments

I check the ICO bench score. If the product and vision has 5/5 then I think it's a safe bet. :)

https://concourseq.io/Q/ALLCHAIN  was given a 4.1/5 on ICObench (https://imgur.com/n4ntCJY) and a 4.1/5 on trackICO (https://imgur.com/uwawk1U)

You have quite comprehensive list. It's enough to validate/gauge the potential in a coin. I'd just want to add a factor of hype. More hype a coin has created during and before ICO, more return it will give in short term.. especially when you want to flip on launch.

I tried ICO once and pre-sale is gone in a matter of minutes. Just keep looking on the altcoin annoucements on when is the date of ICOs

I'd also add that tokens/coins must have a use that is superior to any other solution.

So many new ICOs coming out, thaat don't solve a problem, or are competing against current solutions which are superior anyway.
While it looks great on paper, tokens/coins that promise to ?cook my toast in the morning? just aren't needed.

Looking to invest in an ICO thus December but I barely know about coins with great potential to give 10x ROI

The first you keep in mind is to determine that project that you going to invest in whether are really or not. In my opinion, I have general condition for reviews any ICO project as the following:
Website : Friendly and consist of information referring to the target of project ( Product, roadmap, Team... )
Whitepaper : Descript clearly the future and vision of project
Team : All of core members has linked to LINKEDIN profile and the project is verified by CEO who has transparent records.

Hi OP great list but I would also add a to the list the important matter that unsold tokens should be burned. If not, you will have a potentially big influx of tokens in the market at a later stage. That will potentially hurt your investment in the long-term.

Some youtube personalites really are respectable. Such as boxmining and other very similar people who may do some promoting but keep it pretty balanced.
Im also a fan of ChicoCrypto and CryptoLark

Buying and selling new ICO's, can someone pull a Warren Buffett penny stock technique with crypto?

I get it about getting into ICOs. I took your points if I wanna try it (getting into ICOs).
but I really wanna know about what is ICO? what is altcoin? what is the different from them (ICO and altcoin). I mean the real definitions of them, please some one tell me in a simple words. I still don't wanna make a thread just for asking it.
So far, I know ICO = initial coin offering (based on searching thread in forum), any other explanation about it? I'm not sure I did understand or not. Am I wrong if I said that ICO is altcoin before it get launching? if yes, then about getting into ICOs. So,not all ICO will be altcoin (get launching)?
Please kindly answer my lame question.  :'(

So you'd check an ICO like any regular IPO, right? Should not be too hard.

I'm scared to invest in ICOs since even big and popular ones are scam in the end. Either they manage poorly or really intended to be one.
But desite that I, planning to visit onre ICO for one project called mytimecoin .. A blockchain platform to turn time into the cryptocurrency is one of the projects which Im expecting so bad.

Investing into ICOs require a lot of consideration and is done at your own risk, it is always best to check for the genuinity of the individuals conducting the ICOs and the purpose behind their creation of coins/tokens.

You have articulated some salient point that should guide would be investors into investing in any ICO. However, you have not mention a very important question to ask which is: Does the ICO you are investing in already has a Product or Service they want to develop or spend the proceed of ICO on?

there reason why i go to the ICO is to read their whitepaper carefully their objective and also the dev team and lastly my feelings . whitepaper here is where you can see if the ICO is scam or not as well as thier objective and for the dev team if you already see one before and thier ICO is success you can go but if the ICO is failed why not join it at least you know that is not a scam ICO and lastly feeling if you feel this is a good ICO why not and vice versa

Some of the ICO Whitepapers are filled to the brim with technical/mathematical details that is next to impossible to understand for us regular deadly people to grasp.
How would one deal with one of those cases? My gut feeling say that ICOs that try to dazzle you with pages of mathematical formula is trying to hide something from you but it might also be that the info is strictly necessary for people with the right know to determine if they are legit or not.

You should add this standard ICO question,are the developers active?how many stakes will be distributed what if the developers are holding 90% of the coins is it worth it to invest?is there any 50% discounts on token sales if yes that would be a bad investment.

You made all the spots bud :) And I actually got something from you, got some idea on how to check good ICO. I also consider if the ICO or the project it self will support huge community rather than small community that will eventually vanished

Yes, I also recognized, is indeed a very important factor, total amount is larger, is likely to mean that the next rise is not particularly big, so it is completely a factor to consider.