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I was looking to purchase an ICO at a discount.  The more I look into different offers, the more I see that things may be a scam- similar websites, over seas, similar advertisements.  It seems easy to raise millions.  In fact, now every ICO to me looks like a scam.  I don't want to miss out, but of course don't want to be scammed.

Has anyone noticed the same?  Has anyone invested money in an ICO and actually received valuable coins out of it?  If so, which website help you find it?

That is what you are risking when you bet on these ICOs. It is hard to tell which ones will be around longer than a few months and which ones will take your money and run. For that reason I abstain from participating in ICOs anymore and I advise you do the same. If you must participate check out websites like ICOalert and ICOtracker.

I think you are right.  May be best to not participate.

Well... ICO is always a big risk... You can found a project with very good and unique website and also very good advertisements that is a scam... There are no guarantee that you will not be scammed.... You can try to find ICOs with good rating on websites like:
https://www.icoalert.com/
http://icobench.com/
and similar...
but remember always act on your own risk! I got very good profits from ICOs with relativelly small investements... I started to guide my selft with hypes, and feedbacks on the internet by trusted users*... Maybe that will help you

Investimg in ICOs is a two thing, it can really go sour our glossy. Most ICOs can get you a ×5 after a successful launch, while must can ruin your pocket. Mostly, I invest in ICOs of projects that already having an existing product or a working prototype, with this, you can know that the project is not a mere dream. But in most cases, if I can't make a concrete decision, I would wait and buy from exchanges after listing.

Just now, I looked at a review of the top 2018 ICOs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi2HKOOyomE

This review said that Centra was their best buy.  This is also what I found about Centra:

http://fortune.com/2017/12/17/cryptocurrency-floyd-mayweather-centra-lawsuit/

If these experienced people can't spot a scam, how can we?

I like your theme. I ever feel what do you feel now guys. Just be patient and keep calm cor this situation and It will be happy. Just two probably, i.e advantages or disadventages :)

x2.

There is no reason to participate in an ICO right now because the price of Bitcoin will cause you to lose your money on something that was $0.03 when the ICO started.

That is not all, there are still a lot of good ICOs and their coin has very high growth potential. As long as you are clever and forward looking, I believe you will find it easy. Today, the massive birth of the Altcoin is giving the market more and more coin garbage. Consequently, there must be selection and clarity before investing in any Altcoin

There are 3 main things to look at when trying to figure out if an ICO is a money grab (scam) or legitimate investment. I will number them in order of importance with 1. being the most important. These are not guarantees, but they will help you make some decisions regarding your investments.

1. Their ANN post in this forums. Does it have a lot of time, effort and money put into it? Are the graphics used in the post nicely done or quick and cheap? Does it seem like they have their $h!t together?

2. Their website. See above for things to look for...also see if they have a built in wallet/dashboard ready to send and receive tokens. Sign up/register and poke around the site.

3. Their whitepaper. Look for something that is obviously not a copy and paste job. Also, try and read through it for spelling errors/bad grammar/mistakes..etc.

Due to the proliferation of Initial Coin Offerings, it is hard to determine which ones are scam and which ones are not. In every investment you make, there is always an inherent risk that you will not be able to get back what you invested that's why there is always the advise of invest only what you can afford to lose. Investing in ICOs are quite risky but the rewards you would be able to reap when the project is successful would make you believe that it is worth it but then the problem is to determine what projects are worth investing to.

You wouldn't know the future that's why you should take the risk of investing on it with the hope that it will give you a valuable return in the future. Those who invested in ETH and Neo in their ICOs are very happy now.

Check this thread for those ICO sources. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2372397.0

There are alot of ICO now but many of them  has bad quality. So before make invest in any ICO make sure they has working product with solid team behind the project, not only plan in their white paper. And the other more thing is use and built risk management for investing in ICO.

Usually that case because of the coin is not popular so they give more bonus, or the coin developer want to scam, if you think it's not safe then don't invest in that ICO, find other that is more trustable, the risk of investing in ICO is big, so if something seems not right then it's time to get out

You should definitely check it at least at https://www.icoalert.com/ or similar. Please, do good and profund desk research before investing your money in it!

ill invested in a few project , but yes there are many ICO right now and more of them is scam but if you reasearch the project before investing i think you will get what you want . there are a good ICO project i see that will give you more profit after the ICO but you need to decide by your own  . if you see a project that have working product then its much better.

But won't you think that there's some ico now are just making them a legit one even though they're not with all of those criteria? Well come to think of it and click my signature.

What we need here is an ICO listings upgraded, with good features to check if they plan to run a backdoor scam or what.

I had a break from the crypto world and when I decided to go back and invest in ICO first time, I research a lot of information about it, my first 2 ICO's was  Monetha and BlackMoonCrypto, both been qualified as a flop in my opinion. What is important for is to make the right decision about go big, small or wait after hits exchanges and observe what will happen. Best ICO's have good reviews on YT, and plenty of information on the internet, plus good ANN thread here on the forum, smaller ICO's sometimes is better bought after is available on the exchange, all ways are good too but timing "when" is crucial. I snatched SONM Tokens ages after ICO (over a year) and price spiked just days ago from 0.12$ to 0.4$ now. Remember guys, buy Tokens is never too late as long as you hit that "open window" when the price is still cheap.

I am also crazy about ICO and currently i am looking forward to Gilgamesh (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2162600.0) when they are going to to announce their ICO..

It depends in where are you going to invest.. Take a look over the ICO on my signature, they raised more than 35 million dollars in the first three days.

but there are a lot of scammy projects, and we all know that, it is your choice to join or not.

And if you invest in those ico's that are promising x6 of your investment amount.. Then do not put a single penny in there.

I don't know why you are bent on ICO, if there are already establish project you can participated in, project like Ethereum and BTC are still go buy at anytime. Finding good projects now is getting difficult because the space is now very crowded

If you are looking for appearance of legit project/ICO you will never invest anything in any project. That been said, you just need to take a blind leap and invest in any popular ICO that is supported by relatively large communnity

Don't turn your eyes on every ICOs as most of them will seem like a scam. Go for ICOs which has moer hype as these are the ones which people tend to invest in. As you can see the most hyped ICOs are still running successful in the market.

Most of the icos are only idea without actual product so yes it looks like scam to me especially if they are going to make something big without the experience to back it up. Even among the ico a year ago only some of them already release the product.

Well, if you did not find a good ICO, then you did not look well. I wanted 2 days ago to take part in one. So I did not get tokens. They were bought in 1 minute. I could not take part in another ICO, because there was a lot of supporting documents, I did not have the desire to communicate with it. Some projects are open only to whales, and the threshold of entry is 5,000 dollars. Another ICO was supposed to last a month, and sales ended in a week, as they quickly collected the entire amount. Look for those good projects and you will be happy.

It is always risky to invest in ICO but its not mean that all ICO's are scam.For your information I am here giving you some sites from that you can get all details about particular ICO and decide if invest or not here is the list:

icoalert.com
crustcrypto.com
ICObench.com
ICORating.com
icobazaar.com
tokenmarket.net
icotracker.net

  I will advice you that pls study this all sites well before invest in any ICO because in the all above sites have much accurate and deep information about particular project.

Yeah you are right...ICO these days had made such a image that people don't believe in that at all. Specifically ERC20 token has created such a bad image and people start calling it as Shitcoin. In such scenerio, even the genuine and potential project also got ignored and investors something miss a chance to earn high profits. But we can't really help in this.

I agree with you because of alot past scam ICO's, ICO's have spoiled their reputation in crypto-market and nobody really want to trust or invest in them anymore.

Never tried to invest in ICOs. In my opinion better to invest in alts

My investment strategy has been centered on ICOs as they offer more scaling on ROI in the long term if the project succeeds.
Currently just over 300% gains over the last 3 months. I  just pick projects that are reasonable, provides a good community, has a good product and superb team.
There a lot of reference sites (icorating, icobench) you can use for checking this over the internet.

Advise will be, DYOR. There are a lot of good projects that do not have good returns for some months but moons when milestones are reached.
Good luck in investing.

yes I think investing your money in ICO is quite risky for people who do not really know about ICO, but for me ICO is a good thing to multiply money for the future, but we have to be picky with ICO, and do not get stuck on ICO the scam  :-*

Some ICOs like TeleX AI have an established company in a reputable place (they have one in London). If you see the company established in Panama or some other unregulated place then you should be more cautious. If you want some ICO price coins then grab some here before it hits the exchange http://telexai.com/ (http://telexai.com/)

I have invested in only two ico,sold without or loses second ico is ongoing,long term am expecting up 100% profit
No hype ,all legit

I usually use https://icobench.com/icos. This resource has the quite sensible experts. But I can't find a good project last time. Maybe there is a calm before the holidays   :-\

You are not crazy  ;D There are a lot of crazy people who create so many scam ICO's. I can recommend this site https://icotoinvest.com/
I hope it will help you

I've invested in a lot of icos but scam or not depends on your self mate. if you are doing a proper research and you may so far from the scam project. i made 5x from wabi ico. This is very good amount.
if you are still believing about the majority of icos looks scam for you and look at coinmarketcap. how majority of the promising project like ethereum, stratis, neo etc started from ico.  :o

Yeah you should invest in that crypto which is liked by most because the market value of such things become very high in which people invest the most, like in bitcoin. Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency of the world and that’s why the number of its investors is in millions.

You should not waste your time and money in such a currency which is not welcomed by a large community otherwise you will fall.

its true many crazy ico seems imposible to do but they are do exist. i would recomend you to invest in bobs, pundi, and spectiv. they. have a good project especially pundi and bobs repair. they got great partnership. xlm partnership with pundi and for bob's they got great advisory john mcafee

Investment ICO is actually a very risky move, but if you invest in a good ICO project, it will bring you enormous profits, even a fraud, even a bubble, I would choose investment ICO.

That's why before investing in an ICO it's good to do a background check of the team and of the project. Also, check the project in different media publications.

There are these website you can use to learn more about the project:
ICO Bench
ICO Tracker
ICO Rating
ICO Data

Not every ICO's are scam... Many ICO's are true Investment and will help you create the real wealth for you in a small period of time. It is just we need to investigate properly while investing in an ICO....Read the whitepaper... Research well about the team...And understand the project and its scope in future.

I think you shouldn't forget that these people can easily transfer funds to themselves and keep on doing this to be able to say they have collected millions already.

 Pay attention to my signature below. This is a very good product Titanium. https://tbis.io/token-sale/ Pre-sale is almost over. ICO is ahead. Read carefully about this product. I think you will not be disappointed. Good luck to you.

Everybody knows the average statistics, only 5% of ICO ends successfully, everything else is scam or so, you just do not get good projects.

My suggestion buy DBT ICO tokens, 3days to end ICO with 50% bonus hurry up. link https://datbit.org/ (https://datbit.org/)

No, you're not crazy. People want to get an income of 1000% by investing in a new project, so there are so many scam in ICO.

Ive investment a lot of ICOs which always fails me even the good rating ICOs sometimes fails,it wond give you any returns,they said icorating.com is a good website for the ratings and reviews.

ICO is project that represent itself only an idea. Nothing more. The other information about the collected money, team and created infrastructure is nothing. You can rely on the true and perspective idea.

Put money in ICOs is an investment with a high risk and high rewards. Some of them are a scam and some other simply can´t reach their goals. However if you find a great ICO, you can get a profit of many times your initial investment. So I think that it´s posible to invest in ICOs but you have to do a great research taking into account everything that has been said in this thread.

In reality not all ICO will pay off but this not the limit the fact that there are still ones that do, one just need to do proper research and take time to learn before diving into anyone and there are related topics in these thread too.

The sites like icobench, icodrops help my to make a decision. But they all show the same information. You own independent analysis is the best way

Someone said that every ICO must be considered a scam until proven otherwise. :) However I guess there are a lot of cool projects out there,

Just now, 90% of all ICO projects are scammers. So be very careful. To reduce the risk of losing money you need to carefully study projects. This will help you for sure.

I don't agree with you... Anyways If you will see the project shared by the asians on all the facebook groups, of course, they are a pure scam! But, if you will look by ICOs on a good website with top ICOs lists, you will find a very good projects!
It depends of your source of information!

Well nowadays Icos are in great variety so its hard or most probably much difficult to find out the best ICO which can prove profitable in the future so its better to be away from the ICO,s , ofcourse you are not crazy its just the variety of ICO,s which are hard to chose instead of taking part in them find some suitable airdrop or bounties otherwise invest in some cheaper coin which have a long term but good road map

True that. Not even the project buy the development team also. You have to look on their past, on the previous projects so that might help you not to loose everything.

There are several ways to minimize risks, one of them is investing in projects that already have a working product with real users.
In this list, only such projects https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2451482.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2451482.0). Maybe it will be useful for you :)

there is no universal tool, you can wait for some time and see how much the project has collected for example in the middle of the ICO, usually if the sum is more than 10 million it will not be a frank scam, pay attention to Spectiv - a team of experienced developers develops a virtual reality

For reference, over the past half year at ICO, I earned $ 15,000 and this is only one third of the shot, which covered losses from other companies. Everyone chooses to take the risk or not.

You are not crazy.
Developers can't work 24 hours a day. And a project in blockchain isn't a job for a week.. Be patient
If you wait a year or a couple of months you get much more profit.

Hi all . In our case this is important patience and selection of companies . A couple of days, few companies make money ,need to wait for the implementation of the project

Well, the reason why they all look like a scam is because they mostly all are.
Maybe scam is too harsh a word though.  Although there are ico's that will downright steal your money, most of the ico's are just terrible business ideas or lazily copied ideas that will have no future.
So whether or not they intentionally go out to take your money or they lose your money due to incompetence, the result is bye bye to your investments.

But, the thing is, the reason people are still crazy about ico's is because there are some terrifiic startups out there.
If you find the right one, you will earn huge returns on your investment.

What you need to decide, is are you willing to put forth the time and effort to research these companies to find one you can support.

Pro tip: don't waste time here on bitcointalk asking people, ask the devs themselves.
Any reputable startup or ico will have a way to get in touch with the dev team.
I have found that it is the fastest and most reliable way to do research.
Dev team not available? Then pass on it.

Yes, now it's not a secret for anyone that most of ICO is scam.  On the ICO you can earn real money, but the search for a project needs to be carried out especially carefully. Look for ICO on icodrops.com.

I invested in many projects on ICO. First time came across not very successful. I was returned money, as the necessary amount was not collected. The price of some dropped very much. But this is a very small percentage of total investment. Pay attention to my signature below. I think this is a good project.

Now the big problem is to find an honest ICO. A lot of excitement creates high activity of scammers. But still ICO remains a very good investment option, the possible profit exceeds the risk of possible failure.

A investment in an ICO is always a high risk investment. Look at the Confido (CFD) scam for example. Do your research and make a decision.

Just like in any other field or industry, there is a always fraud or fake ones in the industry. Based on your experience, i would advise you do a clear and comprehensive study of the project and even the team behind the project.

I have realised that often the best thing to do is to buy the tokens AFTER the ICO when they hi the exchanges and their price tanks for a while. Buying the dip often pays.

To risky investing in an ICO without any research and knowledge about how ICO totally works and how to choose the legitimate ICO,all ICO nowadays it seems the same platform but not all are scam they are still ICO has a good project and backbone only that we should study and research if ever you want to invest in an ICO so that we will know if it is not a ligitimate one.

Before investing, be sure to do your research, especially about the team behind.
You can find gems but not easily, 19 out 20 are crap projects.

Investing in ICO is like gambling, many of them are scam and many others are not profitable. In the other side, i just saw Binance listed APPC and the price is around 2$ and i found that ICO price was 0.1$. Lucky investors had *20 profit before even being listed in cmc.

When you invest in an ICO you will probably have to accept that you will be scammed, so you should know the information about the project before investing to avoid risk. You should know about the people behind the ICO project, who are they? what project was born to solve the problem?, which country the project comes from? There are many websites where you can find information about ICO projects, because of forum rules so I will not post on this topic. You can search on Google. You will find a potential ICO project for your own investment.

may be that ICO  ;D

Yes, me too. Some of them even use the same website template and graphics. We all should be careful with our Investments. Always check the team, idea and the soft/hard cap.

No, you're not crazy. Such a large number of scammers in the ICO is a real crazy thing. When investing, you must be very careful.  :(

there are some ico that are scam. I think you should often analyze and investigate. i am not interested in ico who give big discounts. will become ruksak after entering the market. so I guess you should try always looking for knowledge about ico.

Look for really big projects with a lot of solid partners. Such ICOs are likely to be successful. Usually such large ICOs have huge support in media and social networks.  ;)

Very important is a good and promising idea of the project, as well as an experienced team with successful projects completed. You should understand that this is a serious project, when you first look at the ICO site. Yes, it is important that there are serious partners in the project.

You need to research first and read there white paper. Try to google there references if the that persons are really supporting that project.
In fairness to some good ico, it is your decision to join or not.

According to my observations, a really successful ICO is only a few percent of the total. In ICO projects are invested a lot of money, so a lot of scammers.

I noticed that many projects making ICO turn out to be a scam. This is a thirst for easy money, of course this sphere will always attract fraudsters.
I think you can trust those projects that are built on the working business. And the more years this business worked before the ICO, the better

I fully agree with your opinion.
Today there is a lot of excitement around the ICO. I want to see really good projects and not scam

I think, although there are many cryptocurrencies in the world currently but still investing in ICO might give better return within a short period of time. As per my experience, I had invested on an ICO 2 years back and got great return although I am not focusing on active investment, however, I have been researching on an upcoming ICO of highly secure cryptocurrency is called Gitalcoin (http://Gitalcoin).

I have found very impressive in terms of the future prospect.

I am sharing some information you might interested, please refer below

The Website link: https://gitalcoin.io/

Cost Per Coin Pre ICO: USD 0.5

They are mentioned that Monthly Interest Rate Up to 42%

The 1st year they are offering 10% per month which is quite good for ICO investors I guess.

I will get more information and post it accordingly.

Thanks for reading my thoughts.

Purchase ico when the pat pre-ico is good chance to get more discount, but i think it not worth because at that time the community still low. And because of that, the ico can become scam anytime.

what you mean "ico can become scam anytime"? if it is scam, it is scam... no illusions... I believe you were talking about problems related to low community... but this is the risk related to the ICO... If you invest on it, you must understand that hypes are created, and are not permannent  :-\

that's what makes me hesitate to invest in ico, the various scam risks make me more hesitant.
I better buy etherum, clear and safe for etherum deposit to get profit.

Yes, now there is a lot of fraud in the ICO. A lot of money attracts a lot of scammers. But this does not stop people, they continue to invest in ICO, because it can bring them very good profits.

Now a huge number of projects that can take off or fall, I've chosen one project, I was very interested in PayPal's participation in it, albeit within the framework of one of the three startups selected for their nine month incubation program in Singapore.  ::)

I agree with this statement. Indeed, the mechanism of many ISO allows you to spend a lot of money in the absence of proper reporting and control. And these moments are sure to take advantage of scammers.

Basically my experience a couple of months ago in a nutshell... ICO's, regardless of their advertisements, website designs, etc. may be scams but also may be very promising projects. It is difficult to differentiate the good from the bad with visuals. It is better to read a lot about their mission, idea of the project, whitepaper, etc. Additionally, it is a good idea to check the company behind each project - is it a credible one or it is some company of which nobody knows anything. Last but not least, check as many YouTube channels and online threads & discussions to form an objective opinion. Discern between the valuable criticism and the spam.
To answer your second question: Yes, I have invested in ICO's before and yes, I have made profit. I have invested in LiveEdu, Restart Energy, and Titanium. I'm currently getting familiarized with Cointed (CTD). Their whitepaper seems promising and the company behind the project has a trustworthy record - it partnered with Nvidia and TAS Group, which enables it to do green mining and to launch multiple ATMs all over Europe. Has anyone invested in them? I know for sure that a couple of friends have invested in it and are currently satisfied but I still need more proof, as investing in ICO's needs to be done in precaution.

Most ICOs are indeed money grabbers, but some are really good. When I invest I tend to buy ones that will give me bonus token, but also only the ones that I am sure are going to have a future. When I bought both DIGI and Giftz I got a ton of bonus, which will help me make a profit even if the coin price drops a little bit.



I did, I was a little bit worried at first but now I am sure it was a solid investment. But don't take my word for it, please go to their website and read the whitepaper, read their news, blog posts, everything. Always get all information possible before investing.

Just check everything - especially the need of token, whitepaper and team. If project doesn't actually need token - first red flag, team doesn't answer to the questions at all - second red flag, whitepaper doesn't sound good - third red flag. And don't forget that you need to diversify your funds - so no need to go all in

I used icobench for research and analysis upcoming ICO's. I think is the best resource of ICO ratings. Some experts opinions often coincide with realuty. But even the best experts can make mistakes and come across scam projects
https://icobench.com/ico/tradove  It's was the project with good rating, but now but it turned out that there are many charges of fraud and the ICO closed
I do not know at what opinion I can rely on  :-\

One needs to read the whitepaper of an upcoming project/ICO thoroughly, after that you can decide whether its gonna be a good project or not, if the project try to solve a real problem it has a chance for great partnerships and a future, also one thing to remember is what the team looks like, the team is very important as they make the project come true, I'm gonna invest in Daneel.io and have high hopes for it.

ICO have become very popular because of the opportunity to earn good money. This attracts not only new investors, but also scammers. So now there is so much scam in the ICO. So with you everything is in order.

To invest in ICO tou got to take your time to reaearch about the project,bookmark the project site copied from a reliable source like icobench,icodrop,token market, do not be in a hurry to invest,Do not follow the crowd,and the hype on social media,invest what you can afford to lose,ICO has raise lots of millionaire do not be afraid to take risk.

If you think that you can be deceived when investing and buying ICO coins, then you have the option to buy bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and other similar coins to hold for a long time.

I am afraid you are right about the fact that they are a lot more scammers now than before, but I think the number of good ICO is about the same, just a lot more are trying to make money of nothing and increase the number of shaddy ICO.

As far as I can see, now that ICO projects are successfully sold and traded on major trading sites, they are many times more expensive than ICO, so the current ICO the trend is very hot now. I understand that it is not easy to find a quality ICO project in thousands of projects today, which requires you to use a lot of knowledge and time to research and learn new ideas good ICO. Once you have chosen a good project, investing in it is great.

Investing in an ICO is risky because you don't know the person or team at the receiving end. If you can risk participation in an ICO, then its cool for you but if you can't risk it then no need to invest a dime.