Bitcoin Forum

There are many threads that ask for advice to select good ICOs, but it is as important to discard the bad ones. For me the "red flags" that lead me to run away are teams that are not experienced, rates that are not adjusted to the price of ETH or BTC and undisclosed term for private sales.

What makes you red flag a project?

If the dev team is not willing to put themselves out there, buy publishing their names, providing their previous experience and so on, leads me to think something is fishy. Also, the ANN thread has to be visually pleasing as well. I know the contents of a whitepaper is more important, lacking professionalism and visuals in the ANN thread may indicate that the team is not taking everything related to an ICO seriously enough.

Bad communication from the team (untransparent).
No team disclosure.
Large hard caps.
Very high bounty rewards with agressive marketing.

You spoke of some good ones, some of the most obvious for me are simple discrepancies, so often I see different prices on website compared to announcement thread or things like that. It tells me either one of two things are likely true, either they're not professional enough to double check everything and that doesn't bode well for the future, or they are just a scam.

Same as yours,red flag for me is on when I do see the team isn't experienced enough or just starting up on handling crypto projects but doesn't mean I wont really give some consideration this is sometimes intuition would set-in and when I got convinced when I do read up their WP. If do find out that it is just an ordinary or common WP which most projects do have.I do easily skip and find another one. I wont really risk my money if I do find out if a certain project isn't really worth at all.

It's hard to judge ICOs that appear to have a decent team behind them. You can't simply trust a listing of team members with "real" names because LinkedIn profiles are easy to create for fake people.

How do you decide for certain that a team is "good"?

Read this topics: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2109970.0 - red flags for ico
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1678127.0 - how to spot an ICO SCAM
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1963768.0 - How to know if the ICO is scam
Use search button and google, you can find plenty similar topics.

If the developers doesnt want to show themselves,if they have no previous successful projects,or they arent credible or if the project is too good to be true that are my basic things to find before thinking to join,but if one of these doesnt meet i will never support the project,roadmap or the whitepaper must be good too if you asked me.

My red flags are badly writer white papers:
This shows that the team couldn't even put enough effort into highlighting the best of their ideas.
Whitepapers that are all words and no discussion on technical details:
This showcases that the team's work probably can't do much in terms of developing the project they envision themselves.

No code samples or minimum viable product to showcase:
This again is indicative of the team having little technical knowledge. It shows that the team is waiting for funds to get anything done.

Usually once I see them start promising large gains i'm out. It's clear at that point what their only intentions are.

There are many threads that ask for advice to select good ICOs, but it is as important to discard the bad ones. For me the "red flags" that lead me to run away are teams that are not experienced, rates that are not adjusted to the price of ETH or BTC and undisclosed term for private sales.

What makes you red flag a project?
[/quote]
For me the red flag are the following signs:
1. funny name token,
2. Poorly designed subject to BTT,
3. well, the bad reviews and comments that cannot meet the creators.

That will be ICOs without a really cool idea and ICOs which just make another copy from ICOs which has already ended and had a great success.

When a coin doesn't have a clear purpose, and newbie devs with many newbie accounts supporting the thread.

Hidden team identity, this is a factor to stay away. Bad whitepaper and business documents. Weak project concept. Applicability could be low and this would be an indicator also. Then you should look for a demo product.

Lack of transparency, poor quality website, too simple whitepaper, suspicious or no details about team members and low use cases of the product or service are considered red flags for me.

First of all a website design and UI interface - it is very simple to check and the first I actually do;
Than i check the uniqueness or usability of the idea, roadmap - if this criteria don`t match - Red flag)

Now for me the first and the huge red flag is when the team leading an ICO dont have escrow. It means they can do with gained money whatever they want. It is not the main thing in the project, but if I see escrow - I can say that project will hit its goals

For me biggest red flag is team. If team is professional then it's worth to buy and HODL. If dev team is so good then surely they will work and give to community a good product. A little lie can ruin everything

I already lost one bitcoin during some stupid ico which was named iintcoin.
When I look back I figure out the dev team was unknown and there were no escrow service.
And no smart contract.

So I guess there were enough red flags... be careful with scams !

You have good selection criteria, another one that pushes me away from participating in projects, when there is a very large difference between the prices of Ico and Pre ico

Disorganized information and missing project details on their website are usually a redflag for me. Especially if you don't see their whitepaper and roadmap and of course their legitimate development team. I sense they are hiding something if these are not disclosed.

You can actually know if a team is good if there track records are good measuring up with there experience. Meanwhile, sometimes though, a good team might still have some challenges which would the reputation of the team.

For instance, many ico sites do crash these days immediately after the closure of ice as a result of the rush in traffic to access or buy. Thus, this might not necessarily be the fault of the 'good teams'.

Thank all people for yours answers! For example I find two new things here - I need put my attention on the escrow mechanism and about fake newbie accounts under ANNTHREAD! Thanks guys and girls for your help only keep each to other informed we can make good and safety community!

For me, the "red flag" when choosing ICO is
- an unknown team, strange people without confirmation in reality.
- long terms of sales, which increase in time, since not even a minimum is collected.
- a long waiting period (one year or more) of entering the market of the main product.

I am trying to avoid any ICO at all. Only thing I do it is buying good reliable coins and selling it when the time is come. This is best most secure way to get money.

I prefer avoiding ICOs with poor quality and absence of relevant experience team. This is the main red flag for me. In addition to that, the things that raise my sense of anxiety are low quality website (or even absence of it at all) and marketing materials.

The main red flag for me is no MVP - investing in someone's ideas/thoughts/dreams is way too risky...
And, actually, mistakes. If the team don't pay attention to such simple things, it makes them look unprofessional.

Your outlook is very good and in my opinion. I think the red flag project is a project that can not participate in the long and medium term. It is difficult to accept such projects. Investing in it is too risky for you.

My red flags
1. Pre-sale was in crypto long ago - Early investors will cash out day one- price drops
2. Project is about micro lending, charity or a new coin.
3. Project team is 90%+ Russian. I have nothing against Russians but I don't invest in it.
4. Team seems more interested in ICO than building the project, tries to get as much money as possible, emails all the time and try to hype.
5. Team will take significant amount of tokens to themselves.
6. The blockchain is not vital to the project idea. - Only vital to get ICO money.


Best time to buy into new tokens I believe are 3 weeks to 3 months after ICO ended.
1. Price stabilized.
2. Some results should be visible, company still talking about the ICO on their web start page months after -avoid.
3. 100x easier to make a valuation of how realistic the timelines were and if the team seems functioning.

You may not get 100000% gains this way but perhaps 10000% with much smaller risk.

Dev acting too friendly and convincing people this is the next big thing. Thats unfortunately way too common

For me I red flag a project, when they make impossible claims and promise. Or they give ideas which are too good to be true. Also if I sense is not being accepted by the community.

1. High cap for a basic project.
2. Less communication from the team or its developers.
3. Paying for some people to endorse their ICO (For example: John McAfee's shills)
4. No experience in the field that they are working on.

The biggest red flag for me is when there is no information about the development team working on the project. For example there was an ICO called 'wcx' that had an anonymous development team and that CO was the shadiest thing I have ever seen starting from the promotion and ending with the execution.

Yeah it's a big true fact.
I have seen some ICOs which promotes themselves as next Bitcoin or ethereum or better than these without any working product at all. Some even claims that their ICO investors will get promised returns which is actually a major red flag for me because nobody can predict the price of a coin in the future.

When the team is unknown, the whitepaper leaves out crucial information, or doesn't exist at all, and the major sites refuse to list them (I'm not talking about the super-expensive ones).

Red flags include bad communication from the team, inability to answer questions about the whitepaper, team refuses to reveal details such as the background of the company, and there is no specific roadmap for the project, and nothing is said about distribution of funds. I would stay away from ICO's with such red flags.

As for me the project's team and the general idea are very important. If developers hide their real names and do not want to communicate with investors, then this project is most likely created only in order to take away the money of investors.

Linkedin profiles are not that easy to create, you need to look at the number of contacts, that is not easy to fake. Also do a quick name search in google because experienced people will have news and info related to them that are difficult to position.

I would say that also not having a clear cap or selling the tokens for whatever the market decides is an indication of a money grab scheme. Can even be legit in purpose, but the execution is already lacking.