Bitcoin Forum

I want to create some guidelines for beginners. Any help is welcome )

You are a beginner as well.

Wait for an expert to develop guidelines for beginners.   

Never invest more than you are comfortable losing.

Always check the whitepaper of the company, check the team behind it, how well known are they what background do they have.

The official website does it have SSL? Does it show ownership info, who is the domain booked under, how long is it booked for ( I noticed Ripple only has booked to next year WTF tight arses )

Is there is a Reddit forum, Twitter account are they active? is there a community of users around the coin.


I'm also a newbie so perhaps not the best advice, happy to be corrected.

Yes I'm on this forum, but maybe not in life? Or you know everything. Better give us good examples, not useless comments, Thank you.

Thank you, looks usefull)

I think these are some of the key points to look at.

1. Who is the team and what have they done before? Do they look credible and do you think they’ll be able to deliver on the project? Are they a business with no blockchain developers who have pivoted to crypto just because it’s popular now.
2. What stage is the project at and have they had any institutional investment from VCs?
3. What do they need the token for? Is blockchain tech necessary in the project?
4. Read the whitepaper - does it make sense? Is it fleshed out and full of actual information rather than supposition and fluff?
5. What do they look like on social media and Reddit? Do they look reputable and are they interacting.
6. What’s their sentiment within the wider community and the media?
7. What does their token distribution look like and how will the tokens be split across activity?
8. Are they open source? If so check out Github and see what their activity looks like. Not all projects are open source.
9. Does the project fulfil a proper use case - use your gut - are people going to use this service in the future.

this is a good summary and I as a beginner would always also check out forums like bitcointalk, reddit, steemit etc. Also watch youtube videos of your desired coin, check social medias in general. How is the hype around the coin? go check out sites like icobench or icodrops. (deversify your sources as much as possible to get an overview).

Also it is probably hard for beginners to evaluate the value of a coin, but some maths can help looking for the circulating/max supply x price to get a rough overview of the market cap the ico will end up with.
For example if market cap would reach 200 million and your value guess is also 200 million, think twice if it is worth to buy ico tokens ;)
Ask yourself what is the potential of the coin, are there any risks involved, are there any similar coins already out there?

THis looks like a real guide. 10 question in search of Legit ICO!
Thank You for the info!

There are some information we can check. But that not enough to tell ico good or not. I want to work with you make list can check for ico.
Thanks

Look for the product/services that this ICO has to offer. Does it have a real chance of success? You you might consider reading whitepaper too. Join their telegram channel and ask the developers if you have any questions. Check the founder's and developer's background. Are they competent? The roadmap must be clear, short and long term goals are needed. Lastly, check community's feedback to the project.

I think it's absolutely key to join the Telegram and Discord channels after reading the whitepaper and ask questions and see what you get for answers.

Also, what is your reason for investing in an ICO?  This is important, because if it's to make money in the short term you may have a completely different strategy than if you are planning to hold in the long term.  I have seen a lot of coins that actually drop in value when they hit the exchange for the first time - naturally, if people who have the tokens from the ICO want to cash out, as it were.

If you wish to avoid scams, there are some decent groups out there that are actually devoted to ferreting out those scams - ConcourseQ is one of them.  That's a good Telegram channel. One technique I learned in one of the investigative groups was using IMGUR to look up "Team Member" photos.  Scammers usually use fake photos on their team shots and that's one way to reveal an outright scam. I found a scam on Craiglist trying to sell fake Bitminer s9's using IMGUR where their "CEO" was an image that was ripped off from an Instagram account of a surfer from Santa Cruz.  

Also, common sense.  The Plexcoin scam (the guy did jail time for it, so yeah, it's a scam) featured a whitepaper that flat-out refused to reveal the identities of the team members with some ridiculous excuse.  Not sure who would have invested the $12M that that project managed to collect before their assets were frozen, but don't be one of those investors!