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Take on the "4T" scheme: Theme, Tech, Team, Token !

1.Theme
To begin with, you need to evaluate the promise of the very idea of ICO. If you are not an expert, it will be difficult to do this. But it is possible to find signs of fraud even without profound knowledge in the field of blocking:
Go to the ICO website and see if White Paper developers have posted a project roadmap. If not, the startup can be immediately struck out.
If there is documentation, study it carefully. Honest developers try to explain in detail their idea and ways of its implementation, using not only text but also tables, graphs, charts and other demo material for this purpose.

2.Technology
It is even more difficult here - one needs to evaluate the promise not of the idea itself, but of the technology created for its realization. And even a well-written road map or White Paper will not help you to objectively assess the strengths and weaknesses of the advancing technology.
Lack of contacts for communication, ignoring your appeal or a template response not on the topic - alarm clues, indicating fraud.
After all, developers who plan not only to raise money, but also to start the project, are themselves interested in the fact that potential investors received as much information about the startup.

3.Team
always look for information about the team on the ICO website. Most often it is placed in a separate section ("Team") or placed at the bottom of the page in the format "photo-name-post in the project".
Good teams themselves talk about themselves. On their sites you will find short biographies of developers, information on their education, career advancements and experience with blockade projects.
Check out all the specified contacts of team members
Find the legal address on which the company is registered and verify its authenticity

4.
Open the appropriate section (most often called "Token" or "Token Economy") and find the information
And be sure to pay attention to the main thrust, due to which many investors lost their money. Is there any information on the site that issued tokens are not a digital currency and do not carry any real value, and developers are not obliged to change them on crypto currency or fiat money?

If you find such an announcement, save your money for another project.

GOOD LUCK !!! :)

I think this link will add some information about identifying ICO scam now a days. This medium is about how to create ICO scam in crypto community, for me if you know how to do ICO scam, it's easy to understand how to avoid those upcoming scam ICO. Don't be a victim, educate and help yourself for good folks.

ICO Scams: How to create one in 5 simple steps
https://medium.com/coin-governance-system/how-to-create-an-ico-scam-in-5-simple-steps-67391ed8a822?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIuZfyi5mF2gIVhg0qCh0TwQZSEAAYASAAEgLdm_D_BwE

Modt scam ico are more interested in the money rather than laying out their game plan on what they intend to add to the blockchain technology

you just need check few things
1 - Does ICO already has real business?
2 - Does ICO has real team?

Helpful tips. I think that the number of followers from the community helps as well to tell if an ICO is a scam or not.

Hi, I have already invested in Celcius network, Salt lending, eth lend and want to invest in Welltrado (www.welltrado.io). What do you think guys?

And it is very important to find ICO whose history has added value from some people who have invested in ICO and proven to pay, but the tips you give already represent the observation about scam or not ICO.

Good list, but it doesn't really end there. Since there are ICOs that start off legit, but end up being just a scam because the developers just don't do anything anymore to develop the token. Or that after the ICO it just straight off losses the value and the developers again stop developing the token because of that fact. It still takes luck even if you exercise utmost diligence in checking the ICO, so pray you get it right.

The environment with all those scam ICOs makes it really hard for the serious ones to spread their news and do the right marketing.
We are in Pre-ICO at the moment with our project.
Feel free to check us out and give us Input!

https://bonkers.io

ICO scam projects generally have a general idea or are similar to previous projects, leaders are often anonymous or have scammers, virtual communities, and less interaction in the community, calling the ICO in the amount of money. Too big with high bonus to attract investment, too much advertising in the media to create investment trust. There are some signs of suspicion through my experience. I am currently investing in the EFFECT.AI project, which is a very good project in the field of artificial intelligence. The project is receiving great attention from the NEO community. The time to open ICO sale is only 15h, so you can study more about the project and register at the official address of the project: https://www.effect.ai/, KYC: https://effectai.typeform.com/to/wkKnjL.

The fake ICO always disguises the things that people should pay attention to!

Unprofessional personnel always find it hard to find a scam!

So we need government regulation of ico!

Base on my experience Scam ICO is will be known if there is no assurance like how can a project run smoothly if it is listed and how can the platform be able to function as what it is, there are so many ICO which produces lots of FUDs saying that project will be to the moon LOL, isn't it too obvious? Part of marketing. a true ICO project deals with Good reputation of developers, well created website (also can be an option to see if secured or not) and last but not the least you can identify scam ICO in it's feedback.

Machi you may find the scam ICO with the detailed information they have spreaded on white paper pdf file. Sometime as you said it may created by the some best ann creator and share it a fake one on the announcement thread.
If you able to find the developers details you write and ask about the project confirmation on LinkedIn. Normally This LinkedIn profile allows you to understand the project is whether going from the right hand or fake ERC20 creator.

If you do made further investigations then these things should really be done on which checking out profile of the team behind on such project.If you do see suspicious things then better skip and find another project to invest on. Decisions would really vary on what we have read and discovered.If you are lazy enough to read up things and seeking out important informations then most likely you would really able to fall into the trap.

One golden rule also is:
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Be very wary of projects where the team makes promises like; The coin will rise xxx% in price!
Those kinds of comments are not only unprobable, they're also straight up illegal.

Teams are not allowed to make such statements.

So remember, if you think it's a scam, you might just be spot on. Of course this isn't always true, but due dilligence is so important in a market where lots of people are just after your money.

I have learnt not to doubt my instinct. If I have a little doubt in the ico or I read a FUD about it,  I just change my mind on it because once you put in your money and it happens to be fraud, you lost it for real, no recovery.

I actually check for straight forward paper and team plus the bounty manager, that is if it gets to forum here.

This is the reality part of ICO investment which even those legit ones and who do able to reach exchanges doesnt mean that they are already heading into success because most of them or the team do stop in mid-air when they do saw their token had dumped out they do left it together with the profits and the money they do had made without even thinking into its investors.Even these legit ones can really put you on loss.

Please do not invest on the ICO even legit one at this time. There are huge down fall trend going in the market, hence we may not able to believe the even legit project as well. Some of the ICO may delay the token sale and ending date of the sale.
If you want to join bounty campaign, please you check the bounty manager who is been part of this project and go to participate on them. Atleast you may earn the money for the tokens which is been part of bounty allocation.

You need to choose ICO who have been analyzed with due diligence by analysts and do not invest in pool syndicate that can steal your money. CryptoCompass is displaying ICO projects at presale stage with good entries. They don’t pool (risk and legal), but agree on exclusivity directly with the ICO team. So no additional risk from the investor side.

their new ANN : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3178063.new#new    

website to claim access : https://www.crypto-compass.io/

I will not put on trust by seeking website theme of that project, this is 99% wrong step.

There are many ico project offered same technology, but in fact they're still failed reaching the sale target. So I think we must realize that we are not interesting in very modern technology, but we interesting in investing that can making money

This one can be as important information, when i seen some project doesn't have good background dev or ceo, i will skip the project, risky to invest.

This is not affect anything, when the project gaining good public sale, that token will showing in some exchanges and can be trading.

Before joining an ICO, it is best to have a thorough research about the team behind the project.There are certain team or people which are really non  existent. That's what you need to identify first. Discover the concept and the related competitors of the project and of course study the future plan and the token itself.By doing so, you can lessen the chance of joining a scam ICO.

I think that if the team stops following the plan the project cannot be called a scammy one. Investors are likely to lose money, but at least they have chances to sell everything on some exchange when something starts smelling fishy. It is especially unfair to call it so if the project is not developed out of the tems despair. They might not have enough funds to keep going, you know.
As for the points on identifying a bad ico, well, the team is usually hard to evaluate. I look at ico projects every day and most of them have the team of about 10 people who have some IT degrees or work experience. You can never know whether such a team will manage to develop the project. At the same time, if you pick icos with top tems only then you will not find many of them. I only saw a couple of icos with some team members who are already famous for other projects.

ICO founders should have some publicity - take part in conferences, meet investors in real world, etc. Of course, this will not guarantee that the ICO is not scam, but at least you will always know where to find those guys, if they decide to run away.  :) And if the ICO team is online-only, and nobody ever saw them, such project is 99% scam.

Not intuition, but practice and logic.

That's extremely hard to identify ico scam. Really, I've met a lot of projects with a perfect plan, a beautiful website, an explicated whitepaper, an active team, which ended up with a total scam. And also I've met plain unpresentable projects which brought good profit to their investors.

Some great advice.

I have been following a new ICO that did a recent pre ICO SALE. Around a week ago before the sale they had around 40 people in their community Telegram group, then over a week it went to just under 30,000, they have been offering a bounty giving away coins FREE but around 95% of the posts were happening every second on the second 24 hours a day with hardly any variation on the posts, as if it was a script running making the claims... Having a large group seems to indicate part of the value in a ICO but there are plenty of sites offering to create followers very cheaply and write scripts to do this... Is this likley to be a scam, can you check some how?

You want to burst a scam ICO, focus on the team. From the community manager to the campaign and bounty managers then the liaison with the entire team that is the key. Also, follow the trend of events. A lot of people are equally interested and they could discover what an average internet users can get based on searches on Google or the technical components of what the entire project is all about and that is what makes a difference in someone who will lose his money fast and the one who will have made the right investment.

Community size is an important thing to take into consideration, but also the quality and the level of discussions on a telegram group for example is important. If they are talking only about airdrops, price levels and exchanges then this is their main focus, only the profit. So we return to quality of the community

Yes, the project should get more awareness about the blockchain conference because many people will start attending the conference. ICO project should prove themselves to become most familiar and they should attract as many people as possible to raise the fund in the ICO.

You should understand that it’s always important to do your own research, do not rely on other's opinion. I prefer to look very attentively at all aspects of ICO before investing in it or taking part at their bounty campaign. My strategy is to look at:

1. The idea (and ask yourself - does the project really need blockchain technology and their own tokens?)
2. Team and advisors
3. White Paper and Road Map
4. Softcap and Hardcap
5. Token Metrics and Prototype
6. Social pages and site

How you compare softcap and hardcap?
For examples:
1. 2 mln (soft) and 60 mln (hard);
2. 20 mln (soft) and 60 mln (hard).
 

If they are forcing you to buy that's the most important tip to recognize a scammer.

I had to face and participate in a scam ICO in December and would say be aware of those, Who just speaks too much of the company,  it's project and it's investment in it. Be aware of the projects, team members' profils, and the amount the invest in the project will confirm you if they are scam ICO or legit ICO.  

These are great points to lookout for thanks for sharing! This link has some fantastic things to look for in the marketing of a legit ICO. Enjoy the reading.

https://medium.com/suncontract/marketing-strategies-in-the-world-of-crypto-e6dcf3b5f4e3

This is really important indeed and can help anyone who is still starting up in this business. And as you said, we should always consider the theme and how everything is being explained by the developers. Scammers don’t really take their time in explaining their project. They just do a rough work, and you can sight lots of errors in their work due to their carelessness (not in all, some of them do explain properly, despite being scam).

One thing that does matter a lot to me is the support team. I don’t like a business that has slow support team that can take up to a month to reply your mail. Good support teams are always fast and can resolve your problems quickly. They will always be there to support their customers.

I believe lots of people already filtering out scam ICOs in fractions of seconds due to their immense experiences with many past ICOs. Some people have shared about their skills on this but after years of working on different ICOs. Hence, this kind of discussions are really essential for this community for bringing changes by safeguarding our capital amounts.

I think that team, advisors, partners are very important

To add additional tip, if the team says or state that their project will be a big and successful event for ICO then you just have to double check Media who covers their project to advertise it, since most ICO are starting to published their project on  a serious Media Channel.

But to figure out who is legit and which is having potential, you must gain experience. Without experience  you will never able to differentiate even you will be analyzing team, advisers, partners and any other aspects of an ICO.

Yes, I must appreciate you as you are pointing our the real truth. After coming through OP's long tips, even I am aware of all these already and have read them many times in this forum, still I could not make use of any such tips just due to the reason of lack of experience. OP's tips are just knowledge but we need more experience to fight against scam ICOs to protect ourselves.

Far from whether the product is real or scam, the profit is the most important reason for speculation
The idea of the project must be revolutionary, solve real problems, motivated to help more than profit with real and future plans.
The team is not required to be famous but at least have experience with proving their competence(github, youtube,...etc).
An open source project with an openness to answering questions and contributing to its development(not just copy/paste).

First of all I am looking for the goals which they've defined for themselves when they get softcap and hardcap. You should ask yourself - why softcap / hardcap (especially for hardcap) is 20 mln? why not 1 or 30? Why do they need that amount of money, why not more or less? for what goals? Keep asking yourself and looking for answers in their WP.
But if you do not want dive too deep, if the projects' idea is not a new and revolution they will not reach the high hardcap point.

Lol, I totally love the reality check part. It is the truth, a lot of investors who are gullible enough to fall for anything have fallen so badly for a lot of these scam ICOs. Everything that has been listed are the things every investor should always watch out for rather than just accepting the surface alone, there is always a need to dig deeper, chat with the Skype team and see how you can be sure before investing. Also, the idea in this article would be a good one for a lot of investors, having an escrow for ICOs.

Now, ICO's team's white paper and website do a lot of science and technology, giving people a very professional feeling, investors are often attracted by this illusion!

Be sure to keep an objective and cool analysis, discuss with experienced people, and don't rush to invest!

Was really worth reading as well as the OPs'. It is highly necessary for people to understand ways they can easily identify scams these days considering how things have seriously turned out in the space and a lot of scammers seeing it as a quick way to get rich with the decentralized unregulated space where anything goes.

Additionally, every investor who can understand how to fish out these scams just like what OP stated, will always be safer otherwise they will encounter their own lessens like how most people do now a days in crypto world.

I would also add that the important point is the active life of the project. I had the opportunity to compare projects and those that showed their activity
and those who openly positioned themselves come to success. The last my such project Vreo.io https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2886707. The team travels throughout Europe and even America, present their project at various cryptoconferences, were interviewed for television and blogers, magazines write about them articles. Such an active position inspires confidence

Yeap, that's good guys I also follow the project and I'am going to join it

Isn't that why they are scam in the first place ?
I feel no scammer actually have an idea to put in place or a game plan in the first place and the only game plan right from the onset is just to cart away with a lot of funds that the gullible investors have decided to give to them.

It is crazy though, knowing that a lot of people have always fallen for this even when there is a huge writing on the wall, but I guess people are just too lazy to always look out for the right things.

First of all I saw the ICO website and their team members.I always check if the information is correct or not.Again,I check their telegram community where people discuss about the project.Some ICO will give 100% bonus on pre-sale, I think this may be the sign of being scam project.I don't like those ICO which give too many free tokens.

actually this thread has been available and may be more complete. but some of the same entries and some of the missing still have to be read here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3136517.msg32425835#msg32425835
but this is also quite helpful for those who left behind the information

It is very hard to identify nowadays the legit and scam ICO.  There are some which started legit but it will suddenly disappear in the circulation.  As far as I know, any business run by a strong team, well trusted and professional advisor will lead to a successful come out.  I addition to this, if the project are totally supported and endorsed by the top rating investors.  Whitepaper and roadmap are well prepared.  All links are perfectly will appear in their affiliated channels.  But if we notice that the budgets, the token payments and their promises are unbelievable or being unrealistic, scratch it out to save our time, effort and money.  This is only based on my study and researches.

The competence of the team is one thing I always look out for. There are sometimes even on the ANN thread, when you get to hear the response of some of the team to the questions you ask, it puts you off immediately because you out rightly know that someone who is not sound enough to give you a satisfying answer, how can such a person even be sound enough to build a project and get demand for it.

As long as a project does not get sustainable for future growth, then it is bull shit and as long as the team does not look like those I can trust to invest in, then it is a goodbye.

Choose projects with high ratings in icobench or icoraiting. But check everything on project's website. Their team, their whitepaper, everything. I recently found one of the best upcoming ICO called lccx.io (http://lccx.io) - looks like promising exchange based in London.  Well developed white paper, experienced team, located in politically stable jurisdiction.

In fact, that real team is always my own first target and once you can get that sorted out without some fishy stuffs being done, then there is no way I would not go further into trying to check the legitimacy and the whole business idea. A lot of people look at only the whitepaper, the websites and quick glance of the team and make decision based on that, but I believe experience will always teach everyone a lesson anyway.

What are these sites ? ICO reviews ? How reliable they are ? Could you please come up with their URLs if your time permits ? If these sites are being operated by trusted forum members then I guess we may follow them for recommendations.

Good day, thank you for this post. If only I have merit I would give you some!  ;D

Maybe the scammers are reading this thread and now they have an idea to create an ico that very promising and convincing but fake and scam. I think its time to regulate ICO's Project by the government to form a board of trustee that will obliged every team member of a project to submit any legal/personal documents before  allowing them to conduct an ICO Campaign for the purpose of chasing the team by law enforcers if they are scam or fake and file an appropriate case against them.

Focus more on the team before even starting to consider anything and you will be pretty much in a better position as an investor. This is one thing a lot of people do not usually pay much attention to and they let themselves be deceived into investing into empty promises.

As long as there is no product, there is no solid team then as far as I am concerned, there is no future and such a project is always a NO for me, no matter how impressive nor how informative their whitepaper may look. Identifying an ICO scam in early days itself may not possible for all the people but over experience everyone may detect.

Some people did share in this forum like even they were very much careful before choosing an ICO and contributed into those ICOs in angel hours itself for maximum discount still when those project listed out on exchange, they were unable to find any big returns for their investments. Considering all these, contributing for an ICO still remaining a gambling as there is no certain way for making returns for our capital.

I would also add Active, Partners, Distribution of tokens, Clear target, Scalability, Transparency, properly allocated budget.
The last project I found suitable for these requirements was Germen Vreo.io, they doing in-games native advertising without interrupting the gameplay. I would like to find few more projects of  such level, maybe someone can advise

For me the most important thing is the people who are engaged in the development of the ico project, pay attention to them.
Their previous experience in this area, in what company they worked and what results they did, and then we can make a conclusion about this project  :)

Ha... Number of followers can be fraud itself. Most fraudulent ico have great number of investors. Off course, if they don't have large number, that will be a basis for suspecting already. I think luck is involved here not just number of followers.

There are service that offers paid followers in social media accounts, you can see them on the services. Its cheap so that's why some ICO's are purchasing that service to gain followers and to trick people to make it look that they have many followers.

You are right,scammers are now intelligent too so make your investment in the projects after enough reasearch about it.BUt we can identify the fake followers by closely watching the profile if they have lot  of followers but no activity on that page then it maybe the botted followers so this is a scam project of they done that.

We have to be responsible in the money that we will invest into such investments (ICO). You can identify fake followers with the use of twitteraudit.com

If an ICO does not filter their investors and just let anyone buy their tokens then it's just a scam. I highly believe that an ICO who only allows credible investors and knows about their project are the real ones.

Great thanks for your share at all. I have a bit different look as this: I found there are many ICOs with very high Airdrop ( upto $30-$40_$50 & even more) just for joining some social networks, could we trust in them? I am a newbie to crypto, an I see it is not very believable.

That is not true. There have been a lot of successful ICOs that did not discriminate on who can invest, but they turned out to be fine! The basis is not who can and cannot invest. It is basically the totality of the ICO. It should be based on whether the project really has some true purpose and the people behind it are real people that are legitimately creating a good project. I've seen so many ICOs that even fail to deliver a purpose, those are clear scams. Some though are hard to determine if they are scams. Some are quite good on paper, and the people behind it seemed legit, but in the long run it turns out to be a scam.

Airdrops really big trap to collect the data about you. Most of airdrops are going like that. If you want to make money on please check the manager who is part of bounty and join in that campaign.
It will be really helpful way to find the more money because the project knowledge very much understanding about ICO and all will allow us to make money. If you join telegram campaign that is very much easy way to get the tokens.

Thanks bro, as mentioned above I am a newbie so I have registered many Airdrops by joining Telegram/Twitter/Facebook ... and most of things I have got are rubbish. I will follow your suggestions and  hope I would get something worthy, haha, many thanks!

Sometimes I do see some people saying that an ICO requires a team that makes use of Telegram, and that if an ICO has Telegram then it is not a scam. But I don’t believe that, because even scammers do make use of Telegram too. They can decide to use it to distract those that believes in that and then use it to rip them off of their money and after they doing it, they will change their name everywhere, including on the bitcointalk.org forum.

I was also laughing when I saw that comment. Anyone is allowed to invest in ICOs and there is nothing like filtering who and who will invest. If they start filtering it then they would lose lots and lots of investors. The only thing that matters is just be careful.

Carefulness is the thing that matters. You should mind what kind of ICO you’re investing on and know how their team works and how they provide service to their customers.

Pretty good plan, you need to check, but I would be here even added a prologue, something like "history of ideas", or another way as it is called.

Yes, this is really a good strategy that can help not get into the hands of crooks and choose good ICOs. This information will be particularly useful for beginners who are just starting their way into the crypto world.

there are too many tips on how to spot scam and fraud ICOs but it's depends on the experience.
That's why I never invest on ICOs because not all ICOs will hit coin exchanges and coinmarketcap.com.
for me, when telegram channel has no admin or no community managers or there are less active members then that's the red flag that they are scammers.

This tips will help young investors and crypto enthusiasts in order not to be the victim of ICO scam and fraud because it's too painful that we lose our hard-earned money than just giving it to scammers for no reason.
crypto investing is one of the most profitable in this generation but it requires hard decisions in order to invest on the right ICO or altcoins in order to get higher return of investments.

Deciding if ICO is a scam I always try to see not just a whitepaper and information about new ideas that are offered. It is much more necessary to me know who are organizers and supporters of the project.

Thank you for good tips. I have never systemized mine method but I think it is similar to yours. First of all I have to like the Theme and the main idea of particular project in order to invest in it. The protection is also on my priority list.

Good list, but it doesn't really end there.
Since there are ICOs that start off legit, but end up being just a scam because the developers just don't do anything anymore to develop the token, Or that after the ICO it just straight off losses the value and the developers again stop developing the token because of that fact. Base on my experience Scam ICO is will be known if there is no assurance like how can a project run smoothly if it is listed and how can the platform be able to function as what it is, there are so many ICO which produces lots of FUDs saying that project will be to the moon LOL, isn't it too obvious? Part of marketing.
Thanks for your tips, and also, we need to be really carefull before starting investing in new ICOS.  ;)

There are indeed many ICO scams in reality. I personally think that identifying ICO scams is a very important first step in determining the success of an investment. Before investing, you must carefully read the white paper of the ICO project, check the authenticity of the team, the legality of the ICO project, and carefully evaluate it. The prospect of the ICO project, I hope that the cryptocurrency market can set up a regulatory body to strengthen the supervision of ICO projects.