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Hey crypto-buddies,
 I decided to create checklist for scam ICO´s

100% profitability - Guaranteed yield: any funds, ICO projects and investment platforms, that promise a stable interest are likely to be scammers. These are, as a rule, projects of cloud mining, casinos and projects related to binary options, as well as those where the sale of tokens is carried out according to the principles of net marketing: existing investors attract new ones. And, of course, the pyramids, in which old customers receive payments from the contributions of new customers, until the pyramid bursts ...

Celebrities: musicians, athletes, actors who can not know anything about the blockchain and the cryptowrold, and even more to be the guarantors of the fact that this is not a scam, seems exactly the opposite.. Celebrities are used to distract investors from the essence of the project, which is most likely dummy.

Team analysis - It is suspicious that a project team can not be found in social networks or when team members are not connected with each other.

Unintelligible concept - to check the concept you need to study white paper – document, where described the idea of the project and the purpose of raising money. In 90% of cases, scammers compile several documents, and the originals can be easily found in the Internet.

Structure of project costs - If 10% of the investments are reserved for team, 10% will require development, and for marketing will go 80%, then this is a guarantee of the scam. It is also strange if there is no plan for future "monetization" of the project, also a bad signal if there is noticed a lack of investors protection.

Token description - If it has less than two-three functions and it can be replaced by any other altcoin or bitcoin, then this is another bad signal.If the token is not integrated into the project economy, then probably its purpose is simply collecting money. While choosing a coin, you must first think about its use - who and why will buy and use this coin. The second - about the problems that this coin solves. If it does not have these signs - do not invest.

Project Code - It should be uploaded on GitHub and a simple research in the Internet can check the code for plagiat. If the project does not have a link to GitHub or topics on the Bitcointalk, it's a reason to think twice.

Legal structure - should be described in details and easily understandable (at least about the persons issuing tokens)

Investor´s rights -The rights of investors and their guarantees should be described.

The issue of tokens should be within reasonable limits and controlled

UPD: TOGETHER WE CAN CREATE LIST OF SCAM ICO'S, YOUR THOUGHTS ?

thanks friends.. very happy to hear that.
I want to invest in some ICO and I think this information is very helpful so that I do not get caught in a failure.
but if you can ask for advice, which ICO will promise for the future?

Many thanks for this. you already do great job now! I'm join some ICO from this spread and have some doubts with it. check one more time and now I leave it)

 Great article about ICOs, i also always look out for a it's clear and realizable road map working product, if there is no working product for the ICO, i never invest on that ICO.

Oh, man. Nowadays it such difficult question. As for me I see perspective in AI and medical related ICO´s, but only because I´m really interested in this topics. You should check firstly the rate of the ICO (4.3 at least), on icobench for example, check the team, read the whitepaper and try to understand. Check how many they reserved for marketing and bounties also. But still it cannot guarantee anything. My last investment was in Dropil, it had high rates and gathered its hardcap. Try to divide risks investing in 3-5 different ICO´s. Take a look at ImmVRse, ARROUND, ZeroState and TruGame.

Thank you. You are right when there is a beta version of application for example or prototype of product, and clear roadmap with well written points its a good sign.

Good list! It will be very helpful for newbies.

very good list! i will use it next time i want to invest in an ico. there are really many things that have to be considered, before investing.

Thank you for such great list, hope it will be usefull for me during my future investings, by the way maybe you can advise anything?

This is by far one of best check list on how to identify a scam ICO. Thank you for this valuable information this will help me to avoid scams.

White paper too general with no depth is also a red flag. I've heard a lot of talk about telegram's investors having concerns about the white paper lacking depth.

I´ve recently discovered this project https://gpcc.io/
Take a look, you might be interested, it looks very promissing.
Hope I was useful :)

Thanks for your post ! I'm having a plan to invest some ICO projects. This is really a useful article to help me be aware of the project that I am heading to!

I think that this information is useful not only for beginners. all is disclosed in this article. thanks to the author

Thanks for the information 

I check these ICOs soon.

I thought here will be a list of such projects (examples), but still thanks to the author for the work

Good post, man. Nice guide for newbie-investors.

Celebrities just want money and usually they don't care about quality of project they promote. Centra & Floyd Mayweather is good example.

good info , you summed up all important points ..
however sometimes we will be required to ignore 1 or 2 point of your list if all other points are met requirements .
bcoz of company policy and type of token - utility vs security .

I think this information will be useful to all beginners and not only. Since I often meet people who have been engaged in bounty for a long time and can not distinguish scam from the normal ICO. And constantly complaining about the fact that the percentage of scam is increasing and I don't know what to do....

Great! This is an excellent post.
I think this post should be published in the beginners section, because it is helpful for newbie.

great job, you put a lot of effort in this.

thanks a lot for the info's. 

This is a very useful guide to check if an ICO is a scam or not....

Another thing to look at are social networks, if for example there are lots of followers with few posts it’s strange... in these cases I first do a twitteraudit for this profile and check also telegram to check if group is really active or not.

This is really very useful information for investors looking for investment projects. I think these rules will help many people choose a good project. I would like to add more about the projects that promote the celebrities, this is really true, almost all of these projects are a scam.

thanks for the guide bro, this is very helpful for us especially the newbe

Sometimes its very hard to find a scam initial coin offerings. These criminal people are not stupid, and they try everything. They even take time to make everything look proffessional. So even when you look at all those points, you will maybe be scamed. And asking other people on message boards or telegram will not help you, because there are always people who think the some initial coin offering is a scam. So also you need always some luck.

Good post, thank you.

I'd like to put emphasis on team analysis. It's really important and leads to results faster than the other methods.

Also, some of the teams put famous people on the list of advisors without their knowledge, which IMHO is unethical and I think of such projects as untrustworthy.

extraordinary analysis.
quality posts as needed when hundreds of potentially fraudulent ICOs are scattered in this forum.
we really have to read and check more carefully to avoid the ICO scam.

Thank you very much for the synthesis of knowledge takes a lot of time, effort and money. The newbie will need articles like this, can i share in my Facebook ?  ;D

Thanks for making this checklist :)
Its very useful to have it all together like this

More and more Ico emerged, Moreover, the adoption and growth of crypto is still in the early phase, so in the future there will be a lot of ICO projects emerging and can be utilized. The above post is very useful for us all.

Thank you for this content it is really helpful and detailed.

That's helpful! Thanks for sharing your opinion about your basis in selecting a good and scam ICO. The thread you've made will benefit more the investors and even bounty hunters who are always participating in ICO. I hope that the people who scammed by ICO will lessen by following this guidelines.

That´s not my topic but you could check it here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3209170.0.

I also remembered it immediately after read celebrity part. not only centra, Floyd Mayweather also endorsed by some different ico projects, and now I think that projects are disappear or abandoned. LOL

Yeah, Gleb Gamow created even a topic where were gathered 100+ celebrities promoting crypto  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3199334.0 ;)

Even if we check all the boxes on the list, it won’t guarantee that the project will not turn out to be a scam. Scams are usually hard to figure out, this is why people still lose money.

When I was choosing an ICO on ICObench I found one that has a HUSBAND in ICOTeam. And his WIFE (as a independent Jury) has rated his project as the best project and an excellent team and has gave him 5 points.

Could you name this project?

Thank's for your effort and concerned my friend,  this is very helful for us, it's serve us a guide about to choose the right ICOs.Because through this information that you give us we must be aware to be the victims of the scammer's ICOs this is great!!.

Very informative post, just a suggestion, why don't we post here the possible scam ICO's out there? It will surely help us a lot to track which ICO to avoid to lessen the hassle. But before posting it here, we need to justify it first and prove why is that ICO is a scam. I know that there will be a disadvantage if we will post it here like shit posting because they are just assuming that it is a scam ICO. But it will benefit more investors to know which are legit ICO.

information is very valuable, providing education to many people to be vigilant in investing. many have experienced ICO and it turns out to be a fraudulent project.