Bitcoin Forum

Who among us here have been victims of almost perfect Whitepaper?
Those sublimely well-written, full of excellent ideas and proposals that turned out to be a piece of crap!
Reading whitepaper is not enough to be a basis of investing in crypto because almost everyone can write whatever they want,
they even promise you the Moon and Stars.

So, be careful now in choosing ICOs, as much as possible look for projects that at least have initially implemented the products or services, if not the whole.


https://s31.postimg.cc/kf9puh9sr/ICO_s.jpg

I really like this image. Masterpiece!!!  :D

By the way when I chose an ICO I consider few variables...
1. The team
2. Any MVP
3. Clear Raodmap
4. Does the project has any real usability  
5. Interstate from the community

I never read any whitepaper although I have already invested in 13 ICOs (LOL) and most few of them are really successful so far
(made me a lot of ROI).  

I don't think the most important thing is the whitepaper for sure is important but from my opinion the most important is the address of the company who is running the ICO. Why? Cause you can check it with google maps to see if is real, some scam project were found on this way, with a fake location.

You're right one of the factor is the company address, if this company is real existed on the address they promoted, and the best part is to call the hotline number, by doing that, you will figure out, if they are fly by night or a legit company.

not the main thing but can be considered in participating in an ico.
In our experiences, a good whitepaper is not a guarantee of the continuity of a coin. some coin even goes beyond the planning that has been made.
in the end, they cheated and robbed their investors.

Investing should be deliberate, and anyone who does not want to lose their money must read all the possible documents, understand the received information and verify in all possible ways its truthfulness. Whitepaper is certainly a useful and important document, but as many here write this is not the main criterion for choosing ICO. But badly written white paper, when it is a question of big money, is a serious criterion not to consider the project.

PS: funny picture  :)

I've seen so many ads / publicity for "I can re write your whitepaper" that it makes me wary what's tru; what's been completely glossed up

Right now there's no really can guarantee legality of an ico, whitepaper that was being a first lead now can manipulation so easy, true what Mr. John1010 said, right now address can appinted to be judgement matter, because i, myself have been a victim an ico where after i checked the address, apparently adreaa that grafted by the company was an address from a bag shop in england, this is so heart breaking.

Yep, MVP is one of the important things
Because it gives some chances, that product can be normal
If devs, first of all, take your money - it can be one of the attribute of scam

Merited for that picture. Hilarious and succinctly and accurately sums up the entire Altcoin Announcement sub of the forum.

Some of these developers are even involved in white paper plagiarism so that they will be able to convince investors that they can invest in their business and have maximum profits.

Yes, you must really see first time - wp, and just after that, thinking about choosing that projects

Its good to share my thought on this matter. I have personally developed a whitepaper for a project that seem quite promising but did not even germinate above the soil to get to the moon. I guess they are yet to germinate. It wasn't because of the whitepaper but rather, the team members running the project were inexperienced. Yes you are right, using the whitepaper as the only basis to invest into ICOs will miss lead you but the whitepaper can also give you an insight to the project. I personally prefer reading the profiles of the team and how realistic the project is.

I don't know how OK it is to post here, but I wrote a "guide" about analysing ICOs (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3752728), it's a pretty long text so if it's not really good to post here!
but if anyone has their own tips maybe you can add them in the thread  ;D

Whitepapers are not the only consideration when investing in an ico, although important, other factors just just reassures ones confidence, like team, product, etc,.

For me, I'm always looking for their Youtube channel at first to see if there is any speech/Q&A/roadshow report from founder and the team. This is signalling two important factors:
1. They are real people.
2. They are optimistic and have confidence in their project.
Then I'll dig into whitepaper.
FYI, a lot of scam ICOs copied parts from various legit whitepaper. And scammers can even create a good quality one. Be careful, here is the example:
https://icorating.com/upload/whitepaper/4VPsfxSUp2a9xN5dD8hPNxcPwP8rfyPZwWQUvKSF.pdf

Actually, I think you need to study three things before contributing to an ICO.

1. Team
2. A prototype
3. A whitepaper

Do you have cases when a project had a good white paper and then they would do a bad execution or/and exit scam?

It matters only if the project is following it construct.
To me what really matters is the project behind or any business associated with the project.
A project without a business will likely not survive if advert is not properly run.
Invest in good project!

Before investing. Make sure the project has MVP or proof of concept. A known advisers or team so it would easily distinguised if an ICO is a scam.

I truly agree with you. The location is of major importance and for me understanding the whitepaper and see the possibility of a true ICO behind it 

white paper is important because we can know the extension of the project but white paper can not determine that the project is a scam because behind it all we need to do further research that is more important than the white paper as to where the project and the team behind the project whether it is true or not

Yes correct, Whitepaper is just... paper. You can write what you want, promise what you want. A complete due-diligence should be made by everyone investing in ICO but even with this, scam can not be fully avoided.

ICO with existing products are a often a better choice but quite rare.

I believe that ICO white paper is one of the most important part of an ico project because without it you cant review what is the idea and proposal of the project. But what really matter is:

1. Active and agressive team dedicated to their project
2. 24/7 active to their community
3. A project with prototype
4. Roadmap is properly executed

Social media's and youtube channel are also helpful  some youtube review about the ico is there,usualy i check first their social medias,youtube channel and their website if it good and high quality then its qualified for my apetite.

Business is not about "things" nor is not about "products" nor is about "plans" and is not at all about "money" (read this twice if you want).

Business is about people and most of all is about trust. Let me prove it to you:

- Hi, I am Bitcointalk user Paxmao, you don't know my real identity nor CV and I am asking you for 1 billion USD investment to put a satellite into orbit at 1/5 the price that NASA can do it.

- Hi, I am Elon Musk, I am asking from you 10 Billion USD to put a satellite into orbit at half the price NASA can do it.

Now, my white paper is awesome and my web page is in perfect English, no broken links, great campaign, 100k telegram followers and the best campaign managers tokens can buy.

Who do you trust?

Honestly I have written tens of ICO whitepapers and only few have seen light of the day. The problem I noticed is most project founders have an idea but do not know how to communicate it to their investor target audience. All of them are interested in having the same structure as a project they identified as successful due to successful crowdfunding.

I advice people who come to me to have their unique idea communicated in a unique way to their identified target audience. This is mainly due to most of the utility tokens need an uptake by targeted project users for the token to gain traction in the market. It is more of getting your target audience to understand of your project and not forcing them to read a technical WP they may not understand anyway. So it should be simple unless the target audience/investor/users have a technical background to be interested to read the whole document.

Otherwise, for projects that are serious and targeting general investors without technical know how of tokenization use a simple whitepaper version at most 10 pages with lots of infographics on how your idea is revolutionary.
Alternatively, invest in Pitch Decks which are short and extensively use illustrations which is complemented by your presentation (because you the one who understands technical details) should be easy and not be a headache or boring for investors.
That is my take!

I guess Whitepaper is just a par t of significant things in the ico to become successful, then in my perception I think the company profile of the

company in the ico  is what matter most, from the Founder/CEO, team behind the company, also their good background  or etc. something like

that which I think is the important matter anyway.

That image sums up perfectly my feelings of the one coin I'm invested at all in at the moment: Cardano.

The whitepaper reads like an academic journal article or a PhD thesis, even. It was in fact co-written by several PhDs. Cardano sits in the top 10 by market cap, and I think 80% of its value is driven by the fact that the whitepaper insists the coin is brilliant.

Why do I say this? Because the coin's only wallet, Daedalus, hasn't worked in over 5 months! There are a few work-arounds to get it in semi-functional status, but frequently the entire blockchain has to be deleted and re-downloaded, then you need to sync your computer clock using this or that program... Then you have to leave the wallet open 24/7 or risk starting the process over again. It's a real horse's ass of a coin.

The only reason I'm still invested in it is because I can't get my wallet to open to sell my coins.

So in the case of Cardano and its resounding "success," yes, the whitepaper does matter the most. I frankly don't know how it manages to continue sitting in the top 20.

The whitepaper can be well-written and there you can understand how much time the team spend on whitepaper, even some whitepapers look so beautiful also their website, and they are only halo-effects. What I do is to contact directly the team members on Telegram, if they respond fast and good its shows their dedication to project.

Most of the white papers are describing what team wants a project to be
But in the process of developing there are lots of obstacles which wont let
create a perfect product

There've been some good points here but it's worth reiterating that the most important factor is whether or not there is a market or need for the project.

You could have the best team and product and whitepaper in the world but if there isn't any real need for it then it will fail.

I'd also rank having a MVP highly, followed by team and whitepaper.

The Blockpass medium page might have a blog going up about this soon.

It is not enough to invest in a ICO, it is one of the important thing, but there are other criteria, like team, project target, community, history of project etc.

I think Yes it is - we all used to step on a rake and not a time. The number of ICO increases every day and companies only need to get your money out of you. Write a fabulous white paper, draw a perfect site and the idea of the project can be any advanced PC user, but to make a really great product should try.
If you are sure that you can recognize a good ICO thanks to the lists and ratings — I will upset you. Although they were originally created for those who find it difficult to understand this topic itself, and it is much easier to go to the rating and choose a project with a high rating, there is no less fraud, with which a high score is gaining Scam projects.
And yet, when choosing your ICO in addition to the beautifully written white paper and the site, I would recommend you to pay attention to such things as:
Uniqueness, necessity of idea;
Clear goal;
Scalability;
Transparency and accuracy of budget;
The concept, the product;
Team;
The distribution of tokens.
Of course, ICO, which satisfy all the points, not so much. But the options of "profitable investment” and" many investments " are not equal to each other: you can invest in one successful project, and you can in 10 failures. So good luck with your choice.

There's a lot of ICO discontinue their project, is it a sign that some of the people here are begin to think and know that some of them are only collecting the money of their investors then, suddenly disappear.. One of the project I invested small amount because this project is totally active in social media almost perfect, but declaring that they will not going to continue the project, and they say that they will going to refund the investors money, the saddest part up until now, there is no refund.. It's given that they've run the money..

Don't trust only one source, Find out more sources Rating sites, Online presence the team in history, Team related to the project matter, Communtiy relations etc ;D ;D

If somebody had the experienced to distinguish, read and understand then one will be able to say that a project is a crap.  That is why i decided to just buy an altcoin when it is already listed but of course get to know it first before rushing in. Money don't come and go. Money is earn(ed) and will be wasted, wise decision is a must.

WP is important, but its not be-all, and end-all.

Yes, whitepaper plays an important role in the Ico's project because in the whitepaper there is a roadmap and it is an authoritative report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter.

I agree. The ICO whitepaper is quite an important element because this is what investors read first and plays as an important role in determining if they should invest or not. But at the same time there is no point in having a cool idea and a well written whitepaper if advertising is shit, cause no one will know about it

I pretty much agree with you, but still for me the whitepaper is important and shows somehow how the team works. ;)

I invested in few projects and got results as well. I use to email of linked in contact to the member listed on the ICO website.
this time I want to invest in Atonomi seems like a good project but they are not inviting.

WP is just one of the tips if you should spend time looking into the project. So if it's poorly written, you usually see it right away and can save significant amount of time.

Nice pic  ;D

Yes, just like you i dont treat whitepaper as a reference whether the ICO is real or not for me one of my best reference finding a real bounty campaign of an existing ICO is the team road show. Road show is how the team promote their product in a public conference. Schedule of places where they have a speech. So having these acticity can proof that the project is real existing and not created by mind without act

for white paper is not really important I always check if the team is there in their website and active team.

For me I depend on the team activeness. Reviewing their team and advisors profile is also an important factor, I always appreciate those ICOs that spending their time for roadshow, for introducing their project, to get themselves involve to different blockchain conference, sharing and updates on social media platform. This is easy but also take times for effort to build up the network and to see the teams' willingness to learn and to share.

Second is the road map and third is the whitepaper. As long as it can convince me, and no duplication or plagiarism from other projects, i think I am willing to get involve to their crowdsale.

Currently, a lot of companies hold ICO.And all of them first of all give investors their idea.The investor reads the white paper and then decides whether to actually perform the tasks or not, before you invest your money in this company.After all, if the white paper is not written feasible plans, then there will not invest.

most people invest in ICO to know the planning and management of the project is sure to know it all must see the white paper, but ...! neat and neat white papers have not yet determined the project is good and real, therefore there are many aspects that we must examine as the project team and the place in the project are developed to avoid scam projects

I think that is all about team, WP just one of 1000 elements to make good company. It is not going to save company from bad execution, regulation, competition, but team can do it.

Same with me, I do not rely my decision in white paper I must more focus on the team, marketing strategy community and the product. White paper is easy to write but deep inside there are to implement the idea in real situation and can turn a good white paper in scam project

a lot of ICOs are disappearing after raising money. So i try to stay away from icos now. To answer our question, no white paper no longer matters but an actual product does that can be a value add.

Gone are the days when we used to have good ICOs. Projects without ICO but with strong team are holding more value in my eye then ICOs

Of course. Whitepaper is only their documentation. It is only documents that describles the project and answers the following:

• What does the project do?
• What particular problem/s it really solves? (Why are they doing it?)
• How will they solve the problem?
• What are the target dates for the accomplishment of every parts of the project?
• Who are the people involved in this project?

It rarely answers these:

• How feasible is the project proposal?
• What are the methodology/ies you're using or the algorithm/s derived in solving the problem?

It never answers these:

• Are the people/part of the project really reputable, reliable and relevant on the project that they're doing?
• Are they doing things the right way?
• Are they doing things legally?
• Are they well funded?
• Are they well supported by their own community?

Whitepaper is just the tip of the iceberg.

Of course it matters.After all,there should be some idea, people should see where to invest their money.White paper is proct's face.If it is written badly and not qualitatively, then people will not trust this project.

Cardano is a US$4 billion white paper. Tron is a $2 billion whitepaper. Bytecoin is a $500 million whitepaper.... the list goes on.


So yeah, I think in many cases, the whitepaper is the most important. The exception to this ofc are the projects that are actually live with a product, but as we know, those are not as frequent as the million (and billion) dollar whitepapers

That comment was spot on, yet a sad read.
We invest in dreams, and hope they come true. But that goes for most of crypto :P

is it important to have WP ?

Yes Whitepaper is needed because whitepaper tell everything you need to know about that coin/token before making up your mind if you want to invest, purchase or use it.
This includes commercial, technological and financial details of a new coin/token in language that can be understood by someone who is not an expert in that subject.

Beside that in the whitepaper it already describe a lot of things like
    The problem in the existing market
    The advantage using their coin/token and why we must HoDL their coin/token
    Competitive landscape & market size
    Key investment considerations
    Technical explanation of their product and use case(s)
    Their Timeline / RoadMap
    ICO Strategy (how many tokens to issue, distribution of tokens, price, market cap, phases of token release, payment processing, token deployment)
    Team behind the project
    Legal aspects of the tokens
    Marketing strategy, ETC

Another thing the newbie in crypto must be consider:

types of ICOs exist

There are typically four types of ICO projects:
1. Organic
2. Artificial
3. Synthetic
4. Scams

Full located @ https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4610096.msg41617118#msg41617118

I would like to greet everyone a Happy and Prosperous NEW YEAR!!

This is probably the closest thing about whitepaper  :D I have seen so many whitepaper that are out of this world and to good to be true, but ended out very much different from what they stated in their whitepaper, but we still need whitepaper, but don't believe on it right away there should be a good logic on those whitepaper, ask these people how close the implementation to the real thing, experts analyze a project whitepaper, for legitimacy.

I think most of the Whitepaper and Technical paper are just a copy-cat from another project and they are providing benefits from investors even though it will not gonna happen. And, i myself fall for many times on this and i think ICOs are just a scam but not before.

And falling for this kind of scheme is really bad and does not have knowledge on how they work.

We can say that whitepaper is important to the project but if you are going to look for whitepaper only then you are only wasting your investment money because plenty of projects out there can just hire someone who can write an almost perfect whitepaper even if their actual project is almost useless.

You should look deeply to the project that you want to invest in like their partners,supporters,broad marketing,solid project goal and etc. We should dig the project and if possible don't invest blindly if you want to lessen the risk as looking in whitepaper is not enough to say that certain project is genuine.

Well for me, it is somehow important because it includes all of the information about the project that they are trying to propose. Sometimes, the information on the whitepaper doesn't fit on the actual project itself so we also need to analyze if they are being honest on the information that they have included on it.

The whitepaper could be more important when all project indicated there will implemented, but very sad but true, i've been saw guys offered a whitepaper job on a service section, it means they have a template for it, some sort of edting and adding some colorful words then it will become an ICO's thats why some comment here are right, we need to look the people behind the project.

It has a specific role but it should not be the basis when you are looking for a project particularly these days that scammers are getting wiser, they will surely look for some other ways to take advantage of us so they can get the benefits they wanted. You can't just easily trust and believe a project even if they have provided a white paper because you can't literally assure that it was legit unless you've done your own research to make sure that it is a worth it and profitable project. Besides, you can't just depend everything on it because it is also your obligation to secure and protect your funds from scam projects. The safety of your own money depends on how you handle your decision when it comes on choosing an ICO.

I've seen where by a new project in 2019 has a not so attractive white paper and guess what it's one of the best project of that year, the name of the project is Sero, they launch their IEO on gate.io and it was profitable for investors, it's not always about whitepaper

The attached picture in this thread is enough to say how a whitepaper does matter in a crypto project. Don't trust any new ICO whitepaper's words, you can get those quality whitepapers only by spending 50-60$ in Fiverr! So, the whitepaper is nothing nowadays, ICO projects lost their potential, popularity long ago! No one believes those words in the whitepaper.

Gone are those days where you can judge the potential of any new projects with whitepaper only, nowadays you will be in the shadows if you choose new projects because of what you read on their whitepapers, there are many who plagiarized other old coins white paper and even steal contents too

These days they have even become smarter, many of these projects do away with an attractive whitepaper, instead they develop a fully working product before launching their sale and investors are hooked, then they say that the funds raised would be merely used for marketing purposes for the product, after the sales, the project just gradually fades into the background like so much white noise. It takes grace to be able to discern the genuine projects irrespective of whitepaper.

i have been a victim of a well written white papers.  Nowadays I don't give a shit about those papers anymore. If a project doesn't have good backers like angel investors or its self funded, forget about it, its all a joke to me

We all do, since it is one of the basement that we are looking before we participate or invest in an ICO. But still, you should look for it but not only on their whitepaper, but for the whole project, it is not something that we should not disregard.  

to be honest until now with the whitepaper can give a little picture of what will be developed by the developers so that investors can find out how the project can be implemented and usually whitepaper is also a benchmark to determine the success or failure of the ICO.

I don't bother to check new projects whitepaper anymore unless i want to write content for them, this days i am more interested in the team and partners of the project, the few successful projects always have better partnerships, not just one but many

Thats the new investors interest in the new phase of crowdfund. Show us what you got and how it could drive volume then we put our fund. Except for seed and private sale we might not see any public sale before the project is listed on exchanges in the new phase of crypto startups. It is a trend on twitter as they tweets, 'RIP to whitepaper'. Do you know how many whitepaper Mcafree wrote? just to deceive investors. I believe public sale investors are more victims than the private and trend is changing. 

The thing is, aside from whitepaper, we should check the team component.  They are the people behind this project and the one that will make the whitepaper into reality.  Whitepaper is important but the ability and capability of the project developer is way more important than that.  They can present us with a perfect whitepaper but team composition will never lie on how they will deliver the product.  So I think this two. whitepaper and team composition should be thoroughly checked.

If a project does not have a whitepaper, then you have to question the existence of it at all. But then again,,, a good WP does not mean a good project. And in the same opposite way a bad WP does not mean a non profitable project. Guess the biggest example to all should be EOS. Shitty copy pasted whitepaper and people put everything in it and it still became profitable!

Even if not most importantly, i think whitepaper is quite important. You can find all information about the project on the whitepaper and check the information shared here to get an idea of the project.

I think it will matter if those project will have unique or have new idea and not just a copy right project. we encounter many scam projects in past years and non of them succeed even you read their white paper or they have great white paper they still fail at the end. so those whitepaper will matter if they are aiming to succeed and follow what is written there.

Both whitepapers and websites appearance can't be used to judge how good a project is but what the project has to offer the public, real use cases is what defines the potential of new projects, whitepapers can be easily copied so forget about them and do better research first

Well, it'a really difficult for them to come up with a new idea since there are already a lot of altcoins existed which has various platform and usability. Thus, this results suspected plagiarized whitepapers which disgusts the investors, causing a project to fail. For this reason, whitepaper really matters.

Profitable does not mean successful project.  What I am trying to say is, the market can be manipulated and can the price of a token can be pumped and some maybe caught with this hype and some will profit, but a good project is the one that delivers roadmaps.  and the one the delivers those that are written on whitepaper are those that have capable developers.  Imagine, they have the fund to finish the project but many failed because they have incompetent developers.

If reading the whitepaper alone is not enough to become a base for investing in cryptocurrencies, those honeymoon tips and tricks are nothing but real. Please be on high alert for me.

ICO WhitePaper is the most problematic thing. The whitepaper has created many ill-fated victims. all bullshit is a hoax. I never believed the whitepaper. What we want them to be unable to do.

Asking the question looks strange to me, personally i will be straight; never look at the whitepaper for any reason to choose for yourself an ICO or IEO. Carefully check if the project has hard some good products before they roll out their tokenization. Although personally am not a good investor because many of my investment had taught me a great lesson back in 2018. Ensure to invest on a project with a workable products.

Check the project intention, use and their product. There's no use now on effort ing in reading the white paper unless we already know that they have the existing product that will show almost all what they aim in their crowd funding, whitepaper is too important but developers were no longer true to what they put there.

Here are few things I always make sure that any coin I hold has

1. Serious team that put investors first, they will always want to hear from investors.
2. Standalone project that introduce something very new, not repetitive ideas.
3. The plan to list on better exchanges

Here is my own little advice, forget about whitepaper, just go through it to know more about the project only, do not let whitepaper be the main reason you choose a project.

It is true, some scam projects use fake locations and this location is important for us to observe about the project whether it is real or not. Although whitepapers are also important things to read, there are many projects that copy existing ideas and reuse them and I think there is a need for something that can be used to assess whether the project is a good project or just a project that will end in a scam.

Yeah we need the information about the project, but the most important thing is, how the team implemented every important written words inside the WP.

For me it is, that is the reason why on Fiverr you need hundreds of dollars for a professional whitepaper creator to create one of  for you because this is what investors and bounty hunters will look for, Bitcoin the first Cryptocurrency and those early big projects have their own whitepaper, but it is not the only indication that the project is legit or will have potential, there are many factors and this is just one of them.

It is true, the team can write every good information about the project, all the investors wanted, the percentage of a possible return, but it is all just an information where they can create even the impossible. We still need to see how they implement and develop the project in the long run.

About the previous version of ICO, yes it is important to see the white paper and how will the team perform the project in process. But right now, I don't think reading the white paper worthy to be a basis of a good project. ICO and even IEO projects are not trusted by most of the investors anymore, so I think we should find other means to invest our money in cryptocurrency and not just ICO or IEO.

actually, we need a more realistic view of the whitepapers we read.  For example, a project is expected to achieve 1 million users of their exchange in the first quarter and is estimated to bring big revenue and will buy back tokens.  Investors should then pay attention to the members of the group and the traffic index of the website visits, it will surely tell the distance of reality and roadmap.  This is one of the things that needs to be reviewed before making an investment.  The whitepaper is really important to identify the fraud project and the real project.

Reading a whitepaper is necessary but we cannot judge whether a project is good or not only from a whitepaper, it is true that you say that there are many aspects that need to be considered to assess a good project or not so that we avoid scams. And we also need to observe the team and the products they deliver and how those people will carry out the project. But in my opinion, for the time being, new projects are difficult to develop because of the difficulty of getting funding from investors.

 ;D the whitepaper really matters at least that gives you a fair idea of what they want to develop in the first place but it is better if you go just beyond fancy whitepapers and look at other factors as well. For instance, you need to consider the experience of the team as well as the use cases of the project. Ask yourself how feasible can these dreams be achieved and do they have a real world use or it's just a bunch of ideas. Every piece of information you find with these searches will affect your decision whether to invest or not.

I agree with you, I don't really the think good written whitepapers can win it all. I would say it a huge role in making the project appealing but I think there are still several parts of the projects need to look at to like, Team Developers, Partners, Advisors most especially and the legality of the projects itself.

WP just BS in crypto and no need to say a lot about that because so many times people have already found if the new developers in the crypto ( i like to call that as amateurs ) lack of the experience even to write a new WP. All of the things that already published in WP just garbage promises that already made by incompetence developers. So many plagiarism that happened in crypto.
They were writing it based on non sense thing.

Of course, whitepapers is just a written information of the project that includes their plan and everything, in short, a business plan. It looks perfect, and really attracts investors but this doesn't mean that you can guarantee the return of your investment just because it has a good whitepaper. We should still look for the other side of the project to see if the project is really promising.

To me ICO White paper does matter but I think it will be better to look into the project to know if they really have a real product and TEAM. Investors need to check vividly to know if the project has MVP, Real Team, Real Business and also how they intend to market their products. A good project also must have GITHUB and not just a fake GitHub but real and current one to say. Another important thing to check is transparency

Whitepaper is important to read, but it is not enough. we have to consider others aspect
such as, it is true? achievable? how's bout the team? community? how much token is?

There are many aspect which we should know more. Then if most of them is good, we can make decision to invest or not
at least we reduce the risk by reading and analyzing many aspect of the project

Especially i always follow a new project ICOc:
1. Team and their experience
2. Website domain
3. Partnership
4. whitepaper
5. Clear project roadmap
6. ANN thread
7. and team activity with support.
I don't know this good or unless but i always check their everytime because this my head so choice a smart project depends on our mind.

Everyone can write a beautiful story, a beautiful poem a great books, every person who has a writting skills can write a convincing white paper.

The WP gives the initial info about the project, but since 2014 so many WP i've red but there's only few who perform what is written in their WP.

Gone are the days when white paper was attached with so much importance, then you could tell where the project is heading for, but right now even scam projects hire people to write white paper for them and lure investors into, basically what I really watch out for now is the team behind the project, that could give a little guarantee of the project success.

Those days have gone and this time so many developers don't even care about what they first plan that already written on the whitepaper. This time WP is not an important thing anymore as so many developers are always changeing the roadmap at the middle of the development progress. There was a lot of the freelancer is offering such service on the various freelancer website. They are even offering the ico site creation too. Remember the team can be faked anytime and that needs a deeply research.

For me personally for now it is very difficult to judge a project as good or bad because scammers have many ways to lure investors to invest in the project through several ways that they think will make investors believe that the project is a good project. And for me personally at this time maybe I will not invest in new projects and would prefer to invest into the top coins to minimize the possible losses that I could get.

I agree with the picture above, this is the experience I experienced last year, I was fixated on the whitepaper they made and I was stuck in it, I suffered a big loss. but that became a lesson for me, to be more careful in investing in ICO.

I also suffered losses from ICO investments. but like you, I chose to get out of a bad moment and try again to trade and return capital to invest in the market. now I am back with enough capital with daily trading which gives me more money.

Almost all of us suffered from flowery words from the dev team, for sure most of us already invested in ICO which didn't give any returns at all, so we told ourselves not to invest in ICO anymore. And one of the reason we invested was because we were amaze what had written in their whitepaper, having a lot of promises, goals, mission and vision which we believed might come true.

What's worse is that some still have the thoughts of plagiarizing as well. You can see some of those in the Scam Accusations board.

not only is the white paper important, the background of the project is also very important, who their CEO is, who the team is in, that's an important point

I also experienced big loses in investing ICO on their early years here in bitcointalk, yes of course Im hoping and lure with a beautiful promises written in their white paper, later on I've discovered that all of my ICO token never hit the promise value even the years pass by. So today, I'll stick with trading.

Responding to the topic.

Although whitepaper may not be what matters most, whitepaper does matter in any project. The only thing here is that most projects only write what will attract investors on their whitepaper and in the end, do something different.

WP can be an addition to avoid the risk of the project since it will be giving you the outcome or possible outcome of the project but still, you will never deny that most of project got the perfect WP but in the end, they will not follow what it is planned.

To good to be true, as we've all experienced the worst part of every ICO whitepaper, I think most of us here in this forum where now learned a big lesson that's why ICO nowadays will not and never get any investors here in BTT.

Yes, because fact can be obtained from it, but there are some white paper that it's been dress in other to attract investor, and what it's been writing In the white paper will be different from what they are doing, and manger of the project need to be considered also and the team also to whether are working together or not

Yes ofcourse, white paper is the proof of authentication like how much genuine it is but these days they write whatever they need by giving false statements, people believe on that and they start investing and end up in fail. So it's always good to check their team and development also the address location which they share, we should give opportunity to scammers to entertain here that's the reason investors are not interested to invest in ICO projects these days.

At last seen an easily explanation on how most of the ICO works and it's in a meme form which I do appreciate. I've encountered most ICO projects that I've seen a lot of potential before and of course I've invested on some of them and while the project is on going some of them discontinued the project, some of them ended as a scam, some of them are just plagiarized from other authentic projects and some of them have a worst product.

I think most of the users here have experienced this and after some time I gave up on investing to ICOs and just invested to projects with an actual working platform before investing to it.

I think the Whitepaper is fairly important, but sometimes you really need to know what they are talking about, otherwise they can just tell you anything they want, and use difficult words.
They can also just straight up lie in the Whitepaper so it matters to me but it is not everything what matters.

In the past what I really looked in for Ico's was a strong community that believed in the project and acknowledged the authenticity.
I would talk in the Slack/Telegram at the time and ask questions that where important to me to see who would respond and if they did that right.
Also would do a lot of reading and looking up the people on Linkedin, see what they did before this.

Now a days I think a lot has changed because there are a lot more Ico's and they can look legit with a good story and team but they are just straight up lying about everything just to steal your cryptocurrency.

For me it doesn't matter anymore, I don't look at the whitepaper anymore as they are just hiring good writers for it, the are hiring someone for it to look good but most of them doesn't provide real platform based on their roadmap, so what I am looking for now is a real product working before I will start checking on it.

That is correct, if we look and saw that part of project's roadmap are partially implemented this will give a very significant sign that the project has a bone.

I actually doubt that most of people will read the whitepaper fully though. Some whitepapers are just badly written and there's some bullshit in technical aspect that usually leaves me confused. Although whitepaper contains all the necessary information for you to decide whether it's a good decision or not to invest our money to this project but it's not gonna do anything when the project turning their direction halfway thus render the whitepaper useless.

Yes, by now, people have learned their lessons. Projects can write fancy whitepaper with so many technical details in it, but in the end nothing will ever come true to their objectives. But let's not include all blockchain projects. There are still legit and authentic but they are very hard to find. So I think, the most important part of every project is the actual implementation of their platform or the actual development of their app that will attract users.

Yup, some of the ICO failures gives the investors to become cautious because we invested a hard earn money and our responsibility is to double check every project we entered. I always now looking for the result.

Most of the people who involve in crypto always looking the source of information in one familiar project, that's why we are so eager to look it in the form that we can understand, now early 2015 ICO has been born and they put the brain of the project on it, Today the whitepaper is just simply to hype people and making us believe on the beauty of their project which is more of the ICO project now failed to perform well.

Now indeed we can not rely on a whitepaper in a project because nowadays many are faking whitepapers and convincing a project can run successfully i.e. the project by working with a company that runs real products and the project can certainly get the support of many investors, nowadays many such projects can get satisfactory results.

I just gave you a few extra merits for this because I remember thinking it was extremely funny back when I first saw it way back when. We've come a long way over the last 2 years. Nowadays I only check white papers to see if they've been plagiarized. I don't really care about their actual idea already because everything that can be done under the sun with crypto and the blockchain has already been done. Very rarely am I inspired by new projects these days.

Nice pic, And not gonna lie it's pretty accurate ;D , Because of the WhitePaper is written well, then i can't decide on investing on that coin without doing more research. I tend to look at the people behind the project. Their backgrounds, And if they are basically real and not just stolen identities. so looking at their partners and checking their roadmap then I can decide If it's a good project even just a legit one.

Not to mention that as time goes by, it is becoming stale which lots of ideas copied from another project. To be honest, I personally think that whitepaper's purpose is just to track down fake and plagarized projects. They don't mean as much as the development and the implementation itself.

whitepaper is needed for a good project. Actually some people never read whitepaper but smart investors always keep important whitepaper. Many scammers project can be copy whitepaper so after read a project whitepaper then you can analysis this scam or not.
Otherwise team, products development are also needed if a project want successful ICO/IEO. At least we can reduce scam project if we can understand about it (trust project and scam project).

   Picture is great, it shows that WhitPaper is just a part of what it's needed for one project to be successful. It;s never one thing
that people focus on, people have to check entire project, from the team members, their idea, WhitePaper, their road map, and
after you consider all factors you can be sure in some project.

there are many investors out there who were deceived by WhitePaper ICO in 2018-2019, therefore many investors are now turning to IEO because it is more convincing to invest, but before that, we also have to analyze further too.

In as much as the picture looks funny but that's the truth about ICO whitepaper or will I say majority of projects whitepaper be it ICO or IEO. Most team are good in writing a very good and catchy whitepaper but once the funds has been gotten, what they end up producing will be entirely different from what was written thus leading to the question of, what happened? Also, owing to this act of writing a good whitepaper and developing a different thing, most people nowadays don't bother reading them again, Instead they focus on the IEO, once trading starts they dump, move on and wait for another.
Lastly, it seems that, a reasonable number of old projects really produced what they promised hence the reason they are growing each day with more improvements while on the other hand, majority of new projects are always found wanting of doing a different thing altogether.

Whitepaper is very important for investors because it gives them the information they need about the project.This is also part of the things that is needed in making decision on maybe to invest. For instance I personally like reading the whitepaper because the narratives can depict about how serious the dev team are about the project. Unfortunately, most investors do not even bother to read whitepaper before making decision to invest. I also look out for details such as team pictures and profiles in order to check it for possible scam

just see ICO from Whitepaper? of course it was a waste of time, in my opinion the most important thing was not Whitepaper, but the strength of the project team

With Whitepaper alone, I don’t know how accurate it would be to call a project good. Because the whole project should be seen, they have the ability to do some kind of development in the future or not. Now relying on Whitepaper, no one invests in any project. Everyone tries to verify the whole project and the team of the project.

When your browser Fiverr you will get information how much does it cost to make tailor-made ICO project, it costs only 1000USD in a total. But you can pay only for a whitepaper and some indians writers will write it for you only for 100USD - 200USD. So do you think that it has a real value when it is written by a person that specializes only in writing whitepapers?

This is true indeed. When I translated the whitepaper of Epic Cash, it seems like Epic cash will be one of the most popular coin after bitcoin but in reality, it turned into a shit. It is very risky to invest in a project depending on whitepaper only.

It cannot be a reference that the whitepaper will go according to plan and in my opinion right now is not the right time to invest in ico or IEO. the risk is big enough better to choose investments in clear altcoin than we see new projects that still have the potential to fail and this is very risky

Project with actual usable product are mostly being supported by investors, whitepapers gives information
but the actualization of said project depends
from how the team works and how they are managing their projects, there are lots of fake projects and
investors needs to sort it well before placing any investment.


Investment wise, it's much lesser risk if you'll participate with projects that have existing products, project
where you can see developments and progress.

You are right, some projects that already have products and even those that already have a small-scale market are still doing development fundraising. when the project has a real product, it will get more trust from investors.

One of the important aspect of a new project is the whitepaper. It is like a project feasibility where we can see the potential and technical write ups describing the project. Most new projects tend to do copy pasting on older project that becomes a norm for scam projects. But what if those project only reference it to those project due to similarity of idea would that be considered plagiarism still? I dont know but from what I can see, most investors refer so much on whitepaper so projects without it are being snobbed and considered scam.

But if you think about it, does it reallt be required even the concept is easy and common sense for a uswr to understand? Example exchange, we know how it works does it really matter if it has a whitepaper?

Good ideas from ICO indeed make us fooled even though the reality is inversely proportional, so before we participate in it we must analyze further about a project.

to ensure that all require a more thorough analysis. sometimes we become in a hurry to invest. because researching a new project certainly has many factors to consider.

of course with the whitepaper that can be read by many people about the project being developed, unfortunately at this time the ICO method is no longer used and prefers to use the IEO method which in my opinion can have many advantages and has security guarantees from the exchange place.

Although whitepaper is one of the essential stuff for an ICO/IEO/STO project because of the deep information that we need to know, it can be faked as well. Anyone, even a professional scammer, can write a whitepaper by himself or hiring someone to do it.

They can design attractive roadmaps and some technical details in the whitepaper, but it does not guarantee that the project itself is legit. What we definitely need for a project to become legit is that they are backed by their respective legit mother companies.

I mean not all of the legit projects have mother companies though. Full transparency is what we need from them, especially the funds that they've raised from their smart contract addresses and the team themselves.

I am also victim of trusting the white paper i can mention the project names but it wont sufficient  to fill in this thread . in 2018 most of the White paper made impact while coin released to exchanges it has done decent revenue but i was trusting this coins blindly without seeing the team behind that most of the team left project as it is after some time . Some went through legal issue SEC and other equivalent bureau investigation made that coins nothing.
Active team as well as legal issues also matters when we holding or investing in any coin or token. 

White paper is necessary but it's not important if the team of a project knows what they are doing, white paper is just for investors to have an idea about what the project is going to look like in future, the fact that lots of investors took white paper very serious is why there are lots of scam projects who use white paper in defrauding investors, promising what they cannot offer. Lots of

Whitepaper is very important so this is the goal of their project so it will be written on the whitepaper so everyone will know about this project actually, but sometimes we have to be careful now that many projects are plagiarizing their whitepaper so they steal concepts from other projects.

Yes, some scams just copy paste whitepaper from other projects, they don't even bother to change it a bit. Wp should contain everything about the project, from the team members, the project ideas, their plans, road maps, and everything connected with the project itself. Good Wp means a lot, but it's just a beginning, the team should be able to follow their plans, to struggle with problems, to face with many users and their problems, you really need to have a good team capable for all that. Without good team, awesome community Wp doesn't worth much.

Thank you sir! We both have the same perspective, I also looking for whitepaper for facts and compare it to some legit WP because in Service section some user there offered a article and doing some WP job in just only few dollar of payment, Creating and ICO is an easy job because eth base algo is easy to create even a noob person can do it.

Earlier I used to browse the whitepapers of various projects. Once in a while we came across very interesting projects, which have something unique to offer. But that said, more than 90% of them will be having plagiarized content. And that is one of the first red flags that we notice, while reviewing the new projects. But then, some of the most famous projects have been accused of plagiarism. TRON is an example.

I agree, reading through the whitepaper is crucial especially if planning on financially supporting the project. ICO's main objective is to write one such document because it gives an overview of the market research undertaken to see how this new product competes with what's already available.

The sad thing is that often this document can be plagiarised but often this is a good basis to discard a project. If the team wasn't bothered to detail the product/project it goes without hesitation that there might not be an end product at all!

Well,I think that the white paper is very important ,in as much as it is, one really need to see the team behind the project, if the team isn't a working team and no good back up,then everything in the white paper won't be fruitful,also the use case of a project is important to look at, what difference have they come to contribute to the blockchain space,these are the few things I watch out for.

All we have to know about the project include the white paper where they will write something different and the goals in their own products I think everyone will also project which will be valid with a real team and good support.

Not surprisingly, whitepapers are easy for plagiarism because all whitepapers are publicly displayed from all projects, there are no scammer projects that have survived the whitepaper validation checking community and even a few quoted words will be found if they do not include the source.

Anyone here visited the freelancers sites Fiverr creating an ICO is a big money maker there, the cheapest price for an ICO whitepaper fetch around $500 to $1000 they will do a concept based on what you feed them, whitepaper should be created and arranged by the developers themselves and not hire people to do it for you, some cheap developers copy their projects idea to old platforms and whitepaper and this is very rampant just check out the scam section.

of the many projects that I participated in, I have never seen their Whitepaper, the first thing I saw was their activeness on github and social media, that's all

Doing good level of research about the project is what it takes to become a successful investor as there will be thousands of projects with probably the best white papers out there, but the fact is, we just get lured by their "too good to be true" kinda schemes and fall for them. Best way is to go to an advocate who can understand the terms much better than us and make us understand whether the project would work or not. If OP thinks that we'd invest in moon and star talks these days, then I believe we should consider ourselves as noobs even after spending a decade in crypto.

As important as the ico whitepaper is reckoned to be important to a project; it does not really matter. A whitepaper is usually issued to give potential investors an insight into what the project is all about, how to achieve it, beneficiaries of the projects, as well the token models and the roadmap/timeframe to make this happen. Which is why willingness to invest in any project; should be more than just what is on paper.

Gone are the days when project Whitepapers meant much or decided if investors invested in a project. These days, a lot of projects have nothing to offer other than properly packaged Whitepapers with absolutely nothing to back up their projects. No products or clear definitions of their goals and objectives. Worst still is, most of these Whitepapers are rewritten from old projects with some tweaking just to entice unsuspecting investors to invest in their projects.

Exactly! these people are really scambag and they are using the the people welfare to gain the benefits, they do a littile article editing then they've already created their own ICO token in lessthan 200$ they've made an ICO which is ready to collect money from people.

I saw that many freelance site has so many project offer that are related in making the whitepaper article and that means there are people are really using this kind of game to make an good profit by hyping crypto investors by showing them a good and very well wrote WP.

After all the white paper plagiarism so of course, investors don't pay attention toward project's white paper anymore. All thanks to the dark age of ICO scam. Tho, I still think it's a must for a good project to caught investor's interest.

The White Paper is important because we know the extent of the project, and we have the details of that project. More often than not, the scam project copies the white paper and looks at other projects to create a false assurance. But we should do more research as well because we need to be extra smart to invest in a project.

we learn a lot of things this past few years duting the time the ICO scammers grab all the money they want to innocent investors and also newbie in the crypto business, but today, I've notice that ICO is now in the brink of fading away in the crypto world because most of the people today are truely awake.

Now many projects have sprung up with Whitepaper copying whether this will be more and it turns out that they don't have ideas so copy from other projects.
Be careful to check the whitepaper because it's very important.

Not in 2020. Lot of people give lot of hope in their whitepapers but they don't reach those milestones after project got launched.

it cannot be said that we should completely ignore what is written in Whitepapaer. we should watch how the project will develop and compare it with what is written in white paper.

You honestly made my day; I was just laughing out when I am coming across the image you have shared. If I would have come across this kind of topic some two or three years back, that would have changed many things in my investment plans with respect to what I have done with most of the ICOs. At some point of time, people have emphasized about the importance of ICO whitepapers and used it as a tool to identify a right projects.

Over the time I remember someone has shared like this: many ICOs has managed to derive wonderful concepts and provided them in whitepapers but for no reason they fail to develop and deliver those things. Because, this is free world and no one need to keep their word after they achieved big money through crowdfunding. This was what exactly happened with most of the ICOs even they had perfect whitepaper.

A project can not success in one or two months. I saw many projects which start with hype and end of the line they become useless. I don't believe just a good whitepaper can carry a good project. Those projects are good which are follow their roadmap properly and make their promises in time. A good project never give you unreal promises which looks greedy. If you think some projects are good to investment then stick with it and take look properly about their development. If you find out any lick then move yourself from it.

One way or another, at least four years may pass before the project is fully implemented, and in most cases much more. It is possible that, based on the market conditions, many projects will be re-profiled in a different direction of their activities, that is, the provision of completely different services to their users. As an example, we can cite the KubitX cryptocurrency exchange, which decided to take a different path of developing its project, namely by providing services to its customers for payment, thanks to its wallet and tokens, of various goods and services. Although before that the project had the goal of creating a cryptocurrency exchange.

in my opinion white paper is not important,
what is important is that the Roadmap and their team are really real, the white paper is just a support

Of course white paper is a valuable work for new projects. When you find new projects, by what things do you get the project details? (The answer is white paper). We can only get some information for visiting their websites. We know that we all are giving advice before research, so here only can help white paper until listed top exchange.

Thanks for appreciating my post, you have the point here, Yeah i admitted that WP is the user manual in every product they want to offer in public, same with ICO, but nowadays because of many flaws in ICO project, people are now are so aware and conscious about, we can never  blame them, me or us to develop a wrong perspective in some ICO project that has a good written WP.

the whitepaper should be very important for each project because all project developments can be seen there. however, there are many projects that deviate from each concept they make in their whitepapers, even they sometimes change it halfway through. when a project does not follow the development of the project, the project discards its own principles.

Yes, this is very crucial point that every company that is bring with project must out their Whitepaper initially before the public sale begin. It is the document like a legal document that is brought with an IPO to be listed in the Stock Exchanges for a company. Again, this white paper is very important for the investors where they get all the glimpses about the company for the well decision of their investment into that project.

Roadmap can be changed by the team anytime and that means if that was not also the correct point to determine how good the ico. it's better to see that from the track record of the team or the beta that has already launched.

well, I totally agree with what you say because it's better not to trust too much with the published roadmap, it's better you read more in the whitepaper provided and see how the concepts and projects they develop, because the roadmap can be faster when there are many demand from investors.

Yes. It's really an important factor for a legit ICO but it would not be enough as the basis for legitimacy. Investors should also see to it that what is written in the whitepaper is true and correct like the whereabouts of the company and their hotline number. Everything should be verify by them personally so that the money invested in the project would not be a waste at the end of the day.

For me, a whitepaper is a like a business plan in business and a documentation/manual on a production. Without it it seems that the project has no clear idea what he is doing and what will its end result. I would recommend to skip everything that has no whitepaper.

The white paper is just a document that is a guideline for investors so that everyone understands the technical organization of the project. But it is not the main reason of the success of the project

All of the projects, especially ICO have an initial whitepaper, I have never seen any project that doesn't have whitepaper, back in 2014 or so there used to be some POW coins that used to make a whitepaper after the launch but no one is surviving till now. OP actually stated something good that you should always check that project should be having some working product that they promised in the whitepaper or working towards it and is under progress, this makes sure that the team is working and not just giving everyone false promises which they can't fulfill.

Thanks mate for reinstating my point, actually I never discredit the importance of WP like I said the WP is the Owners Manual of every product they've bought, but today the WP is far difference with the digital product there are promoting, and all of the written words inside WP are not defying the product and it will not happen also in their finish product.

It's not a permanent and WP can be changed by the team anytime as they want, that depends on the situation that has already faced by the team whether the team can run the project based on WP or not. WP just a plan from the dev and it can't be considered as a strong point.

Whitepaper plagrism isn't a new thing again, even good or fair projects plagiarized their whitepaper and still do very well in the market, to me whitepaper isn't something you can use to judge a new project because it's easy to just edit a whitepaper and change few words to make your own project

the reality is the whitepaper is the brain of a project. so, if they change the concept of their whitepaper, they have discarded the project. that's the importance of whitepaper.
on the other hand, because of the importance of this whitepaper, many others try to steal ideas from it. not a few we see the whitepaper that has been imitated to date.

why would they copy others job , that only means that they are not fair or good if they do that . the one that do that are only scammers or not a good ico but they will soon find out because there now many ico investigators that thier job is to ripped ico out . so it does really matter , if you are an investor or if you are a business man that wants to run your verry own ico  . not only white paper but all that an ico require does matter as well because every requirement is important and will be look out fairly

Lol this almost ruin McAfee new project called ghost when they were exposed for copying another privacy coin whitepaper, McAfee statement did changed my mind though, saying the projects both have same idea and almost exact use case, I'm glad I invested in ghost even after the whitepaper war

Repetitive projects can easily copy from other projects whitepaper to fill their, it's wrong and it's not entirely bad too, that's just my own kinda view, team experience and future developments is what matters most to me, we have many projects with great utility but lazy team

ICO is no longer alive again but I will still like to contribute my own point on this topic, ICO whitepaper isn't what you should be after, there are other things that should come first before ICO whitepaper, I'd rather focus on the team and the project use case, whitepaper is easy to build

Prepared road where it is mentioned how the project will move forward moreover whitepaper is not a good thing for us. Because whitepaper can be presented by the team if they want, so it is understood that it helps to call investors here. It is also easy to understand that if a project runs out of money then we have nothing to do and all these whitepapers can do nothing.

whitepaper is certainly important if indeed the project intends to run it or the project is not fraud so then you will read and pay attention to what they say.
but does not apply if they are scamer.because the main thing is to see the project is real or not.

Yes, even the whitepaper clearly represent the content to be a good project but lack of budgets when it comes to actual presentation of the product, its become useless. Whitepaper gives a high percentage rating when the project created, most of investors look for the perfect whitepaper where almost everything they needed to know must be present there.

It's really hard to identify which is the perfect one to invest with. A lot of things can be happen if the project even success in their ICO launch. There's always a long way to go for them in actual market.

Why would whitepaper matters to anyone? Because in crypto projects actions speaks louder than words, many projects have good roadmap but the team are their main problem, roadmaps, whitepaper are all based on empty words, capable team is the best

You can detect a scam or fraud project by going through roadmaps and whitepaper but they aren't reliable, these shouldn't be the reason why you invest on a project, use case is what will determine the survival of a project in crypto space

I think to some extent, the whitepaper is important for every investor to go through before investment participation. Also, the whitepaper is something every bounty hunter must look into before joining bounties; because one way or the other, there are strategic information's that could impact the rewards of bounty hunters. The whitepaper can also guide as it reveals quarter at which you can expect certain developments, which to some extent impact the price of the token on the market.

In a nutshell, projects differ from one another; likewise our research skillset and strategy, so i implore that we do whatever suits our interest regarding investment.

ICO is still alive and you can see some new icos have raised the hardcap easily. WP is only a plan and no more. People who consider it as a critical point to determine the trust of ico must try to learn more.
You can even pay people to create your own WP.

I do think a lot of investors put too must trust on a whitepaper and missed the grand picture of how projects will implement all of those well-written ideas in their paper. The whitepaper should be realistic on how to tackle and solve the problem utilize their coin/token and implement it. That, to me is the best way to present the project's ideas on whitepaper.

White paper is must to analyse about a project and its potential but don't get trapped after seeing the perfect white paper it could be created for a clean perfect scam as well and many projects doesn't developed their projects in the proposed way so we also need to have look at the project team and their reputation in the crypto market.

I dont blieve in whitepapers per se. Project can write an excelent white paper but all the other stuff can be completele garbage. One of the things i would dig in is linkedin profiles, their links, thier history, try to link them together information .Often i find problems in linkedin and thats a red flag.

Yes most of the projects get disoriented from what they said in the whitepaper and always deliver less than what was promised in the whitepaper in the first place. I feel so sorry for the team on which we trusted by giving them our money and then they deliver sub-prime project to us, so the team shouldn't make the promises that they can't fulfill in the first place and just stick to what they can deliver, this will always keep the investors happy along with the token holders.

I quite agree on this that project shouldn't be based on what's written on the whitepaper hence they can add flowering words on it to convince investors and supporters but in the end they cannot back it up on actual project released. The visibility of the team, road map, funds and project's ideology should be based about on how can a project be successful and can be judged by it in actual adoption in the crypto world.

Over time, we've come to realize that Whitepaper is just for fancy for most projects. Most do not even follow their roadmap at all. Some people read Whitepaper, get impressed and invest in projects without putting other factors into consideration, this is always misleading. Most important things to look out for before going long term in a project are team capability/reputation and actual development of the project, not only Whitepaper.

One way or another, White Paper, in my opinion, is important not only for investors or interested users. The fact is that White Paper is a very powerful marketing tool that brings great benefits to the project itself, which allows it to attract as much investment funds as possible. Indeed, in the very basis of white paper there is no advertising, but the described clear scenario for the actions of the project team, which in fact should interest specific investors.

This is absolutely true. Most of the ICO are very futuristic when it comes to their whitepaper. The reality always hits us when it comes to this, it always don't work as we expected. However, its been a great journey to each and everyone, being with them from the start until they reach the limit of cryptoverse is the important thing. They help us earn at the same time we help their company grow to extent that we can. So call it quits. There's a bright and dark side in everything.

ico whitepaper always discuss about technical of the project although most of those are just some ideas that need realization first before possibly finding the flaws. Id say it matters if we really want to get invested into the projet and see whether it could really solve problem they are proposing to find the solution for through their project but there's always something that could go wrong as you say.

In any case, white paper is important, as it describes all the proposals and solutions proposed by the project. But of course this is not enough to unconditionally start investing in this project. Anyone who really doesn't want to be deceived usually checks all the details - documents, addresses, names, etc.

The whitepaper, in the end, is just a paper. It maybe important at the beginning stage of every new altcoin but after a time, there should be real progress as the main focus, not a well-written piece of paper. Don't make crypto become a cult where everyone only looks at project whitepaper like a bible

Whitepaper is just like a blueprint and the future plans of the developers with the project and should always be treated as an indicator of the progress related with the project. People always invest in that project which have a promising Whitepaper along with having good real world development, not just promises made that the team would deliver in the future date, those days are gone when people used to invest in smokes and mirrors promised by the project team, now the investors want some of the work to be finished first and rest should be delivered after the fund raising ends.

White paper is just a beautiful legend, a fairy tale that, if it does come true, is either not as written, or does not live up to expectations, or does not come true at all. Choosing a project for investment taking into account only white paper is like marrying a bride only because of her beautiful appearance

Or maybe and most of the time it is using by this crook to lure and hype the investors to their scummy project. By the way a good project make their own way and attract people by the result of their project. For me ( not at all) WP is just only a tool that can be use good neither bad nowadays.

Whitepaper is a documentation of what and how the project wants to achieve. It'll let you now either their concept are new or an old one. You can also compare it and it's economics to the similar project you've known. And furthermore with the quality and uniqueness of text, you'd know how serious the team are about the project. Surely it's not the only way to decide for your investment but is the first place to look at.

Make sense.

All those hypes to attract investors interest, this scam developers always find ways to construct a good WP knowing that

investors are also reading and make it as reference for investing.

You are right. Good project will find ways to succeed, if the project have good usage
and adds weight to this market then probably it will get support from most investors around.

And also don't forget to watch out for those well-written whitepapers where they just copy-and-paste from somebody else's work. You can see a lot of those cases in the scam accusations board. It is actually good to see if a particular project have good wp, but you need to look out if they can implement what they are saying on their wp. And it would take time to follow their developments. For me, the most important factor is if the project has very active product or app, which has practical usage in the market.

You cannot judge the project through their whitepaper, a lot of projects have failed and cannot be implemented like the Roadmap and Whitepaper they wrote. So let's focus on reality, see what the project is doing

50% of white paper can be important, but now only white paper for a requirement does not have any value, if there are institutions to research projects before doing IEO and ICO I think white paper can be very important, but now it is still not

Wonderful choice of words, do people still invest in project because of good Whitepaper or "promises" in Whitepaper? I doubt anyone still does that. Just very few projects achieve up to 50% of project aim on Whitepaper or even follow their roadmap accordingly. I'm not condemning investors who use Whitepaper doing research, oh yes its necessary, because a lame or copied Whitepaper is already a redflag.

All projects are required to have a whitepaper or litepaper to introduce their project in more detail and clarity, but that cannot be the most important thing for assessing a project. Because it's easily manipulated with nonsense and promises that really don't make sense for a new project.

Honestly, I see many projects taking white papers as a must to have.  Some people do even think the absence of white paper means the project has nothing to offer.  Though this is a document that summarise the idea and the problem the project is out to solve.  But the point is that, we shouldn't be deceived with a well packaged WP, because we've seen many instances like that and at the end of the day, everything turned to scam.  Never use WP as the only yardstick.

I found this definition of whitepaper that many ICO project themselves does not fully understand.

''A white paper is an authoritative document intended to fully inform the reader on a particular topic. It combines expert knowledge and research into a document that argues for a specific solution or recommendation. The white paper allows the reader to understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision.''

Whitepaper of the project does matter, but not the most. The most thing we need to know is about the project and the team.
Investors should see the whitepaper before investing their money to the project of course because some scam projects often plagiarize the whitepaper from other projects. Team member is the second, we can avoid scam project if we can detect the team members are fake or real.

White papers can be a guideline for all of us in following the ICO project, because that is where we can better know what the project contains, but indeed many do not meet our expectations, we are trapped by the writer's words so that we are trapped in their trap,

Whitepaper of a project does provide us the initial feel and vibes of the project.
It also shows the seriousness and professionalism of the team towards the project so whitepaper is important but yes the most important is the development of high quality products and services as promised in the whitepaper.

It was relevant at the time of your post but now most of the bad, fake or low quality projects are mostly pointed out by the community and people stay away from them and i have seen such projects with failed icos and not been able to raise any funds.
On the other hands good projects are selling nicely and it is easier to identify good projects now than it was like 2 years ago.

I think white papers are very important for ICO before making a sale because from there investors know what the purpose and concept of the ICO is
otherwise it is a road map, if the road map looks good and run on time chances are the ICO will be successful

I would never invest in a project that has a whitepaper that doesn't convince me.
I am not a programer so i can't really tell if all those formulas and algorithms that are displayed in technical white papers make sense or not.
But i look at all the other aspects like the tokenomics, the use case, the team and what the benefits for the token holders are.

We will have an ico sale without whitepaper, i think that the white paper is not important in these times.

SimpToken, sounds exciting! <insert Shut up and Take my Money! gif here>

But will it surpass the glory of CuckCoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5219845.0)?

There are great meme tokens out there but ours will allow you to tag people as Simps in the blockchain! You can't undo that!

Remember if that plan has already planned based on their theory but the real implementation will be very different from the fact. There are a few projects that can meet what already stated in their whitepaper but most projects were changing their plan and didn't follow the roadmap again.

From all angles, I believe the whitepaper matters whether in the case of ICO or IEO, because in each case, whitepaper is used, and it is in this whitepaper that the team writes down their ideas or use case they are bringing to the crypto space. In addition, it is through studying the whitepaper will an investor be able to make the right choice. Lastly, irrespective of the fact the whitepaper is very important, I think most scam team has made it look like it no longer had value, through writing one thing only to end up developing something totally different and of course worthless. So, let's look beyond what the team are projecting, be it hype or whatever and starts from the basics of the project which is found in the whitepaper.

Whitepaper is still an integral part of any project. However, a serious investor should not rely on how well-written the whitepaper is, but check for their capability of delivering their actual product or service. Nowadays, I prefer to check the product rather on how they created their wp. Because most of them are just copy-paste from other's work. So in my opinion, whitepaper doesn't matter the most for me but the actual product they can offer to the community.

Most times I just wait till i see high listing on many exchanges and top quality ones before I buy the tokens My assumption been probably those exchanges will screen them out before approving them But is still Ok to go on with ICOs before listing, only ones with good reputations and sponsors that you trust

yes, so many project have changed their roadmap in the halfway of their development. their step in every plan will delay and delay again, it will be hard for them to move forward. and in the end, it will just become an abandoned and failed project.

Yes whitepaper is most important for any ICO or project. This gives you clear understanding what the project is about and how it's going to be successful. Before investing in any ico everyone should read their whitepaper carefully. Through their whitepaper you can also find some clue if project is legit or not. Some scam project copy their whitepaper from other projects so that behavior makes you realize that this project is fake. So when you reading white paper you can also check if it's copy from somewhere or not. Google can help to find plagiarism whitepaper.

For me the whitepaper is an absolute guideline for analyzing a project, the project can be assessed as having value or not in several key factors in the whitepaper.

This is somewhat true having a solid and good whitepaper at the very least would give a might better chance of the project to become successful. It shows how much depth the project goes and all, and the other thing that matter would be investors. Whether or not they are interested with the project or just being a bystander. So, it is important to have whitepaper.

This thread was written three years ago but it's still relevant the whitepaper is very deceiving you have to check if those who wrote these whitepapers really knowledgeable on what they are going to do with the projects, some of these developers hire whitepapers writer just to make their projects look good in paper.

Someone has seems bumped it. The whitepaper is really relevant and important before engaging in any projects because here you will see the goals and plans of a project that developers and founders has made, if it will be worth it to invest or to participate in a long term. That is why they make their whitepapers look knowledgeable and presentable just to attract more investors.

Most of the icos nowadays are a copy from other projects, just a copy-paste with a new ico name, that's why the white paper could look really nice but the project fails hard in the first months.

Create the token cost $2
With ''wget' we can download the ico page
and with Gimp we can edit the white paper

So, anyone can make a new ico in less than 24h, that's why most of them fail hard.

First of all, idea copying and document plagiarism is a lot in this market and because of this dangerous situation, a lot of investors and community members regularly check WhitePaper, which shows a serious face of projects, and when developers take such an angle, they certainly understand the importance of the whitepaper, from ICO to IEO, even some other form, whitepaper is indispensable. It's really like you said, good whitepaper increases success rate and interest level, the rest is practical and feasible.

Yup, exactly sir! You can pay an article writer in the service section of this forum. The Ethereum chain is the most abused system in the crypto market, you are right in a low cost budget you can develop your own token, then grab some pictures on internet and put some attractive bio then you've done, you can collect a hundred thousand even millions of dollar in an ICO project.

Whitepaper is one of the important factors of a project. Whitepaper provides the depth study of a project. It also educates investors, shares the technical knowledge of the project. And also whitepaper publicizes a company's product or service.

Having whitepaper will generate leads, spread expertise, build thought leadership, it also helps you build a mailing list, and also allow you to accommodate original research. But know that whitepaper is just one important factor to a project, there's still mission and vision, roadmap, and others.

A whitepaper is a basic document for a project, The whitepaper must have a background, objectives, strategy, focus, and timing for implementation for each project.  Projects that don't offer a whitepaper should be avoided, but there are fake projects that offer convincing whitepapers, So that very many investors are deceived by false promises written in the whitepaper.  The whitepaper is one of the many important parts of the project, Reliable investors will always research all important parts of a project before they decide to invest.

You can also create individual Defi projects in no time, read And this is how you make 'easy' money riding the Defi (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5277820.0)
Unfortunately, all opportunities are only taken advantage of by scammers on a multi-million dollar target mission with low capital and capitalizing on the hype. We have a Scam Accusations board but not all scam projects go undetected from the start, so be careful and watch your investment.

The whitepaper is very important but some whitepaper is not very reliable I have seen a lot of projects that have a lot of good whitepapers but ended up scamming their investors, projects now are like a box of chocolate you never know what you are going to get, you should go deeper not only whitepapers look on the team and how they address their investors. 

Yes, just like you i dont treat whitepaper as a reference whether the ICO is real or not for me one of my best reference finding a real bounty campaign of an existing ICO is the team road show. Road show is how the team promote their product in a public conference. Schedule of places where they have a speech. So having these acticity can proof that the project is real existing and not created by mind without act

Obviously, white paper is not the ultimate honest description of one project.
However, it can give you good sense of what one project is about, especially if we're talking about developed, working project.
Its not as representative for really young projects, because you can't test their statements on practice and can't track them with reviews of other users' experience.
Basically, same applies to road map of a project - you can track actual results of working project, can't do it with new ones.

Nowadays it is very difficult for us to be able to distinguish between which is the original ICO project and which is a fake ICO project because between the two currently have similarities that even almost reach 99.99% both regarding roadmaps, white papers, websites and even team members most of them have fake identities / fake photos, and that is why currently ICO projects are starting to be abandoned and of course we also have to be careful if we want to invest in an ICO project if we don't want to lose money

yes, you are right the whitepapper alone is not enough to convince if the project is legitimate, or I mean the ICO whitepapper is not a real guarantee. I've heard of a site that offers such a service for only $ 50 with a million dollar return from a fraudulent ICO project. I hope someone will be more careful before joining or investing in any ICO project.

This is absolutely correct. the project has many deviations to those written in the whitepaper. Not technically but the most seen deviation is the roadmap. For whatsoever reason, most of the projects can't keep up with the original roadmap. I think to cover all aspects, they should always update the project whitepaper to comply with the actual updates.

Given its pivotal significance, it is of most extreme need for any startup or wander to guarantee the creation of a proficient white paper. But typically difficult to do! In a still generally unregulated ICO advertise that needs lawfully official arrangement and data necessities, up to presently, the creation of a white paper has generally been a matter of chance and mystery.

If you check out the first page of the thread you'll find out how mess up ICO whitepaper and learning how much project had successfully launched the real satisfying product in the end of their roadmap are actually just few.  Only few of them too made it with a marketing still.

Somehow you ccan see the project like WAVES which the marketing was so massive during its ICO but still not satisfying after years of its launched.  Its successful though.

Today we can already judge a project base on whitepaper. Plagiarism is common which means if its WP is plagairized, you can expect what is expected.

yes, Whitepapers are very important for investors because they provide them with the information they need about the project. This is also part of the things that are needed before making an investment decision. The whitepapper illustrates how serious the development team is to the project. Unfortunately, most investors don't even bother reading the whitepaper before making an investment decision. I'm also looking for details like team pictures and profiles to check them for possible scams

There are actually some ICO projects that have a good whitepaper and website also. But that is not the real thing that you should consider when joining a project because as of now, even how good their website and whitepaper is, there is still some projects that are failing because there are reasons that they cannot reach the target on the sale to be exact. You should be focusing on their capabilities by checking how good this project for everyone not only in the market but the use of their website and hoe good iis their mission and vision.

The whitepapper is important but They can design an interesting roadmap and some technical details in the whitepaper, but that doesn't guarantee that the project itself is legitimate. what we need to know, it can also be faked. Anyone, even professional scammers, can write their own whitepaper or hire someone to do it.

Indeed whitepaper is matter, but it is not the most. We should look for other aspects in the project as well.
But reading whitepaper is important, at least we can detect several red flags of the project from there.
To obtain the background, purpose, and the planning of the project, whitepaper is the first thing we need to read.

This will be a basis of the tech and platform use case. So if a project doesnt have this, means they are not sincere to launch a good project. Whitepaper show the true power and strenght of the platform. It will be a guided technical written report describing all aspect on what to expect on a project. Whitepaper is vital so better to have a good perception on it.

Haha. Yeah most projects which gone bust are exactly like this. But white paper is an important thing to analyze along with the team members to judge whether you wanna get into projects or not .

I would say no, The product is more important than ICO , I know some recent ICO did a copy-paste from some other one's white paper and yet get into Bitmax.io  ???
Github, Mvp , the product comes first, you can write beautiful messages but can you do what you say?

Yes in my opinion whitepaper is a very important thing for a new projects. And if it's not good enough to belive in it I would not suggest you to invest in that project. Cause this whole market is full of scams. And in most of the cases th scams are like low efforts. So those which are looking low efforts projects they don't put a lots of time in white paper. And other one kind those try to convince that they belive in works not in paperworks. But for me I belive that those who really think about their projects in long term they will publish a whitepaper which will be described properly.

Have you realized that almost none of the Defi projects out there have a very detailed whitepaper? All it has is a technical token economics or yield farming methodology or whatever they call it, and they keep changing and refixing it anyway! Whitepapers. Nobody gives much attention to that anymore seriously.

Everyone can promise and write a nice whitepaper, but the reality is pretty different, when it comes to the creating a product, team recognizes that they are not enough skilled and so they give up, but with the money what they raised from investors. Solution? Before ICO is managed every startup should present their product and not the whitepaper :).

The ICO WhitePaper is the most problematic. Even though the Whitepapper is very important, especially displaying project data or information, the fact is that the Whitepaper has created many unfortunate victims. all the bullshit is a hoax. completely I never trusted the whitepaper.

I don't so, whitepaper has a pivotal role to have a successful project but I think the Team behind every projects still the most and integral part of the project. Having a very good whitepaper is going to be useless the team, developers cannot deliver or execute what are being written and planned in the document.

Even now, many projects that are already running have also updated their whitepapers and roadmaps. everything just didn't go as planned from the start. projects and platforms are of course adjusted to follow market trends. the simplest is the displacement chain network used. usually it wasn't all planned from the start. developers do so following market trends and need to remain in the market.

Although the whitepapper is not the most important, but in my opinion the whitepaper is quite important, because you can find all the information about the project in the whitepaper. but scamers can easily copy the whitepaper to convince investors. My advice is not to rely on the ICO whitepapper.

believe it or not but the fact is that there are still many good or fair projects plagiarizing their whitepapers and still doing very well in the market, for me whitepapers are not something you can use to assess new projects, you can judge for yourself that the Whitepapper is not a guarantee if the project is REAL .

Most of the project were delivering different with what they promised indeed, so the plan in whitepaper can't be relied 100%.
But at least we can know what they are planning with their project in their whitepaper.
So i think whitepaper is matter, not the most but it is still matter to be read.

At this moment there's no truly can ensure the lawfulness of an ico, a whitepaper that was being the primary lead presently can control so natural, genuine what Mr. John1010 stated, at the present time address can be selected to be judgment matter, since I, myself have been a casualty an ico where after I checked the location, evidently address that united by the organization was a location from a packed shop in England, this is so deplorable.

Since 2018 whitepapers makes no sense anymore, before ICO became successful in 2017 whitepaper is one of the best ways of finding how good a project could be but after 2017 scammers start cooking their own whitepapers, full of plagiarism and others copycating, today no one tries looking at projects whitepapers anymore because it doesn't count, there are probably fake

I remember when i was new here,i love reading White Papers as i believe about everything written ,Seems like a Great future is waiting for those who will invest in their projects.

Not until 2018 comes and everything ruins,Because there are So many good white papers but nothing happens even before the ICO ends.

Now even a secondary student can Write his own White papers and pretend to be a nice project and team,but only few now are still reading because it's easy to create but so hard to adopt and make it happen.

Yes, there are many projects that have copied Whitepapers on other projects to create new projects, but in general everyone should also read the Whitepapers to find out where the project is going and what the concept is, even though it's not a real project.

There's a lot of project are using old coin/token whitepaper and make it fresh looking because of their creativity but after they've got your money for IPO/ICO etc they will create a drama and suddenly gone with the investors money.

I try to invest in projects with a ready-made or working product. Or at least with a demo version of the future product. This will attract investors more than just an idea that may not come true.

I’ve seen a lot of projects like, where they can’t launch products as their whitepaper. Investing after read only whitepaper isn’t a good decision. Research about there development and keep your eyes on their present work before investing. Whitepaoer is important to understand a project plan. But, It's really not everything.

anyone can write a word and a sentence that makes a lot of people believe in it. but for a white paper in an ico project it seems that only people who are new to ico will be trapped in it so that there will be fraud for someone who doesn't understand it.

of course ico whitepaper matter, because a whitepaper is what makes investors interested in your ico project, so a good whitepaper will be more interesting, but that doesn't mean a good whitepaper will guarantee your ico project will be successful, there are still many factors that influence success. ico, but yes whitepapers are important

Today it is very easy to make a white paper, usually these scams hire someone who knows the area and in a short time he will prepare one for you. When I choose an ice, I prefer to pay attention to those who have a solid team, participate in events and go public in lives or videos.

That happens way too many times, I mean if you have the money doing it is not hard at all. Give me 100k and I can collect millions of dollars for you, that is the trouble of the crypto market. If you have 100k, you can spend 10k on development, 1-2k on design stuff, 3-5k on staff to control everything and then you can spend at least another 50k+ on marketing on the greatest places and you will be capable of collecting millions of dollars.

This is why it is filled with these people, not all of them spend 100k on this but the reality is that even if they do not spend 100k, they still earn more than they spend on the project, spend 5k and get 10-20k, spend 10k and get 30-40k so in the end it is profitable to start a new project, and when it is that profitable to start a project, everyone starts to do that. It doesn't have to be profitable for everyone who invest, project owners only care about how much they make.

I agree it's not one the most matter, but still one important thing. By reading the whitepaper I can understand how the developers thinking and how the concept made. To complete the research, of course, we need to dig another significant information from them. Other than that, we also need to use our instinct. I think we also need to see how they interact with the community, and how the community itself. We need to see how they progressed and developed. Over the years, more people engaged with cryptocurrencies, more trash projects will come,  and it means more things we should do to guard ourselves and gain profits, one of them is intensive research.

Whitepapers have proven very effective for marketing and promoting cryptocurrencies. When Bitcoin launched originally in 2008, it was marketed through a whitepaper that was supposedly written by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Since then, almost every project has been introduced in the market with a whitepaper of its own.

Developers for new ICO projects now have more advanced methods of marketing at their disposal. New cryptocurrencies now rely on webinars, social media and animated presentations to promote their ICO.

The time gone very fast, today, people are not interested in looking the whitepaper, people interest is just only on how they earn very quick, they don't care the project they are looking the right timing when the developer may rug pull the money from investors, then they will ride the tide. Whitepaper won't matter most.

Currently traders are focused on quick profits from investments so don't consider the purpose of the whitepaper anymore because there is no guarantee the price will increase even though the team will launch the mainnet and we have reviewed many cases of other alt projects that the launch of the mainnet has no effect on the price increase, so they are more appropriate take low profits rather than bear losses with no potential for price recovery.

Your point totally resonates with the challenges startups face in delivering on promises made in whitepapers. It's a common issue, and I appreciate your perspective. I agree that showcasing a tangible product before an ICO is a smart move – actions do speak louder than words. It not only builds trust but also sets a solid foundation for the project. Let's encourage more transparency and practicality in the crypto space! 😊🚀