Bitcoin Forum

The best strategy to follow in ICO investment is the antique old "caveat emptor" trade principle, aka "let the buyer beware" or "do you own research."

As such, the environment has become so irresponsible that even the SEC has created a fake ICO called "HoweyCoin" brimming with red flags (including guaranteed returns and random celebrity endorsements).
It must be a stressing issue if one of America's least digital connected agency starts creating fake fraudulent use cases to warn investors.

The SEC indeed shared valuable insights on fraudulent ICO patterns, that's why we tried to figure out a bunch more.

Here's our non-comprehensive list of ICO red flags to supplement the SEC's warning:

• 1. Promoting blockchain technology rather than a product
• 2. The only token functions are "money functions."
• 3. Guaranteed returns and MLM incentives
• 4. Unclear token distribution and extravagant bonuses
• 5. Opaque private sale valuation
• 6. No vesting period
• 7. No hard capitalisation
• 8. Ideas, ideas, ideas
• 9. Poor media mentions

full article https://tropyc.co/pages/news/what-makes-an-ico-shady-af (https://tropyc.co/pages/news/what-makes-an-ico-shady-af)

I am shocked every day, I usually take a few hours to read some projects and honestly I do not see the use of such projects, many of them have absurd ideas that in my optics does not make sense. I will give an example: jesus coin, what is the purpose of creating this coin?

See The ANN Thread: ✝️✝️✝️ [ANN] [ICO] JESUS COIN - Decentralizing Jesus on the Blockchain ✝️✝️✝️ (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2171006.0)

https://i.imgur.com/Tsq1fhG.png

 :o :o

and then we have this:

https://i.imgur.com/Tsq1fhG.png

Promises and more promises

The problem is that people invest in ICOs even when they know it is shady. They just work on the greater fool theory and are confident they can exit at a profit once the coin gets listed. They manage to do this a few times and become overconfident. They don’t realise that the music must stop at some time.

The number one red flag for me is when ICO promises outrageous bonuses or something along lines "invest with us and we will give you big returns every month or so" .
Also it is quite amazing how people fall for projects who for example promises to develop new kind of batteries which will be better than existing ones. Sometimes I think if one cant understand that ICO cant do a massive break thru in any area, they should not have enough money to invest in the first place.

A complementary list of red flags are given in the recent example of howeycoins

https://www.investor.gov/howeycoins

e.g. allowing investment with a credit card, exaggerating celebrity endorsements etc.

What the f*ck did i just read? About their feature. A coin which do save up the user from going to hell? What a unique and bullshit,complete non-sense it do have. Even just on the coin name you would able to find out that this aint serious.
What makes an ICO shady? When you dont see any transparency in them, in terms of their dev team.I do always prefer on checking out the team with credible,good standing,experienced when it comes to blockchain tech.