Bitcoin Forum

Hi Forum

A quick question if I may since taking part in airdrops I have noticed that some are disappearing quite rapidly, and I wondered what was your best way to spot a potential fake ICO?

leave your answers let's see if we can prevent people from losing money

Airdrop291

All fake!

Well as far as i know no one can determine nowadays  which is legit ICO project and not due to some fake project as well that always hidden behind on it. But try to gain some feedback first on any ICO where you want to invest maybe it can help 'cause indeed feedback is the most important nowadays and a big help to easily determine the reliable projects. Regards

Usually i used to check coinschedule.com. in that website we can find top 10 ICO, from those ICO we should filter the best ico based upon our researching skill.
First gothrough the ICO whitepaper. Then choose the project based upon good managers like yahoo. Finally check linkdin and telegram team.

I'm still new to ICO's but as far as I know, One should first check the members of their group in their telegram or ANN or even facebook, If there are lots of people that are potentially fake or just posting just to make the project look good, then you should beware about that . Next are the exchange, potential of project to earn, and ofcourse the unique feature that the project has to offer.

To find a scam, you don`t need some super-techniques, machine learning and working with large data, but diligence, attention to detail and in proportion to investments, the time spent on researching ICO projects. Scams can be distinguished by too bright descriptions or, conversely, confusing definitions, of which little remains clear after reading.

I think that best way is going to check how the ICO is publishing itself.
If they are doing it by publishing the project then we are good, but if they do so by publishing how much money the investors can make from investing in the project- it shows that they are really greedy and shouldn't be trusted.
On the other hand- a also very storng indicator to consider is the devlopment team, if the team is unable to show a record that they were able to go out with simillar products or that they really have the ability to finish the project then I wouldn't invest in them either.
If the team is unable to finish the project your investment will probably ended up as a loss.

If you are talking about airdrop then most of the airdrops are fake and never get listed on the market which the owner thinks that they would and he makes that token in order to sell that on exchange when it gets listed to get a profit for risking just a small amount of money. But the fake ICO are now a days pretty hard to identify as the scammers also spend a lot of money in marketing and making fake profiles of team members, so it's pretty hard to identify a fake ICO.

i think icobrench can help , but its not all , hard to look it easily , you need to do research at least read the white paper to determine it fake or not

I have looked into some ico's in depth and the ones i steer clear of are where there's spelling mistakes in the whitepaper on the site, as I believe if you're going to release a paper then it must be proofread prior to release.

I also see lots of sign up forms with errors broken links I steer clear of these also, and some are crazy enough to ask for your private wallet, well these I'm pretty sure are fake.

You cannot tell fake ICO so easily man, it is considered as a fake ICO after they revealed themselves as fake ICO by leaving their social media and website. There are way too many for ICOs to consider this or that is fake ICO so make sure you prove the legitimacy of an ICO by reading all their documents and licenses.

 firstly its better to check web page and white paper and other documents, secondly follow their social media links and groups such as telegram, twitter...because fake ones usually not sending message. Look at the team and check their KYC from ICO ratings websites.

You need to be observant, don't just join bounty that you have seen has many participants but indeed explore things and find in yourself and evaluate it, there are lot of whitepaper out there who are also good in writing so don't depend on them but rather find leakage from the team their sites, vision and many more.

As far as I know that a fake ICO has some features such as a really bad website with bad UI design, a messy whitepaper, an unclear roadmap, etc. Also, they have some fake info on twitter which it is easy to check. Another point is that they may often offer you a really high bonus for participating ICO (private sale, presale).

Another tip is that checking some red flags or review about the ICO by some influencer is a good point to suspect.

Any other tips?

I think, now very rarely or I do not find fake ICO this year. After a few months ago some big countries set rules for ICO, I can not find any more fake ICO.
All you have to notice now is fake Airdrop. If the project is not running and is not trusted I suggest you do not combine with the Airdrop. Because now many Hackers who do the attack from the Airdrop data.

First of all, check the project on ICO-trackers. Also check the site and social networks. Well, of course the branch bitcointalk.

To understand this fraudulent project or not is very simple

Study the team that is working on the project. Look at the advisors of the project and the potential of the product itself.

Those ico's doesn't have a announcement thread in specific. They try to make every communication through dm. What they expect is few investors to make an investment. This is just a trap, and here most of the users who get caught were new people to the network. They don't know about the reality, but with the minimal knowledge they just try to get the best out of the investment and realizes that they have got cheated after a long time.

Without inside information it would be difficult to predict the 100% authenticity of ICOs. However some indications include:
- the projects idea: how broad and innovative it is.
- the team: how connected they are and their partnership for the project. Normally the partners have physical interactions with the team, so if the partners are reliable then they can help phish out the fakes. So if no real or established enterprise is partnering with this team on their project then it is suspective.

Just keep in mind the majority of the ico's fail, maybe then you'll think twice about investing into them.

Don't focus on ICO reviews, look at the team and make sure they are real people. If it's just a new social media account then it's fake, make sure it's not a one man show otherwise you won't see your coins again

If I was you. I would just stick to airdrops.

Why I prefer about airdrops over ICO...

ICO: The founder team receives a (sometimes miti million) reward before delivering any working product at all and with no guarantee that any working product will ever be delivered. So a lot of risk for the initial investor and a gueranteed reward for the founders. to me it looks more like gambling than investing with a big potential of being scammed.

With airdrops however, the initial risk is on founder side. they invest time to deliver a working product and in case it turns out to be worthless, there is no risk for the airdrop members and no reward for the founders.
so to me it looks like choosing an  airdrop over ICO shows a lot more confidence from founder side. And if they are wrong and can't deliver... there is no harm done.

This is bad that you are encouraging him to only participate in Airdrops.

Based on your statement that you only want free tokens rather to invest to real world case use project.
And its your own fault if you get scam for not doing your own research and relying on peoples reviews some of them gets paid for doing it !

Thats  Risks Management for you !

You can check ICO update website There is the latest news published in their blog and social media or you can search on google and bing search engine with some keyword quotes "Trust ICO" "Top Ico List" " "released Ico" etc.
I follow this website: https://www.icohotlist.com

Most new ICOs will fail but if you need just few minutes to do what is required for airdrop it's better not to waste time checking them. You will spend much more time trying to find a legit ICO than filling the forms for bunch of airdrops.

1)The ICO doesn't say 100% of your crypto will be returned if the ICO doesn't go through for some unforeseeable reason.

2) There is no explanation of how people participating will be rewarded.

3) The ICO is a ponzi scheme (IMHO see bitconnect)

4) The ICO isn't backed by a substantial amount of work already.

Most of ICO s are fake ,we are living in time when scaming is more profitable online than in real world ...but if you know what to do and have skills youll probably make your self rich in this jungle, its definitely not for everyone and good advice is if you are investor in ICOs dont go all in on one ,because youll probably lost your money.
Their is no best way to tell fake ICO all you can do is do your own resarch ,read a lot ,dont just by the hype and try understand why the token you buy have future and what is the purpose of that tokens in blockchain or do they have some product or they revolutionaze something

With all these scam threats roaming around and taking every bit of opportunity to trick the weak, would it be possible to have a one-safe-source where all detectives can input their findings for awareness of  the community? These detectives will then get token as reward for their detective skills. Or does this already exist?

I know some fake ICOs are like copying other existing projects' whitepaper, or just modifying how they express but the concept and outcome are actually similar.
Be careful and to make research if there are any similar projects, and how the whitepaper can convince you.

1.Bad website
2.No details in Token Matrix. No Whitepapers.
3.guaranty profits(invest can't guaranty %profits) 

The only way is show your proofs.

or don't invest at any of it.

Here's is base on my observation.

- if airdrops are asking for a fee for that ICO that's something ridiculous, you are about to be rewarded but you're paying them just for them to be able to send you the reward? just like the old email scams.
- the developers can't give their own identities.

A fake ICO or Scam ICO has no distinct features. They are all like all other ICO.  Identifying which is fake may be contigent on your instincts...  So I advice you follow your instincts.

A potential fake ICO is the one that lack a clear roadmap and whitepaper to tell of their ideas. Lack of inconsistency from the management team and reliable information on the team members is a red flag of a fake ICO

I would say a demo or a beta version of the product means a lot. I'm glad that there is a trend visible now on the market that project teams have already something to show before they collect funding from ICO.

I know what you mean here, so you can ask easily "How to find legit Airdrop"

well is hard to know because what we get from airdrop isn't much like we do on bounty, and almost the legit ico never do an airdrop the prefer use ads from social media or we can call it bounty to find the Big Investor and make them invest on it. and i will see the best answer about this problem.

Well based on my experience i always checking their team because some of the scam ICOs has the same face of the founder make sure they are kyc verified and also check their ICO on some ICO review sites it actually helps me choosing some good ICO and also check their website fake ICO always have some ugly website that looks like some 5th grader made their website and the next thing is check their social media sites if they had many followers why not maybe they are legit somehow.

I agree with this statement, because every project is based on its team. It's important if it has many members and you can read about their experience or find information in social networks. It means that they are open to questions and to the community. Usually fake ICO projects post 2 or 3 members of a team and it's difficult to find some information about them and about their experience.