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After reading their whitepaper then ask yourself these questions:
1. Does the document make sense to you? (Did you get a picture of the whole idea they are talking about?)
2. Is project going to provide any real solution to any problem? (scam projects usually provide vague solutions which normally does not point out the blockchain aspect in it)
3. Is the document having original contents (scam projects usually copy people's work)
4. How old is their official website (most scam projects usually have new websites)
5. What has the team done already towards the project.(scam projects usually do not have any detailed roadmap)
6. Check the team's profile on linkedIn and also their number of connections. (fake ones usually have low and no real connections.)
7. Check the token distribution. Is there equity and equality? (the scam ones usually allocate higher percentages to the team)
8. Did they give any abnormal price speculations? (i joined one bounty(Crestonium) who promised 3 times profit within 6 months else they are going to refund investors monies back to them. They ended up being a scam)

No matter how vigilant you are, you can still get scammed but at least, you can reduce the risk of being scammed. Enjoy your day

I think the rise in scam projects these days is so alarming. Even those ones who didn't mean to be scam eventually turn out to be scam because the ICO will not be successful.

I think we should pay as much attention to gtihub code development as possible.
If a team has maintained active development in the past, the project is generally not a hoax.

Yes it is a good way to avoid fraud in ico projects that harm investors. many of which I found ico projects that use fake data to create team members and advisors. always check the truth of the ico project.

Everything at the present time good thing. Until they are unsuccessful in per-sale ICO. They become Scams. Every project before the start of the thing looks very good. White Paper, Team, Investor. Everything looks perfect. So scams are becoming more sophisticated and dangerous now

Yes, to avoid being scammed I first check the telegram of the project how many are connected to them and how fast they reply to the members and investors. Then I will check the roadmap the whitepaper. The team that managed the project is also a very important thing. How well they plan the project and how interesting it is to the consumers and the public. Although, sometimes how much checking and evaluating we do before investing sometimes it is hard to choose a good project and a good ICO. But we should be careful with our investment to avoid lossing our money.

To avoid scams you need to know about that area. For example, if you want to invest in an ICO project, you must know the project that you are about to invest. Not only hear the good promise of the enemy but accept the money to invest.

No 100% of assurance to success because the project name can be defined after the campaign. The result depends to the performance of the project whether it can be shitcoin or one of the potential coins in crypto.

Research, Reading and Response. White paper is important, how can you trust projects without a whitepaper. With law enforcement actions and general awareness growing, outright scammers have it harder than ever! Though, of course, there’s still a need of research and digging. So make sure you know about the project you’re investing in. Go for Liven and Treon these are my favorite projects, LVN is an Australian ICO with an established business in food sector.

Thanks. This is enough to determine superficially whether to participate in the company. It can help many people

My personal opinion is that you need to evaluate the development team. Watch their profiles on social networks, search for information about activities.

Yes, it is very difficult to identify the genuine ICO. The only thing we can do is to gather information about the project, read their White Paper, study their website, product, team etc. We only can minimize the risk of being scammed by using our study and knowledge in taking the correct decision about the ICO.

not to be make a decision that you are wanted to make some investment on it cause as long as you are have some doubt on it you have to more practical for not trust easily even that you have been read everything on it.

Good day. I always check social media sites of the ICOs I join. I'm more at ease when I saw the team members participating on various crypto summits. It means they are well know and legit persons. You'll know they are real and not just pictures on their websites. Many things are still to consider.

Yes, these are really good tips that can help bring scammers to clean water. I am interested in the following question: How can I find out how much time does the site exist? Tell me how can I check it out?

Thanks for the information, at least this will save us from the scam projects we invest in.

I strongly recommend those project with very detailed roadmap and  because it is a tool for me to determine whether the team behind will do whatever it takes to work ahead of their deadlines and it will show how dedicated they are.

Once you observe any flaw in data representation then there are chances the project is a scam. However, some projects improve over time depending on what happens as they progress. I see it as a complicated process that anything can happen anytime. Best thing you do for yourself is to manage tour own risk
 

It seems to me that the most important aspect is the real application and value of coins. It is very important to make sure that people want to buy these tokens. If you look now at the proposals of different ICOs, then you will not want to buy their coins, because you have no interest in this other than speculative.

Yeah! I believe that no matter how do we know the project, we cannot prevent to be scammed. Whitepaper is not an indication that a certain project will success. But there is an advantage of looking in a WP. In fact, it helps us to become confident on what the project we supported.

Then you should look for the information of this project carefully.
If the founding team has a bad track record, it's because an honest team is more conducive to the development of the project.

The development of blockchain has both advantages and disadvantages. A liar is always good at deceiving money by all means.

These statements are like 50-50% true. I mean yes most of the ICO's are having new websites, linked profiles, or new social networks but it doesnt mean that its really login to be scam one. Many times they could be legit projects but they might be newly formed and thus making their way through new social networking accounts. White papers are getting shit way of learning the project ideas and scam % of them. Because most of the time you can get what paper created for few bucks and they look like most progressional too. May be its hard to predict about the ICO's these days.

Risk of being scammed can be minimized by knowing the ICO and the project before investing and mostly project with a detailed roadmap is the one you should trust.

It is more likely those newly formed projects are inexperienced and hence might not be able to handle the project to a successful end, even if they are not scam. Am not saying that is always the case though .

From my experience, i have noticed that ICOs that promise dividend after investment end up to be scam. Most of them look like ponzi in nature. A typical example of such that i know of, was impressio. Some scam projects can disguise to be real, yet they are scam.

To minimize your opportunities to be deceived, a detailed analysis of the project is best suited, which today becomes very difficult, because the scammers have learned to deceive so well that it is very difficult to distinguish a good project from the project's scam.

Those are good way to set up our minde to nog getting scammed by an ico project. Everything that would we take are still have a risk. We must learn anything and every step of the project, we must know the plan and the growth. Make sure that the project that we are joined is a good project.

Thanks to the author for his useful advice. I know almost all of that, but it's still good to remember again.

It's almost becoming a norm to get scammed these days. Well, a lot of these scam stories can be prevented if we consider certain things and take them as precautions. First, make sure all your details are never shared with anyone online, read up and do your researches on projects, their managers and reviews  before you actively participate in anything. Be safe!

It’s also necessary to check the availability of profiles on Linkedin for the main team members, as well as the number of contacts for each of them. If the profile was created recently and there is no information about the previous places of work, such developers also can't be trusted.

if people fill out the form 100%, then even existing information should be checked. Thus, there is still the risk of being deceived. It is necessary to trace the whole chain of biographies of each person with whom you will deal.

That's a good idea.
We have to protect ourselves, before others take warning.

Hello friend, if you want to get some information like this about a website, you can visit whois.com and then search for the website name

What you are saying is very true. Those who never had it in mind to scam inventors will definitely refund all their monies to them. The real scammers will surely run away with the money

In my opinion, we must trust the selection of cryptoprojects for professionals. As in principle and in any field. Everyone should do their job. Sometimes, to get caught on a scam enough of such stupidity. We need to be more attentive to the little things. I think with a long work in this area and comes the ability to distinguish between a scam and normal companies

I rely on only my analyzing which consists of detail checking, talking with more experienced people and making trends for it. And this is enough for me.

This information is very useful and can help prevent people from being scammed. Even though some projects may have all these features, if they do not reach soft cap, bounty hunters will not be paid and investors may loose their money.

What you are saying is very important. I came across this project and its only the CEO whose profile was available on linkedIn. When i questioned him about it, he said the other team members wanted to stay anonymous so i stopped doing their bounty. Eventually, the project ended as scam

Thanks for the piece of information. There is no way you won't be scammed in this crypto especially when you doing bounty. But if one could follow your guidelines, I believe it will reduce the rate of being scammed.

If you are not scammed at ico that is good but not last, tokens would be literally left by the team and that is basically not scam  :)

Scam is major challenge in crypto these days and we all have to fight against it and make crypto attractive to the world

9. Is there math and tech in whitepaper or only words?
10. Should the solution to the problem described in WP really be decentralized? Maybe traditional DB or website will do the trick?
11. Does the token has any real value in the upcoming project or is it for example just a discount token/any other trash?
12. How much competitors will the project have?
13. Is the team capable of making everything they promise or is it too small/unprofessional for the task?

Basically, Investors prefer to go on well know currency such BTC to minimize being scammed, there first basis is how long the currency excess and how many trust it gather in a long run, although reading and investigating is enough to say if a coin is satisfying. Its to insane to avoid being scam but it can be lessen, a good way of it is a detail roadmap of presenting the coin. As I see most of the coin had a favorable start to collect investors and as times goes changes are coming and many projects has occur, that incident is the riskiest part cause provider got his belly full and its unpredictable what will gonna happen next, better if you prepared your minds in to deal with those circumstances.

I think it's very difficult to minimise risk of being scammed. But we should control the risk,study the profile & contact the team members time to time who involve with projects. after satisfaction all about the project then should be investigated.

well for me, you cant minimize it, the only thing you can do is try to avoid it, minimizing it means that you will still be able to become a victim of scam with such a low risk, but if you do everything you can to avoid it, then you might be.

Definitely Yes I agree with you mate. All you have mention is what we need to know if the ICO project we are going to join are legit. But scammers nowadays is very wise. They can still provide what you have mention but still it is a scam. Maybe you can lower the risk that you will be scan but you can't really avoid it.

The thing is, that even if you check all the points that were mentioned in this thread, you still could be scammed. The team may just stop developing the project after a couple of months, not right away after the ICO stage. They even may be listed on a trusted exchange, but if there is no utility for the token - it costs nothing.

To reduce the risk of losing money. It is best not to invest at all. And if you decide that you can accept these risks, then you need to try. Just think about how you can still get an increased profit of more than other investment options.

This is some serious information here .
But the major concern here is that most of the users who fall for the honey trap are the new and immature users who are just trying their luck here .
If they don't have an idea of how a whitepaper should look and what should it present , they will never be able to judge what is right and what's not in the whitepaper . Moreover , all the ponzi and FOMO hype has worsen the conditions and it is just impossible to be sure about any project . 60% of ICOs that are posted in the bounty fails.

The pump and dump groups make the whole situation very serious. It causes fluctuations here and there and the gap is also large. But one thing I always say is that, the future is always bright. Altcoins will one day gain the limelight they deserve, and it all depends on acceptability of cryptocurrency. As more people accept crypto there's the chance of getting a need and usefulness of altcoins(and that will make them fly high or trade better). I think developers of altcoins should also create realistic projects.

Thanks for this tips! I really wanted to reduce the risk of getting scammed but reading the whole whitepaper takes time. I guess I'm going to read a few pages of the whitepaper and use the other choices. Well, knowing the project really increase the chance of avoiding scams but still, there's no hundred percent chance to avoid it.

Yes, you've got the point the risk of getting scammed was minimize that's why it's really important to do more research before investing your time and money on a specific project.

It is based on your understanding. Because if you look at the whitepaper you can actually recognize if the ICO will success if you yourself noticed that their platform are feasible then you should trust that one and support it with all of your heart.

Now it is becoming more difficult to choose a good ICO, I spend more than one day on it. The terms of some crooks. I'm looking towards blockchain ICO projects.

The number of scam ICOs are continuously growing and investors know this for a fact which is why a lot of them try to stay away from ICOs. This caused the market's recent dumps.

As a careful investor, you should inspect the project. Research about it. Read its claim and evaluate if any of their claims are attainable depending on the efforts they exert. It is really hard to detect a fake ICO because real ones have its fault too.

Very good reviews to inform us to be more careful in choosing the ICO. Yeah, those questions can be the consideration when we are going to invest or join in the ICO. Of course, the answers of those must be analyzed carefully. We no need to hurry up deciding which ICO must be invested.

That is true ..
no matter how we should always try to avoid the scm project. this is very helpful to my knowledge. I also tried to learn about a project from this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4560719.msg41090029#msg41090029

The most important index which determines the level of this risk is being careful in the choise of projects which you are going to participate in and that's all.

In order to protect yourself as much as possible at the time of investing in cryptocurrencies you need to actually spend a lot of time studying a potential project. It will really be useful.

articles that are very interesting and useful. yes it's all back to ourselves, if we want to learn and understand every project that will be done or at least analyze the project first to reduce things that do not want to cool. be a smart trader or hunter because now the technology is getting better and growing. not a few of them are potentially deceiving.

from so many things you explain, it seems still difficult to determine which projects (especially ico) will not scam, because the fact is that now ico seems to be good (in terms of whitepapers, management teams working in the ico, token) is not a guarantee that the project will not scam, I have found two examples of ico that looks good but even the scam is uchit and cryptoriya

Minimizing or cutting down on the risk of being scam is possible by doing a thorough research on the project prior to investing. But more interestingly too is the act of diversification of investment. Never put all your investment in only one place!

No matter how careful we are in choosing an ico, we can never tell if the ico is a scam or not when the ico is still on-going. We can only tell once it is finished. There are some icos that are not scams but are also not successful in the end. When their projects become unsuccessful, I think it would be best if they refund the investors' money and tell the bounty participants that their project is not successful and say that they are sorry, not that they suddenly disappear at the end of the ico, maybe if they do that, we can understand them better and not hate them and tagged them as scams.

Of course always perform due diligence before you start to investing in any kind of project investment.
Thank you for the points you write here, it helping some peoples who doesn't know what to find out.
I usually checking their developers profile and their planning.

A very interesting article in which there are points which I adhere to when choosing a project or a coin for investing ;)

Your post is really helpful and insightful, and if the majority follow most of the steps on here, it would be difficult for them to invest in an ICO that is a scam and lose their money. Anyways, about the whitepaper thing, most of these whitepapers are even more convincing than those that are legit, so people need to be really careful out there.

Do you think that all ICO's which start with crowdsale are scams?

Scammers and fraudulent ICOs are now really very much in the industry. Fraudsters make their projects very qualitative and people are very often trusted with them. If you are very careful and follow the rules that you have written here you can choose a really high-quality project.

I really like this your concluding sentence very much. The scam in crypto is something we can never run away from but hopefully we can tame it. It is only the team or perhaps a member (s) of the team who know what they're up to. No one else can fish them out and so i like hardcopy your list. it'll help in taming it and we should also always not forget to avoid being greedy- it might end you where you don't want.

Avoiding the risk of being scammed is not actually an easy thing because it is obvious that no one has ever gained mastery of being a super man against the gimmicks of scammers, although as a bounty hunter i always try to go through the whitepaper  to actually ascertain the subject matter, that is, the important of their project to the society but when the subject matter is not properly detailed; i just simply close the page to visit other bounty that is worthwhile.

Thanks for the effort that you brought but we can not avoid sometimes to scam because they are getting well now a days they keep on searching also how to be strong. The best thing to do is to study well the ICO before you enter in any transaction sometimes you to be paranoid to be able to avoid the scammers.

We all know that crypto currencies transactions are most safest and the most confidential one and it is like next to impossible to hack the crypto currencies transactions as it provides us the user anonymity and peer to peer transactions and enabling no third party seizure in the bitcoin transactions thus no third person could see the crypto transactions and thus minimising the chances of ny hack or scam but in order to prevent yourself from scam you need to keep your keys and passwords very secure and confidential.

You should learn more and more knowledge, so you are more experienced in the market, in my opinion, you should not focus on doing and doing, take the time to learn and improve knowledge.

Investment is risky. What we need to do is to avoid traps or some cryptocurrencies with greater risks when investing in cryptocurrencies. We need to keep a clear mind when investing in cryptocurrencies. I think this is very important.

This is good, more people should follow this. It is true that we can always get scammed even if we are vigilant but at least we can make sure that we do not end up falling for the cheap scams. Also I would like to point out that people should always make sure to check the url of the site that they are on to make sure that they are on the right site before doing anything on it.

Are you sure one can stay in crypto without even a single scam incident? Maybe such a person is very new in the crypto community or he is not so much into it

Scam is always part of the game,no matter how careful and vigilante you are,you see different ICO with pictures of the proposed project very good and promising you see picture of the teams looking very real and so on,but at the end you just discovered you have been scammed,to me what I think every investors, bounty hunters should do to avoid this is to partner with icos that has built their name on intergrity and trust,and registered their company too,check for their licence that permit them to run an ICO in the cryptocurrency world and not just selecting ICO to participate, with this the rate of been scammed can be minimized.

Sometimes even of your are being scammed at the ICO stage, you can lose your investment if the team fail to pursue the project and the coin gets no value

Thanks for the information you take time to list out , if it is followed carefully being scammed will reduce drastically and it is also important to do background check up for the team of the ICO, also check if there is any previous business experience or business capital and just like you have said detailed roadmap is essential and it's feasibility

I will always say it to others that if you want to participate in different projects, you must give yourself a time to do some research about the history, about the project, their whitepaper and the team behind the project, those are the things that we need to consider before we enter into new projects. Its very helpful also to know if the project is suspected as a scam or it is a legit project.

It will surprise you that there was a bounty I read thoroughly about the website,roadmap and got what the project intend doing for those in cryptocurrencies. I concluded it was a trusted project and even recommended it to mates out there. You can't believe when it became scam  :'(.

I will also like to add that you look out for willingness of the team to list the token on time in a tier one, reputable exchange! Some  investor like to trade their token up and down to get more token, yet many project fails in this aspect!

These are real facts and also ways to avoid been scammed. You should also avoid phishing sites as well too. If you want to invest into icos, check their githib and also research the team to be sure they are credible

Thanks for sharing this information it can help us to identify the scam project to the legit one.

Nowadays the vast majority of ICOs are scam and even you're careful in choosing where to invest scammers are now professional for their project to look great and convincing to the investors. I think we can avoid falling to their trap by taking time to learn about the flow of ICOs and improve ourselves because its better to have enough knowledge to become aware of what to look for when investing.

Oh thank you friend.
I am also looking for that answer and I found it now.
At whois.com, everything looks really and is easy to know when you own a site for someone or a company.

This is really great, I appreciate that this information is out there for everyone who needs it to see. It is really good to know that there are all of these information on ways that people can avoid being scammed, dealing with scammers has become the bane of this industry and we need to find a way to weed them out. This is a good start if you ask me.

it's very difficult to avoid scammers now because they now have a lot in common like real projects, like websites, whitepapers and others ... but to check the age of my website I still don't understand, can you say how do we know it?

Bitcoin is not just a risky investment, it is the riskiest investment possible. But “risky” doesn’t mean “bad”. It just means that you have to be more careful than usual and have a backup plan in case your hopes will be dashed. And, of course, there are some precautionary measures you can take to reduce risk.

A good guide for the analysis of the projects! Thank you! ;) I would also add the study of the project activity in other social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram).

Yes, it is a good recipe how to reduce the risk of being scammed. But if someone wants to scam you, they will do as much as possible to do it.
I have seen many really nice ICOs which scammed their investors like Centra (with advisor Mayweather).

Investment is risky. I can't help suspecting that the most vital angle is the genuine application and estimation of coins. It is critical to ensure that individuals need to purchase these tokens. In the event that you take a gander at the proposition of various ICOs at that point you won't have any desire to purchase their coins, since you have no enthusiasm for this other than theoretical.

Good list you have here. I agree with the last paragraph, there is no guarantee that you will never be scammed but at least you can lower the chances of that happening by applying these guidelines.

It depends on how smart the scammer is, if you look at he bitconnect debacle it was blatantly obvious that it was a ponzi scheme, and they operated in plain sight. Those guys were smart and many people fell for it. Follow your brain and ignore the hype

Not "it won't work" but it's really like that.
ICO is held when the price of Bitcoin is at a price of 20,000 USD, then now the price of Bitcoin is around 6,000 USD and it is difficult to accept by investors.

I think the only way to minimize risk of being scammed whether in ICO investing or bounty participation is doing intensive research of the project. Reading the white paper, join different social media sites and  research the team behind it.

the way you give it is like it can be a solution for traders or new investors who find it difficult to make sure the ico or the project is scam or not, hopefully with information like this no one will be hit by a scam anymore.

I agree, these good recommendations will be able to help many people. But scammers stand still never and constantly come up with more clever ways to scam.

Well i never join ICO becuase its so risky and i dont want lose my money. The number of scam projects this year is too high and investor slowly leave ICO. 8 points you give is very usefull for those who want to invest in ICO. I hope scam project reduce next year.

Waiting for BTC with 1k price

like that there was, initially had no intention but because it was on the edge and there was an opportunity so they could have done either because the sales were not successful or indeed from the beginning the intention to cheat

Great post! It is a must for every investor to go through these rules and if every investor would stick to these rules, there would not be any scam projects, because such projects won't simply get any investors.

You need to try less to believe in public and popular projects and coins because basically they are doing a lot of popularity around something in order to quickly earn money from naive people.

Mostly you just want to be very careful with the kind of people that you are dealing with when you are investing in coins especially the new coins. The markets now are rife with scammers and the best way is to just avoid them at all cost. Always remember, if something seems too good to be true then it is most likely a scam, this can keep you out of a lot of trouble

How many do not study the project, it is very easy to fall for the scammers. Now everyone is very good at faking that it is impossible to distinguish projects that are good from scammers.