Bitcoin Forum

What Are ICOs And Are They Scammy?

As ICO moves from white paper, fundraising to final online deals Professional analysts say that 80% of ICO is a scam, and only 8% manage to trade on an exchange.

This is what we are getting all because this is an unregulated and decentralized market and there is no need to apply for any license or permit if one will be launching an ICO anytime just make sure that you have a disclaimer you are not accepting people from China, USA, Singapore or any other countries where ICOs are expressly prohibited. Unlike the IPO in the stock exchange, an ICO can go without first proving its capacity or experience in handling the project and there is no need to verify first whether the team behind can be real or not...this is the reason why scammers are having a big celebration right now at the expense of the victimized investors. I am hoping that there can be something to be done to alleviate this problem.

Ico is the short form of initial coin offering. When some coins launch they offer their coin through private sale and public sale where the coin price is low. And yes mostly Ico is scammey so before investing in ico's make sure to research first.

Recently, more and more disappointed in the ICO. Every day more and more new ones come out, but you do not want to spend time on them, read and study, because 95 percent of them are scam. Even those in whom I was so sure disappointed me.

Unfortunately; this is true. Nowadays most of the ICO are scammy. Since this is an unregulated and decentralized market and there is no compelling reason to apply for any permit or allow on the off chance that one will dispatch an ICO whenever they want. One need to evaluate the team members first to decide.

I think in my observation in Whitepaper and especially on website design. Almost of them are same design and coinshit all.

what I know about ico is to raise funds by selling tokens, these tokens are rewards to funders or what we usually call investors and basically they don't cheat because the tokens received by investors have the opportunity to have higher prices when they being in the market It's just that not all of them give good tokens and there are even some who don't give tokens but that is only partly because there are many ico that benefit their investors

Most of them now are.

Before ICOs are something good that made the market healthier but due to the bad usage of it, it has been crowded by scammers.

Look at ICO as very high risk investment. Even if you do your own research there is still chance of fail.

Read trough various experiences of people with ICOs and watch youtubers explain how it all works. That all helps in the learning process and should help you down the road.

Also, here is a tip for you how to find good youtuber. Find a few months old video from youtuber where he predicts prices of ICOs or coins, check if he was right. If he was right (youtuber) continue to watch his videos and learn from it ;)

ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering. It is a fund raising mechanism where investors offer some unit of crypto currency in exchange of crypto currency like BTC and ETH. Yes they are scam because there are no regulations for applying for any license. Anyone can launch and thus it has security issues. So before investing on them please gather a sound knowledge about the project.

ICOs or initial coin offerings are ways through which a company raises cash to finance a blockchain project, some (not all) can turn out to be fraudulent

Initial Coin Offering or ICO is a fundraising mechanism for new projects by selling tokens that will be used in their project with payments using multiple cryptocurrency or fiat, basically same as IPO. There are usually several stages such as Private Sale, Pre-ICO then Public Sale with the bonus they offer.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/guides/what-ico/

Scammy? I think yes. But not all of them, on Google, there are many ways to distinguish between a scam and legitimate ICO, but it does not guarantee, at least it can increase our success chances of joining a legitimate ICO.

Lately, SEC has launched fake ICO to educate investors and newbies like me, the details can be seen here: https://cryptocurrencynews.com/icos/ico-news/sec-launched-fake-ico-howey-coins/ And here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3920469.0

ICO is very high risk investment, So be careful!!!

This is the main issue regarding crypto currency market. An initial coin offering (ICO) is the way to raise funds by crowd funding and it needs no regulation to start any type of ICO. This allows many fraud groups to create false ICOs and take away the money of the investors.

Hey Doctor A,

I agree with the majority of people in this thread that many ICOs turn out to be scams and this is likely due to improper regulation. That being said, many ICOs are not scams and are damaged by the hesitation investors have due to the huge influx of ICO scammers. ICOs in general are a risky investment but if you find a quality product that you believe in, nothing is more satisfying in the cryptosphere than to see the project succeed after an ICO.

Best,
CafeCoin
https://cafe-coin.com/

The ICO is a common thing in the crypto currency. The new projects collect the capital through. Here you will find many scams. But you have to be aware of the investment. If you verify before investing; you will benefit.

ICO stand for Initial Coin Offerings and this is a sort of sale given when a new coin is launched. All the ICOns are not scams but some are. You should go through the whitepaper and the website properly while choosing an ico to avoid scams.

You can treat ICO as IPO in crypto space. ICO is the medium for projects to raise the capital they require for building there projects. They ask public to invest in them before the project is out in market and in return they provide coins on a cheaper rate then the expected rate on listing.

Scammy or Not? Depends upon projects, you need to be very careful while investing in ICO, a lot many scam ICOs are out there which just run away after taking your money.

ICOs are startup teams collecting money from different people to fund their project.
They come up with promises to share any profit their projects makes with the people who invested them.
But most of ICO issuing team are not dedicated enough to work hard with others money and spend it on unnecessary task than developing the real project.

I still don't know what Google created for. LOL. You can find every information you need about ICO on Google. But if you wanna know if all ICO are scam or not so I can tell you that not all ICO projects are scam :). Although number of scam ICO is really high but it's not all. You still can find out so many good ICO projects to invest out there although it's being in downtrend.

ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering. When a new company wants to start a new project and they need funding ther start a ICO to offer people their token with discounts; profits and bonuses. Most of the ICOs are scam but there are lots of potential ICOs too.

ICO is a collection of funds for the release of some kind of cryptocurrency. You give them BTC or ETH, but instead get tokens. These tokens when releasing a coin on the market should cost several times more, it is good to be able to receive a multiple profit. But today, indeed, most of these projects are scam, and some simply can not collect the right amount of money, so they do not enter the market.

You can’t generalize by saying ICOs are scammy. But it’s true that most of them are. You need to be careful before investing.

Suffice to say that most ICO projects are hype. ;D
While some ICO projects are truly valuable, you need to decide for yourself which are worth investing in.

ICO is a way to raise a fund to develop the project and it's also great opportunity for scammers to do the same, make a fake white paper and any details just to get investors.. but not all ICO are scam. There must be some with real usefull idea to improve one compamy

ICO or initial coin offering is the private and public sale of coin when it is first launched. If analyze for a while you’ll find out that most of them are scam.

ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering. From my experience most of them are scam but not all of them. You can identify good ICOs by analyzing.

ico is one of the profitable investment. Besides being profitable for investors, ICO is also beneficial for bounty hunters because they will get the paid from ico. not all ico are scams, there are still many legit ico that can be followed. it all depends on how we can choose the ico well.

Initial Coin offering (ICO) is an approach which is actually a type of crowd funding that use crypto currency; is a way of raising capital. Recently there are many ICO projects and many of them are scam but not every ICO.

ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering which means someone is offering investors some units of a new cryptocurrency or crypto-token in exchange against cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Not every ICO is scam; but it’s true many of them are.

ICO which means Initial Coin Offering is an unregulated means by which funds are raised for a new cryptocurrency venture. It’s really not a good news but it is true that recently almost 80% ICO projects are scam.

ICOs main work is offer the coin and as far as i know most of the ICO is Scammy so before invest on ICO you need to research about this.

Well there are few ICO’s who are legitimate but the amount of fraud ICO’s are so many that it is quite to differ the legit ones. This situation is really very upsetting for the users of crypto currency.

The acronym "ICO" means (Initial Coin Offering). In a simple term; they are coin of a particular bounty that is open for sale to investors to buy in other to enable them implement their project and after the they might have reached their market cap and accomplished their project, they will then distribute a percentage of the total revenue raised to the investors. Most significant about the ICO is that the token bought by the investor will be sold whenever their is an increase in the price of the coin above the initial price at which  he bought the coin.

Despite the infinitesimal number of programs that are scam in the bitcoin Forum; ICO's are not scam in its entirety.

The ICO’s who scams are usually attract their investors by lots of available promising promotions. Investors fall for their trick and ultimately the ico where they invest in turned out a fraud. So stay cautious where you invest before everything.

"ICO is a crowdfunding a new cryptocurrency and an innovative idea that can be implemented
on the blockchain technology.But it's a bad news that 90-95% percent ICOs are scam.
"

"From research I know that before the coins come to the market; for the precedes or the fund
raises coins were given at very low prices. It is called the ICO.Unfortunately most of the ICOs
are scam.
"

"Initial Coin Offer is the short form of ICO.I think few scam/crap ICO usually use unneeded
complex words in technology/concept page to make investor confused and think it's
something awesome while the fact it's nothing special/useful.
"

Most of the ICO : short form of Initial Coin Offerings fail before going to the trading stage because of their poor attention in Secutiry; Utility and Cryptoeconomics

Most are scammy, ico is initial coin offering, tokens of the project are offered to people at the begining of the project instead of mining.

I think most of the ICO scams. But you have to verify. If you are aware then you will benefit. The ICO is basically made for investment collection. Which collects a kind of token and coins exchanges.

to my knowledge, not all ICOs are scam. as long as I participate in crypto to this day, only 2% are scam, the rest is 80% not.

ICO stands for Initial coin offering it is the best time to buy tokens but the sad thing is most of them are scam or cant even reach the softcap so you better do your own research before investing or else bye bye money

Ohh, if this is true then we had lesser chances of getting profits with those batches of ICO as many people wants to invest to try their luck to gain profits in investing ICOs. Maybe it should be 20% will made it to exchanges.

There are a lot of fraud ICO projects now in the current crypto market. Because there is no rules and regulations for these projects. So; whenever people invest in these projects they got cheated.

Of course the situation on the market with ICOs is more pessimistic now than some years ago, but it is not the end, and it is not the tragedy. It was obviously that such a "tasty topic" like opportunity to collect and get a lot of money will attract  people that are creative but not honest. But there are lots of projects with really good interesting perspective ideas and trustworthy. Of course it is sometimes very hard to identify the scam project and the trustworthy one, but it is possible))))

ICO is a shorten word of the pharse "Initial Cryptocurrency Offering". It mean that this is a form to mobilize capital from investors to deploy their project by the way sell off their tokens (they make it themself and have no value if it is not listed in market).

They certainly are not synonymous. Like every other rapidly growing Industry, there are the Fortune Hunters that jump on to the bandwagon in this space too with an objective of making quick bucks. They are the scammers. If we look for a strong team with a great idea and a MVP at the least, they can be filtered. The point is, a reasonable assessment of the website, whitepaper and the path that they follow, gives a good chance of weeding the scamsters out. Strictly, my understanding!

ICO project Is been designed to improve standard of living, most of them are not scammy

ICOs are basically initial coin offering project before starting or releasing any coins into the market and exchanges. Not all the ICOs are scammy but recently there has been cases where the ICOs ran away with all the investors' money and vanished in thin air. So; be careful and do your own research before investing in an ICO.

Most of the ICOs are scams almost 80% and 10% ICOs are trade on the exchange.

ICO is initial coin offering, they are so useful and helpful in years ago but now no one can trust any new project conducting ico because they are mostly scam except few.

ICOs are the most dangerous place to invest, and they may never be able to eradicate fraudulent ICO projects. Today, fraudulent projects are very smart and smart. We should avoid losing money

As I understand it moves through white paper. Some expert said that most of the trade on exchange some of it are scam.

Just go to google search Crypto ICO, a lot of post explain what is this and why it's important for a project to become success, ICO let project team collect funds to run their platform, but as I know more than 70% project failed to raised fund or just a scam ICO to steal investor fund, ICO investment is dangerous but it's also let us earn easy money, you need to find out potential project, such as ubex, current market dip not easy for an ICO reach their hardcap target, but ubex DONE

Crowd funding on blockchain. Some are some aren't just like anything

there is a lot of understanding and discussion here about ico and about understanding ico. You can search from many references and read them. this must be because I think you will understand if you find a long understanding in the article discussion. and certainly not a scam like you think.

ICO stands for initial coin offering which is a project selling their stocks to new investors who trust their project and for funding them to run their project.
And it's scam or not, it depends on the ICO itself

If you are a member of the bounty company and it turns out that this company is a scam, it is necessary to conduct the following actions, namely to remove all your content from social networks for this company. You can not leave a chance to scammers. I recently found an interesting article on Bitcoinstall and I suggest you to read it. use https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4598987.0

ICO's are just abbreviation for the term "Initial Coin Offering" It means that someone offers investors some units of a new cryptocurrency or crypto-token in exchange against cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum. (c)blockgeeks

Are they scam?

No they're not, but most of them are scams. ICO's are just new projects which uses cryptocurrency to run let say a messenger project that requires token in order to send message as a load. (That's the simplest way i can explain it) But it depends on the project some of the ICO's uses token as utility and some are for security.

To avoid scams it's better to do a background check of the project, members and other informations. This thread that I've made might help you feel free to check: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3196383.msg33152916#msg33152916

ICOs are launching of new coins with the help of investors and relentless efforts by a whole community and developers. Not all the ICOs are scammy to be honest. There are reliable and credible ICOs out there but we need to have the basic sense to understand which of them are good and which of them are bad.

ICO are initial coin offerings and they are referred to as ICO because they are the form of investment that people make in a company when it Kickstarts and in return the company pays the investors tokens that are pegged at a fixed price at the time of ICO, and if when the company delivers the products then the project gets more attention and the price of token in the market also rises due to which the investors get more profit for investing.

ICO- Initial Coin offering in short a funding where projects do seek on to built and develop on the project that they do propose to the public. They do need support by means of financial.
Scammy? Yes, and its being a common thing here on this market to see those shitty projects that do tend to scam. Promising fake plans and showing some deceiving whitepapers.

Lots of ICO are scam as we can see now but there are great projects that has done successful ico now so it is neither bad nor entirely good, that depends.

not all icos is scam, Before investing in any ICO you have to research about their development team, White paper, Roadmap and is there any real product they have been selling , and also you have to check that what problems they will solve from this ICO. thats my suggestion before you invest in ico

ICO is the first stage of a cryptocurrency. They raise funds to develop that project in the future. Many ICO scams at this time, It causes frustration for many investors. And that makes ICO in the last 6 months of 2018 become quiet because investors have been afraid of ICOs and lose confidence in it.

ICO is Initial Coin Offering. The coins or tokens are offered for exchanging the new project. In the case of ICO; most of the time scamming. But you have to verify. You'll benefit if you invest your skills.

Usually ICO offering lower price for some token so it's the best time to invest if you think they are worth to invest.
AFAIK most of them are potential as scammy ICO so make sure you have observe first their project based on community feedback that you can find on forum such bitcointalk before try to invest !

First of all, ICOs are Initial Coin Offering that helps a company or a project to come up with the necessary fund they need to sail away with their offering!

No, as much as many ICOs proved to be scammy, in general, i'd say they are not so scammy in actual potential.

The ICOs could never be scammed as they have permanents record with them!

some of them are scams, we must see and learn them first before joining ico. but there are those who also really pay and give us big profits. all depends on the concept of ico.

not all ICOs are scammy,although scammers have taken advantage of the fact that there are not regulations.may it is high time we demand escrow of ico funds so that teams do mot disappear

ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering. When a new coin is launched the organization decides to arrange crowdfunding and pre sale of their tokens through some discounted price which can later be used. Not all of the ICOs are scammy to be precise but in recent times a lot of them are. You need to be careful and do your own research before investing in one.

Totally not all the ICO are scam, but since last days is an increasing part of them, so you need to increase your awareness while you will choose your ICO to follow and invest in it. ICO is a tokensale basically.

Not all ICOs’ are scammy. But you have to make sure before investing your coins. Because there are a lot of ICO projects launching everyday; some of them may be fraud. So; you have to be careful before investing.

Now there are a lot of ICO projects which are available now. They don’t have to follow any law or rules. So; they may cheat on you. It’s wise to understand about the ICO projects at first and then invest.

When some coins launch they offer their coin through private sale and public sale where the coin price is low. As per analysts say 80% of ICO is a scam. before investing in ico's research is mandatory.

ICO helps to establish the new coins and we could able to get information regarding several topics ; but unfortunately there been many scams isuess are happening and this all are actually effecting it reputation but hopefully soon the things will be more developed

In fact, there are a lot of good ICO projects that try to create something useful for our world and help investors earn. Therefore, even with such a large number of fraudulent projects, you can find quality.

Not all scammers are in new projects. But about half exactly do not represent anything from themselves but only create a work visibility by copying the code from another successful project.

There are tons of discussions related to this topic on BTT, like this one regarding scam ICOs: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1963768.0
ICO is a form of raising funds, that is very similar to crowdfunding (if you haven't heard of that one - it's when people are offered to invest in a certain project and receive stakes as a form of reward). ICOs are related to cryptocurrency world, the products of ICOs differ though, from medicine related projects to entertainments and AI. ICOs started launching in 2016, reaching top point in 2018: total number of ICOs 712, approximate amount raised by ICOs is 17.8 billion USD according to coinschedule data - https://www.coinschedule.com/stats.html?year=2018
Top 5 ICOs ever are Filecoin, Tezos, EOS, SIRIN LABS Token and Bancor: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/initial-coin-offering-ico-what-are-they-how-do-they-work.html

it all depends on how we see a project. if we have negative thoughts about a project then we will be afraid to join in it. we must know that there are some risks that will be gained in the world of cryptocurrency, and we must be able to avoid it. one of them is by choosing a good ico. it will make us avoid unwanted things.

Some ICOs are set out from the onset to scam people, some good ICO can also turn to scam due to the team's inability to meet their roadmap. Some ICO also run foul of regulation thereby forcing government shutdown.
So yes ICO can be scammy but there are still good ones that are relevant and successful.

ICO literally stands for Initial Coin Offerings; in meaning; ICOs are the project of fundraisers of various projects; companies; programs; and events. ICO has accelerated the Coin business in the world by offering tokens worth of coins in the meaning of Crypto-currencies. It is very important for the crypto-space; as it becomes. ICOs being the scam; fraud etc as it is not regulated by any authority thus stands in Crypto-market where e=verything is based on freedom. We need ICOs; We should check them deeply before involving in them.

ICOs; also known as initial coin offerings; are when companies provide pre saling of tokens on discounted prices before a launch of a new coin. Most of the ICOs are pretty quality based and reliable; although you should always look at the team behind its developement. Are they reliable?

ICO is been called Initial Coin Offering.

Ico is meant for the fund raising of a particular project or vision. Ico is used as a medium to actualize the project by individual funding and assistance. Most of the ico's goes through this process while some don't. Some might go through the medium of selfdrop and all are just good.

I think in the next couple of years the situation will change and only projects that really want to work and improve the entire infrastructure will appear on the market, for today most of the projects are just scammers

The full form of ICO is initial coin offering. Here capitals must be raised by crowdfunding with using various cryptocurrencies. These days the rate of scammed ICO has increased a lot. We need to be very careful before investing on an ICO project.

There are a lot of hoaxes in the ICO today, since it's an unregulated and fragmented market, and there's no compelling reason to apply for any licenses or allow people to send an ICO at any time.

Indeed, lately there are many ICO that are scam, but there are also many ICO that aren't.
I think we just have to be more careful when selecting an ICO to invest our money on.
Choose wisely and so we'll get avoided from any scam ICO as possible.

ICO is more like the offering of these coins in the initial stage through private sales before they get enlisted in the market and be open to the general public. And yes; most of them are scams. That is why we need to be careful before investing in them.

Hello doctor, you are a noble profession. ICO is a way for the project team to finance. For example, if you need to run a dental hospital but your funds are not enough, you can raise funds like this in the world, and then your profitable profits. Distribute to every investor who participates in your ICO. But now many ICOs are scams. Many of the projects you know are entrepreneurial, and entrepreneurship is very difficult.

ICO means initial coin offering and it works like a new public offer of shares but that market is regulated and till now, no regulations are there to tackle with the mischief of any ICO. Many countries banned ICO investment before regulation as they don't want that their people lost their hard earned money if someone does any scam. Many ICO gives decent returns to their investors but not all ICO are up to the mark.

Generally ICO means initial coin offering and it looks like the initial public offering of the stock market. When a coin comes for the first time in this market; it goes for ICO.ICO can be scammy or can be not. Be very much careful when investing in the ICO project.

Every company starts their business by launching their coins and this launching is referred to as ICO.S The meaning of the ICO is “initial coin offering”. Actually not all the ICOs are scammy but it is very difficult to understand at first.

Obviously the circumstance available with ICOs is more negative now than a few years back, yet it isn't the end, and it isn't the catastrophe. It was clearly that such a "scrumptious theme" like chance to gather and get a considerable measure of cash will pull in individuals that are innovative however not fair. Be that as it may, there are loads of undertakings with great fascinating point of view thoughts and reliable. Obviously it is now and again difficult to recognize the trick venture and the reliable one, however it is possible))))

You can consider ICO, for the most part, as Internet startups that have nothing at heart, but they are very eager to earn and will use all their strength to invest in their well-being.

ICOS are initial coin offering and they are also very good ways to make profit. Though most of them are scam but f you take your time to do a very good research, you will find very good projects to invest in and make profit from it.

ICO is a form of capital raising for project development, of course there will be many fraudulent ICOs, let's thoroughly understand the ICO you want to participate in.

When some persons decide to work on a project and they want huge fund for this they form company and issue ICO which means "Initial Coin Offer" in which they will give their coins to the partners or investors and after listing on exchange the coins will give decent return to the investors.
Here are many ICOs are running so invest only in good ICO projects who have good team and working project. Because now-a-days many scam ICOs are also running who take away your hard earned money.
According to me every-time be careful beware of scam ICOs, and for this read-out the whole details of ICO projects and if found good then invest in it and if not find suitable then don't invest in that ICO.

ico arent scary and scammy if we follow the right ico rating websites then we can analyze the right ico for long-term growth but the development icos are real and take time for growth

I think that you already understood what is the ICO. And, of course, not all of them are scam. I will not deny that there are a lot of projects now and many of them simply duplicate existing ones products, trying to change and add something new or simply promising to do it. But you can't categorically refuse to invest in good projects. They exist. You just need to look carefully.

If the ICO fails, it is certain that the money collected during the process must be returned to the investor.
If it is not returned, it can be said that the ICO is a SCAM. Be careful of friends with ICO whose information is lacking!

You can determine what ICO is a scam if they have whitepaper that look like a copy from others it just changes by other as well and also if their are.participants on the ICO

The ICO Project is a campaign of issuers of their own coins, calling for investment in their projects to make a profit. Do you have a scam? Yes and pretty much.

ICO is an offer of a coin that will appear and require funds to be collected.
If SCAMMY is a group or people who make public lies to seek profit from the losers.