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Suspicious activity on our favorite site icobench.com
It still began with the article https://hackernoon.com/beware-of-ico-bench-97addacfedc7 from Philip.
Where he unflatteringly speaks about the experts on this listing, also looking at several ICOs and their ratings, I noticed testimonials from ico-experts, who say so softly contradict themselves.
What do you think, is this their new kind of earnings?
Leave a bad review and then ask for money for editing reviews?
It is very interesting to hear your opinion.

I'm not sure why is everyone surprised honestly. This is a well-known fact, ico rating sites are not really to be trusted. Most of the reviews are pretty much fake or sponsored (bias) and that's why you find people falling into scams all the time.

If there is anyone to blame though that would be us, the community because we gave them so much power. If people were using their brains instead of investing based on a meaningless score, they wouldn't charge that much money for listings etc. and they wouldn't get rich on our back.

In my opinion, all the reviews are not reliable, the projects can use the money to buy good reviews, too easy to do it. So take a look at the review pages as a reference.

It is an open secret, this is one of the ways they earn money! I remember of one ICO called RoomDao where ICO Bench tried to extort the owner. I remember reading a medium post made by the owner of Roomdao on this very subject. However, I am not able to find it now because the issue may have been solved between them and the ICO also moved to a different owner.

Also one ICO Alethena launched an investigation on this and the findings are shocking. I encourage you to read the medium post below to get the full picture,

https://medium.com/alethena/this-is-how-easy-it-is-to-buy-ico-ratings-an-investigation-13d07e987394

This rating platform is botched up pretty badly and an informed investor will never decide on the basis of ICO Bench rating.

I don't trust icobench because their rating and expert review untrustworthy, I think some of them is pay per review to increase high rating score, my opinion is icodrop better than icobench, a lot of project listed on icobench with high score, but project owner run away at the end, I just use the site to check the project ICO price, other information: don't trust it

Yeah I smell this bullshit a couple month ago before hackernoon publish an article, ICO bench always change their rating sometime like konios ICO, maybe 4.5 rating ia given because of money

Personally, I like this platform. I do not pay attention to the estimates and try to independently evaluate the project, but through ICO Bench it is convenient to track the latest ICO and information about them.

In general, people should always follow their own criteria. Even if all the ICO rating sites reviews are absolutely legit and unbiased, they may simply be wrong, and you could be making a mistake based on another person's opinion and not yours.

 I do not believe in ratings on such platforms, I heard that expert rating can be easily purchased. In any case, it is better to do your own analysis when choosing any project.

I think most of the reviews are based solely on the feelings of the icobench team. Sometimes I do not believe them. Reviews can be paid for the purpose of attracting investors.

I use icobench only to search for new ico, and I can make an ico list based on when ico will end, basic info like how much is the price of ico, whether the ico is still pre-sale or already Main sale, about the ico rating I don't believe 100% because of things it can be bought

There are some theories, that it costs a lot of ETH to be listed on such a website and to get great marks. But I do not think that it is true. I usually look at the rating websites for great projects and the ICOBench is my most favourite one.

This platform was a garbage from the beginning. I don't know how you can define it like "our favorite"

All ICO rating sites at this time are for profit and few good projects are listed at these sites. I think we should not believe anything and must judge for ourselves, because if we have the knowledge, the risk will be less and less, and it can help us make a good profit if the project has a clear development.

Those 'approved' experts especially, are actually all paid shills. They'll often give out 10/10 reviews for a few bucks or a promise of tokens. It's just weird.

Yes, all ico rating sites are set up for profit. Once there is interest, they will never give a fair rating. Especially now ICO has begun to move towards the edge of scam, more Ico rating sites have become tools for scammers.
So for any Ico rating site, it can only be used as one of our many investment references, but it is definitely not the key one.

I always take a look at ICO-bench and similar websites when I'm looking for a project but I never take too seriously their rating because I know that it's ofter manipulated to earn more money asking project to pay for a better rating.

I am pretty sure that expert ratings can be bought, just like positive youtube reviews, articles, comments and other things. We as an ICO had dozens of offers like that (to be fair, though, not a single one was about buying a score on reputable ICO calendars). What can be trusted, however, is the score without expert rates. The reason is that it's calculated automatically on many websites (icobench included) and just cannot be interfered with. At the same time, this score is based on many things that can be bought (for example, hype and subscribers in social networks, viewers of website and youtube etc.) and the program cannot really determine the potential of projects adequately, giving both overestimated and underestimated marks from time to time.

But not only icobench but whole of ico rating site except icodrops. That's the only reliable ico rating at this time. I don't even know why so many people are still trusting that garbage ico list site.
It looks like these guys must try to use their internet to get the reliable information about this one.

ICO should not rely too much on rating sites. They're always open to manipulation. But ICOBench is one of the better ones.

First of all, I must say that I do not trust this resource, because this resource has very strange actions, but still I hope that they can make the project verification strategy more transparent and clever, because it happens that the advisors can be bought.

for a long time, i did not believe in some ico rating website because the ICO can pay for High rating! Some of them is not realiable, Be careful!

Check out ICO List by CoinCodex (https://coincodex.com/ico-calendar/), there are combined ratings from various ICO rating sites.

Cryptocurrencies, ICO is free and open market for everyone, not regulated, there are no rules.
Having positive reviews on this site is something like having an advisors in your team - you pay them and they will promote you.

There is not any reason to believe in ICO ratings now. And there was not in any time. To fix that situation government should regularize this field like it is in stock market. Without government's participation things gonna be even worse.

They are having an enough money from their paid reviews, they would not risk their gold laying goose for shady blackmailing reviews.
ICO Bench is one of the favorite ICO rating site as they provide most discrete and researchful reviews. Though they are not to be trusted blindly, I don't believe they'd be involved in blackmailing an ICO.

He does not ask. He's just hanging it here. They contact him and pay money. Well, I think rating systems lie to us. The one who pays the most gets the most. This form of business. See how many of these rating agencies are now.

the most logical answer by far.
people started to forget the reason why did they create that kind of project, rating is part of business. all of them will say something or rate you based on how much your money, plus some of them will ask you a listing fee in order to get listed or get rated by them.
that is why it is advisable to collect the information from many sites or many sources.

remember, people will not do something if they do not get something in return

This site was created in order to sell the ads and promote ICOs. It is obvious, isn't it? People make money, and icobench is just another tool for promotion)

Why so surprise? Im sure just recently discover how these doggos do work and doing shady stuffs. As long there are review sites they are really prone into such possible bias reviews.
Due to they are on the possibility on being paid just to make some so-called expert reviews from others just to show-off that their project is worth to invest on but the truth
this do really wipes out the credibility of their service and this is why i dont really easily trust up these  review sites.

It is a platform, it is there to guide, these are reviews done by humans, and the last time I checked, it is said categorically that no matter what, as an investor, you should always do your own due diligence, so, in a way I do not see the reason why people should be putting blame on ICO review platforms.

Trust yourself, as that is the main thing anyone should be doing and make sure you always do your own research as this is the only way you can be sure of whatever you are investing in. It is your own money and you should not let anyone make you decide what you should be doing with it.

I still make use of ICObench though to see what people are talking about, but it is just a guide, knowing the number of ICOs in the space and having to filter them, but it is just a way to know what I want to be researching into myself, which is the team of this projects, the availability of a standard product, and the solution the product is actually bringing. If people cannot get to do all those by themselves, then they should not even be investing in the first place.

There is nothing as good as your own due diligence and for the fact that experts are humans like you and most of them are just simply looking for a means to get richer, it has really corrupted the way a lot of them tend to do things with integrity over time and therefore get to mislead people eventually.

What is important as an individual is to at least make sure that you have your own understanding of the market, know how to do your research and due diligence, know what to look for in a project which is basically the team, product and business solution, and then with this you would not have to rely on some experts before making your own decisions.

yes that is their new profession. that's why I don't trust any ICO rating website. they are only fraudsters who disguise themselves as ICO experts.

This is very bad. Corruption has already reached here. I think it is not bad, you want a good review. Pay. This may adversely affect the confidence in the cryptocurrency. I'm upset.

I've been in the crypto industry for a long time and there was a time that I want to invest into some new ICO just to test out how does it work qhat I've tried is to do some new ICOs online, read reviews and ended up to different ICO review sites there was a new ICO they're promoting that it encourages me to invest on it and guess what?

The project is a scam. Well i don't 100% believe that ICO bench and the likes give 100% review it's a business afterall they can make a great review in exchange of great payment however that doen't mean that there are no legit or great projects out there, the best thing to so is to review the ICO by ourselves and conduct our own reviews.

I do not trust any sites that give an ICO rating, as they just make money on it. You can see only if you want to know some information about the project.

I think Icobench is a paid surveyor and I don't even believe in it dright now. When I start in crypto, I had been following Icobench but right now I feel like it's not reliable anymore.

There are a lot of paid projects to get good reviews at ICObench, I know from 2018 when I noticed that there are a lot of projects that are well reviewed as scam and failures. I never believed in it and now only the icodrops are really reliable

I think it's not a secret anymore. that's why the site rating could not be definite about the size of how good the project running because their system even as it is. certainly it's their trick to get results but certainly, it was not justified. own analysis will be even better I think of relying on such sites.

Selling website. I watched ratings there earlier and then understood that there all projects buy to themselves good rating.

Ico rating sites is losing a lot of confidence in the eyes of crypto  investors. The reviews of the projects don’t reflect the truth.

We should be responsible for our own money and decide base on facts that we research from them not on the bias reviews from those ICOs reviews site. Those sites can make a good reviews in exchange of money. It's business they need money to maintain their sites.

It seems to me, everyone has long known that rating agencies have been bought. Therefore, you shouldn’t rely only on their assessment in selecting ICO. Icodrops is one of the rating agencies that you can still trust. However, in general, now it isn’t the best time for ICO investments.

That`s website is good and we can use to choose some posible good bounty campaign but dont use this information as main source of information in choosing bounty campaign because not all time  that website is reliable to choose good bounty program because we need to remember nobody's perfect  that is why we need to learn how to choose good project in your own knowledge.

I bet everyone who is in crypto at least half a year doesn't take seriously ICObench.
 For me it is just payed website to search new projects, but I don't care about their 5 star rates, because it is bullshit.

Nah, I don't think ICOBench even are that stupid (to do bad reviews and ask money for edits). That's basically just blackmail and anyone knows blackmail, no matter the ends, won't get you anywhere. The law is very clear on that, blackmail, like murder, crime, no matter for good or bad.

But come on guys, surely you know by now that all sites are useful for a certain limit of information, right? Get what you need, no need to have trust for all the rest of them.

Ofcourse some of review are not reliable i can see so many successful ICO which has a very low rating on icobench.