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So, what does KYC mean? I always hated that thing, mostly because I feelt it is an unnecesary leak of information.

With these times and all the shitcoin scams and real waste of time and money I came to the resolution that we need a new meaning for KYC.

Know Your CEO.

The best way we could prevent or atleast act in the case (most certain) of one of any new project being a scam is selecting a number of trusted users of the community to verify the "Team" of any coin just the same way we are verified in most sites.
Since most of the new coins claim the "Team" is the people shown in the pictures they shouldn't mind verifying it to this peculiar non snitch trustworthy gathering of users.

In the case a project is to be compared to bitcoin or ethereum and the team crave anonimity you shouldn't need an ICO or could provide code before launching and provide a service.

Any ideas? Would anyone actualy ask for this before investing? and keep the word and not invest without the check?

I think it is more than a fair price for trusting someone with perhaps thousands of bitcoins.

Edit: I has another interesting post few ahead for (for the ones that read op only)

I think you have a point with this, we as investors are the one that have something to lose if things go wrong and if the team of a project are proud of what they are doing without having bad motive they should allow potential investors to get to know them even before initiating the fund raising. This will increase the level of trust about the project.

I am a bounty hunter and also customers complain about this.
KYC in the customer's perspective is also very important to know the clarity of the team from the project.
Many ICO SCAMs place fake teams with unclear KYC status.
but to find out the project has a genuine team and has verified KYC can check it on the trusted site of icobench.com.
Many developers have joined and verified and they also help people who are competent in their fields so that they will be safer and more trustworthy.

Often them team is just a profile picture purchased from photostock linked to a made up linkedIn profile. A formal verification system needs to be done on the CEO and senior members of the team to ensure that they are real, this would safeguard the investors from scammers

KYC means nothing to us but the developer can use of your KYC to be sold to someone or just using it for the verification purpose.

I should agree with this one and this idea is actually needed to give more protection to the investors. These icos teams have no idea about what's the main purpose to implement KYC for investors. we don't need another idea because this is already the best one.

I'm generalizing but all or most I seen about ICO promoting sites cannot really prove the projects are legit, I did seen a good few of succeeding projects but that is not something that can be atributed to the site itself since they only promote it.
Most of the scams are pretty poor made and well, they just similar clones nowadays.

Then there's again as someone mentioned, we are facilitating our information to perhaps indesirable identities while investing so an eye should be keept from all sides.

First of all we have the problem of fake ID, we could complicate things for them a lot, I mean what kind of stupid verifications we get on "legal" sites?, wether it be gambling or, whatever that involves information, meet in person could be nice but also really easy to scam, cam?

Second is capability, before, one had to come with code first. I seen 80-90% of the team aren't really programmers on most projects, what are we looking for people to plaster our ideas into a currency or usefull service, recreation etc. Or hypists to spam our not even made brand.
I were very harsh here, there is involvement of a lot of people for a project to succeed but you cannot expect to be able to do something just by finding nicer and better ways to tell something, and well having a wider audience to do so.

I don't agree with taxes, but people accepts them and since we are paying taxes for benefits or "cashout", extreme ones in some countries, we should also be able to use aid from the government in verifying their identity and, well, mentionable doings of the team.

However with this measure I'm extremely concerned for other projects, projects mantained and developed as communities and exchanges asking for such things for listing, there is projects that are developed differently like bitcoin, monero, ethereum etc, such projects could have proven developers which identity wished to be wished shall be private .

I have been suggesting something similar for a while now to avoid fake and scam icos, it should be a rule that the project that intends to raise funds should post company registration documents alongwith team's kyc documents verified from government agencies and i think this is the only way to filter out scammers from ico community.

Everyone has a price.

Even trusted members of the community can be paid to write positive reviews.
And even if they are truly honest and do not want to do positive reviews for a few bucks, they could just make mistakes

So it's better to do your own research . .

Great, one has legs too in case is too susceptible to prices, however, how bad would be if these peoples identities become public if they really wish to progress through an ICO?

One should always do his researches aswell, and I cannot find trustable just a group of people either, thats why I recommend reading the second post I made aswell.

I think LinkedIn is doing a good enough job for that already. Profiles that have been live for decades are not exactly falsifiable, and you can always contact the CEO's connections and ask around.

I made once an account that could easily been leaked on my time of low security passwords since it was same as of leaked mails.
Besides that accounts can also be farmed I think is nothing close to enough.

I think there is a need of an intermediary. A trusted intermediary which should receive the KYC of the applicants on the behalf of companies, verifies them and send the results to concerned company. I think there are already few websites providing this service but adopting them as intermediary is not a common practice among companies.
Such intermediary should work two-way, verifying applicants KYC one way and verifying the genuineness of company the other way. Everyone will be in win-win situation.

This idea is a sophisticated one and I'm in support of this move. The members of the team are supposed to be known to investors even before the commencement of the ICO sale. They need not to hide themselves from their investors as investors are shareholders on the project as well.

What's interesting is that projects that promise to create a decentralized platform are in demand for KYC. They're breaking down their own rules when they're at the beginning yet.

KYC/AML is really needed especially if you are starting a company that offers innovation and if you want to improve your services and if you want to have a solid statics and data system. You said that you need to know the CEO of the company before letting them know your personal information but it's not the thing you have to base. You have to know the whole team and what they really do. If you really wanted to try to invest with them then you have to try your best to reach them and talk with them verbally.

OP, please check this the remediation of having KYC/AML. :  https://complyadvantage.com/knowledgebase/kyc/kyc-remediation/

We used to have escrow that hold funds for projects but I only participated in a couple of them.


Sometimes parteneriates request such thing and is the way to take if you want to develop a legit business.


What I mean is the same but from the perspective of the community to prevent and be able to recognize and localize the subject in case of scam.

I accept to pass the KYC process only when the team members of the project are verified. If I can assure that the project is legit and won't steal my funds, I do  not have any problems by passing the full KYC procedure.

What if they got paid, perhaps with the cryptocurrency itself. I just don't see why can't we just ALL or.. most of the investors see it clean and transparent as it is and it goes same for politicians, when you have in your hands the future of something people might believe in be it a country or a currency or a person AND your position tends to be seeken by unwanted activists then atleast for a while you should accept a leak in privacy unless you can give proof upfront, like code itself.

They can be hard to distinguish if you don't look well, some are pretty easy to spot indeed and then you got a real shame of graphic designing wasted in some.
I'm saying nothing about KYC from the user sender side
Also, identification and verification can be faked on many sites, thats why in 2nd post if I'm not wrong I were mentioning for more drastical measures I dislike a bit. That's why I think joint cooperation between the community members would be crucial to prevent.

As it seems to me, binance carefully checks both the team and the viability of the whole project before displaying it on binance launchpad. I think the ICO taking place on the platforms owned by the exchanges will be the trend of this year. Customers trust binance, because if i happens "misfire" exchange risks losing part of its reputation.

Anonymity is one of the reasons why we choose crypto and you can be scammed with such thoughts. What if the project is scam, and steals all of your data?

Binance has been able to reach the current position because of the careful work.

I heard some peoples suggesting you must KYD (Know Your Developers) before you start to participating in every ICO.
This is no other than a part of due diligence that should be required to avoid scam or fraud projects.
I am agree with you, from our point of view as investors or supporters, we should know who are the peoples behind it first.

KYC process is one of the issues that always makes me feel doubtful to fulfill it.
It is not about who I am and their trust to get who I am, it is not about decreasing the multi accounts or citizen from forbidden countries to invest.
I personally come from a country that is always allowed to join in any case of ICO project, both as investors or even bounty hunters.
however, feeling doubtful is always there when should send my identity to someone over there that I really don't know who they are, trusted or not. It is such worries for me.
In fact, I never find out the teams of a project that also shows us their identity, real identity to ensure us that they are not scammers. They only put social media or other links.
well, so blunder at all until right now for me.

That is what is happening now. It is true that the Binance launchpad is one place where people want to invest in the ICO. Of course it is not arbitrary projects that can be included in the Binance launchpad. If the team from the project is not trusted, of course Binance will lose his reputation.

Knowing who is the real CEO of the project should be useful for the future of the project that we invest on or join into the bounty, so there will be a guaranty even if the project isn't successful at least every investors could get all their money back.

KYC is more shits rather than waiting for your bounty coin to be listed to an exchange. Just don't invest on any KYC ICO platform.

Some project may avoid dealing with the law prohibiting ICO / STO in some countries such as US, China. So it seems normal that they require investors to do KYC. But right now there are many projects that are not convincing or maybe fake making us hesitate to do KYC.

This is indeed necessary and thank you for sharing this method, Although it's still not enough, at least it can spot the fake ico or etc.

Currently there are many trusted KYC service providers such as Civic, Jumio or Sum & Substance. If the project integrates it, I think it's safe, the rest just need to do more research like seeing the team background as you said

This is wrong, have you not learned from the experience of several previous projects such as Hashcard? Some Experts who are there now are only experts who are paid even though some of them still have a passion for reviewing. So the review cannot be used as a consideration.

Investing in token sales is almost the same as gambling, sometimes you are lucky or not.

This is an interesting idea, but I think it is difficult to implement it. I mean that such a decision can have many pitfalls.

KYC should be done in good projects and we don't need to worry too much about this information because they always have the best customer security policy. I believe that only fraudulent projects have signs of selling customer information and this really affects us personally. I hope in the future many companies will provide 3rd party KYC services so people can be more secure in selecting projects.

You are very much correct and I agree totally with you on this, I don't see any reason why we the investors in this ICO projects have to carry out KYC before we can have access to my coin.

What is the KYC used for? Because the last time I checked, I actually used crypto to make purchase of the token and not fiat, I think the KYC should be for the owners of the project so that we know they are not there to scam us, not for us the investors becase we always end up becoming the victim.

I had this idea a year ago. But crypto is a special environment. There are many projects without identification of both users and creators of the project. The problem is that they can find a way around this, because everything is voluntary here.

Account Verification I think that it is necessary, first of all, for the founders of the company, from investors or bounty hunters, I think it is enough to confirm the phone and the mail

This was my challenge in every ICO projects that asking for KYC to its customers and bounty workers.

I always them, I show you mine if you show me your's :D Their most common defense are, they already completed KYC verification in icobench and also in other ico listing websites and they don't need to undergo KYC to its users.

KYC has its advantages and disadvantages, giving away vital Information to a total stranger could sound queer most times, but we have already gotten used to the trend, that today people do not even think twice before giving up their identity.
Your suggestion is a good one and will aid in getting hold of exit scam ico owners and also reducing the rate of exit scams

I fully agree with you. I think that while there is no regulation in the world of cryptocurrencies, such tools for team verification are necessary.

Kyc for developers! This is a good idea, agree scammers a lot. But the question is whether they want to do it. After all, it is easier for them to enter kyc for us, not pay.

I agree fully with you. I believe KYC is introduced to eliminate scammers because there are fake people joining cryptocurrency though it can be stressful.

I recently done KYC on Binance because I would like to participate in Celer ICO. And I have to say that their ID verification is the best one, fastest and the safest.

It is hard to obtain genuine infos regarding ceo's, the easiest way is to make a black list with all the projects (and the team behind it) that has been proven to be scam.

I'm very tired and cannot make a post right now, after I sleep and wake up well I will make a new post erasing this one and making a  new one or something.

I just had to note that  one must be very careful on notes about people around a project, shills and such.

I have also thought of this many times, but most of the project teams will not want to reveal their identities to just some chosen set of people in the community, because they too do not trust just anybody, just like investors I'll not trust just any CEO. This is why we need platforms like Civic and others to help in this process.
ICO listing sites should also come in to help, but the case is, how many of them can be trusted?

Definitely, the new meaning for KYC should be know your CEO. There are a lot of scam projects all over the crypto ecosystem which is making investors lose huge sums of money and also driving out serious investors away from real crypto projects. I think I support this new name and direction.

Inasmuch as ICOs need investors kyc information, it's also important that the investors know who they are actually giving their money and he/she is ready to be held accountable.

I know a platfrom called kyd (know your developer), they check and review the developer of a coin/token. but i don't know if their review is authentic or not.

Honestly i only invest in a project that have a video showing their team's face

I think this would be a great idea and it would definitely help crypto industry to grow a lot since people could invest only in project they trust. Honestly I don't know why someone else didn't thought about this before since the industry of ICOs would have been completely changed now. Every new project that claims to have a team with dozens of years of experience in cryptocurrencies should prove it to their users first before asking them for money.

I agree with this thread. Perhaps many bounty hunters doesn't agree with kyc verification, i think kyc is for the investors but not for bounty hunters and some good projects states that they will be having kyc on the starting poibt of their campaign, but some aren't telling kyc, they would just surprise you if their project is done already.

It also depends on their own method of verification and selection, there is no system that does not have loop holes, if an hacker can break into United State of America fund to steal, which system cannot be broken ? Even with Binance Launchpad, we don’t expect 100% perfection.

Remember that we are operating a decentralized system even though we have centralized exchanges but even with that, the projects in question, the team are scattered all over the continent, Binance cannot one by one verify each of them individually but will still be system verification, so I don’t see Binance not still having one or two challenges with the system,and that should not make them imperfect.

The only KYC we need is a KYC for a team) They taking our money. They must give us some guarantees that they will be working for the project and that they will finish the project or return the money.

KYC was created to comply with the fiat world and its laws of centralization and is enforced by the government to mainly prevent money laundering but also to keep track of what people are doing with their money so that they can tax them.

at some point in last years when ICOs started failing and could no longer fool enough people to rob them, they started coming up with weird ways to look legitimate and one of the many ways used was KYC. then immediately afterwards they realized since they are not really regulated and there is no law that they abide by, they started selling all that information to make more money.
the worst part is that KYC and its problems is not even an ICO related issue. there are exchanges that have done the same thing! like bittrex selling user data on darknet...

that is KYC from customer perspective.

I mean, I just outright refuse to invest in any sort of ICO, just because they usually have absolutely nothing to show for it and the chances of getting burned are just too great.
Think about it, there are enough projects that manage to get things done, before even raising a single dollar of funding.

Verifying the team behind an ICO might mitigate some of the risks, but in the end it's always possible that they do not reach the goals they've set out.
No matter who they are...

Most of them (team that created ICOs were not verified) we can take how bittrex was refusing to launch its IEO caused by the bittrex team has discovered a shady things from the team. KYC should be mandatory for the team.

Well, this is not something that allow us to see competitiveness but yes however cataloguize their capabilities if they actually do a job. Also, there is always more people, and time, we aren't against chronometer right now all real hurry is eagerness for profits or timing because of speaking too early.
Indeed most successfull projects were either done without any coin raising or the code was provided right after the raising, so, done before.


More funnily, with their identity known they might think twice before doing a run after the ICO.

I think KYC used to be done because both company and government demands it towards user so they don't launder money bla bla , but if it was done from us towards unknown people AND taxes are paid then it should be surveilled/identified by whatever entity recieves the taxes (treasury I think it is called) , not a company that hasn't proven itself and has chances of going shady.
Shouldn't treasury take care the creators are legit since all this shit is taxed?

Also, whoever claim's an ICO is trusted just because is on icobench or whatever site might be a shill or holder, I agree it might give a better insight or even can help prevent scams but one is also easy to be influenced, just look at yobit and their own shittokens coins all day, everyone profits. Shitcoins, we don't even get those nowadays and if they were easy to create then an ico is a term of 2 months where you hype and raise.
Not having a whitepaper before even mentioning an ICO says a lot already.

And for the end, how and when the hell we start making it a crave and deny doing it otherwise?

You are absolutely on point, this is one of the great ways we can use in knowing a good project by verifying the team directly, at least a very good project should not be afraid of displaying its location and location of the team members which any of community members residing in same country as the team can verify and give feedback.

It will really be great if groups can be created generally for people to join other than the ones created by the projects, whereby people can come and discuss generally about any form of ICO for verification purpose by any member residing in the country of the project team.

Know Your CEO? :D Mate, you made my day.
 After all these scam projects I am tired and want to do something different than passing the pre-determined barriers by CEOs. Now revenge time!

Well, the truth is that there are some project here in this forum that was managed by some trusted forum member here and at the end they all turn out to be scam. So, i think your recommendation may be also difficult for it to s÷ the light of the day.

Well, thing is all they do is accepting a ridiculous amount of btc for managing and promote it, perhaps they should specificaly say if they endorse the project or not , not leave it in a limbo of conveniency where you misguide people and earn without a penalty. So even if they promote they should atleast admit they endorse it, it is still a factor left in cause for the promotion but a bit would be mitigated.

However promoting obvious scams this way should also be punished somehow.

Also, we really need to see and talk how we will start demanding this kyc.

Note: While I wouldn't usualy just change the subject like this I feel that since I already have signature I could do no harm in metioning LIF , or even more important, windingtree.com, It is one of the most legit projects I seen out there after an ICO with constant development. Price is on one of it's ATL's however it raised a bit.

https://kydcoin.io/ someone forwarded this to me in an alternate site.

At first, I also had a negative attitude to this procedure. I did not participate in projects where it was necessary to pass it. But now I've reconsidered my view of it. I understand that this is a good way to protect against fraud.

But many projects also abuse this procedure. They may steal your personal information. So I can not say that I also have a good attitude to KYC. I very carefully examine the project before going through this procedure.

This is good suggestion because it's important that we know who is team in every project so we can have assurance that what we invest will not take away. And if the there's no motive to scam the people they will agree to this so it will fair to their investors.

I had similar feelings towards KYC earlier, but when I wanted to participate in a sale I finally did the KYC. After it I have passed it I told them " now you know me, it is time for me to know You as well" and put a bunch of questions. At first they were surprised but responded politely. One of the criteria I judge a project is how accessible  their leader is and how he is responding to the community.

that could have been the case if they were only accepting fiat but 99% of the ICOs have been accepting cryptocurrencies (mainly ETH) so there is no anti money laundering involved in it anyways! not to mention that almost all of them have no "company"! a group of people on the internet who code are not a company hence they are not subjected to any laws.

I wonder if any of them will be able to give more order than the whitepaper they present to us which are sometimes misleading, the only one we can still rely on for now are the projects some of these big exchange are listing under their IEO, hopefully that can guarantee us at least 80% of the genuinely of the project and the success of it because no exchange too will like to promote a coin that will make people loose trust in such exchange after promising to cater for the assuring part of the project.

KYC is essential for compliance and for startups to prove their team consists of authentic professionals who have the skills required to get their idea off the ground and achieve success, and it's also important for investors who are committing capital to be able to verify who they are investing in and what qualifications and experience they have so it's wise to check if this has been approved before you invest in any new ventures

Now you can fake any documents and show them on the Internet as your own. We experimented to create a new document on the basis of any other document, changing the information and photo in it, and then print, put in a special cover and present it for verification by KYC. Such documents are tested by KYC, they are very difficult to distinguish. I think that the publication of documents and other information about yourself by members of the ICO team will not solve the problem of fraud. We need government regulation of ICO activities, only authorized state bodies are able to qualitatively verify the documents provided in the original and completely eliminate the problem of fraud in the ICO.

that's a good idea, we're turning things around. if previously the CEO demanded our data, now we also have to do it to be a draw. so nothing is hidden because Kyc for 2 parties will create a project that is open to each other.

I can't agree less with you on this team members especially the CEO of project should be verified and ready to be accountable for investors fund should anything go wrong, many team have used fake identity to scam ico buyers kyc the CEO before giving them fund is a welcome idea.

on the one hand KYC helps to weed out any dishonest,but on the other we still understand the policy for what is it to high to control people and track who's doing what and who has what money and who can influence which processes,that impose KYC and not for fighting crime though!

This should be done as collective not as a single user, if we demanded it from the beginning and done it all we wouldnt have any hassle getting the data, verifying and perhaps meeting part of the team atleast.

it is important enough to avoid project scams. when the team is also required by Kyc, they will not dare to scam because their identity is very clear and can be reported.

There are several ICO projects that I follow that use real Teams. And the project can be successful and continue to grow. And I think the Team must also pass KYC so that investors and bounty hunters can check. And I think that can also increase trust.

Some time we need KYC not only for investor or customers but also we need KYC for owner and ICO team, they are really trusted person or not because almost of ICO owner never could be trust with their promise.

yeah, indeed we must be more careful in giving our personal identities to others. we don't know what they will do with our identity.

before giving our identity, it is indeed a good idea to recognize "who they are" if they are people who work with responsibility and can truly be trusted i think it doesn't matter to follow their rules.

How many I did not ask the ICO team to answer my question  to call the regulatory act on the basis of which they demand to undergo a KYC check from bounty hunters and that it is written in these documents about us, no one answered me. I am sure that the ICO teams themselves do not know the answer to this question, and their demands that we pass such a check is only an unjustified excess of their authority. We just need not to participate in those ICO projects that require us to provide our confidential data so that these projects cannot collect the necessary funds and these KYC checks against bounty hunters will disappear. Or you need government regulation of ICO.

You are right and at the same time wrong as well ,for example look what happened to few well knowned exchanges this year ,we know them ,both CEO and teams that still doesn't safe us from losing our money and coins ,and there are projects with verified CEO that still went scam so KYC will safe some and KYC won't safe many ,it doesn't really solve anything

This looks hilarious like a turn table. The rabbit hunting the hunter. But on a more wider perspective, information of teams bounty hunters will run marketing campaigns for should be known and available after proper evaluation. Know your customer - know your project developers should go hand in hand

Personally I have a feelings that scam ICOs require KYCs as their efforts to show that their team actually seriously work and carefully check applications, registered forms from bounty hunters to show that somehow they are not scam teams.
I doubt that teams of scam ICOs will check those KYCs and verify them for bounty hunters, because eventually they will make scam exits, with money from investors, and IDs from bounty hunters.

maybe KYC system must be annihilated from requirement need for just buy some token or coin, as long your token or your coin sold in sale event, who care about KYC procedure, it doesnt need i think.

Now, to test KYC, the CIVIC project team has released a good application on a smartphone, where you are going through verification and further, by scanning the bar code, you confirm your identity in the project, so the scammers will not cooperate with this company!

In perspective of governments and bounty managers, KYC is fundamental tool for them.
- For governments: to trace flow of money, to investigate in exit scams, and more reasons.
- For bounty managers: to screen, indentify and wipe out registration/ application of bounty-hunting farms. In short, to avoid abusements.

What will happen the project itself turns into a scam.Giving the personal infomation to others has risk always no matter of who we are giving the information because most trusted site can even leak out our information or someone from insider stole and sell it on dark web.

I am agree if KYC applied to developers team because many scam ICOs last year. But its hard to do because there is no regulation on cryptocurrency market, anyone can create their own token and sell it and leave it. If government regulating crypto, i am believe it will reducing scam ICOs

i all the time keep repeating this. it is ridiculous to demand kyc and private information from investors. crypto market provides an anonymous ecosystem for its participants. what is the meaning of the kyc.

Guys, I totally agree with you. Those structures that are not authorized to collect personal documents must meet in accordance with criminal law. Each country has a specific regulation for such things, but the cryptocurrency market today is outlawed in many countries today.

This is why I've not been anonymous from the start. Everyone knows who I actually am

It is not a good application in my experience. I tried it firstly on mobile, I tried the maximum 3 times and all failed, then I contacted the CIVIC guys by email as requested, and still I could not get it done.

I will not say which project this was but it was several months ago. Everything worked well, I could scan and do selfie, everything,,, but when it came to verify, it said failed over and over again.

Does this company comply with European Union regulations regarding the security of personal customer data? What responsibility will they incur if personal data is stolen? Without answering these questions, few would risk using the services of this and other similar platforms. Cryptocurrencies are growing up and now companies need to get used to taking responsibility, especially when it comes to the security of customer money and personal data .

Thats great idea it should be implemented in all ICO,IEO and other forms of crowdfunding event, I think we should apply these as a requirements for All ICO's to know better about the real background of the team that implementing the ICO and the project itself to be held criminally liable if they are mismanage or scam the money they raise.

Well, the team must all pass the verification of identity. And this information should be publicly available. Then everything will be easy. Scammers themselves will leave the market. Of course, they will eventually find a loophole. But at least 1-2 years will be calm.

a lot of fake ICO and it uses KYC, be careful of your ID, it could be misused, trackico can verify every ico team, that's a compliment to a website that provides ICO

But I do not think that this will happen, who will verify his identity? Or he will send ID to everyone who asked for that?  ;D
This ID problem is trying to solve ICON. Maybe after that no scammers will appear.

Originally, I have known KYC as "Know Your Clients" but now I discover the new costumers refer to it as
"Know Your CEO". In the wise that it is majorly introduced to suit the CEOs better. Well, I don't see negativity, because I think the managers introduced it to authenticate the identity of participants and reduce scam,fraud and even crowd.

I am amused by such thoughts, I want to laugh at the naivete of the author of the topic. Never a single business owner will disclose all information about himself, because it is at least not safe for him and his family. Gangsters can come to his house and rob him. This is the first reason why directors will not go through KYC.

I am interested in your statement.
My question is when a CEO / CTO / CMO submits the KYC on some ICO Rating websites, does their document check properly?

Know Your CEO is a good idea , if all ICOs starters pass Know Your CEO procedure then u will find that 99% of them just attracted by easy money making and scam intention.
i still dont understand why investors give their money to some unknown stranger with exchange of trash whitepaper and some promises and then Dev disappear or keep burning ICO fund by spending it on them selves and investors waiting for coin or token to take value while Dev/CEO living a luxury life with their money.

But in EU there was no GDPR that the user must agree with it before they can give their documents that related to the identity to the icos platform. As far as i know amazix was applying it and those icos must follow that (EU icos)
That's indeed any country has different regulation.

Good point!
I told already about that more than year ago. It could be good solution, or ether CEO will be some fake persons..
But main thing, no KYC must be collected from bounty hunters

I really appreciate you posting. This deserves thousands of merit. The main thing here is verifying the team members of a project because many just spring up now to scam investors. Wish I had some merit to give. This is the best post I've seen today.

I have tried to do KYC at CIVIC to join in a bountyhive campaign, that's good and in my opinion is very simple, but not all projects work together with CIVIC.

A bitter truth has spoken by this thread! This is the right time to be strong against all those shady ICO projects. They ask KYC for them who are supporting their project to grow, investing to make the success! :( This is totally strange! They should come with a video KYC, address KYC and all the original documents. I feel bad that we are not enough united, if we raise this question strongly, then project CEO has to response our call! But people still investing without proper investigation and they let them earn money and scam! We have to ask them KYC first before making any positive step about those projects!

Its not really needed at all for them to comply their KYC first. Seeing project transparency like developer/team existence would be enough. Checking out social platforms are legit ones and do really have that realistic goals
when it comes to their project funding.
The only mistake as an investor is that we do keep feeding those scammers because we do lack of some search or further verification.

KYC is because of regulations nowadays of sec and i see it was required in general to have a legality before conducting and ico than facing the laws after the successful crowdfunding. Everyone should be smart to look into the credibility and research on the informations of the team and not only hoarding in the project.

Investors should really gear up to this KYC stuff. They are the ones to be verifying these so called project team members with just pictures on whitepaper or website. Investors entrust their money to unknown persons, yet these persons still demand their documents for verification. This post is just the best.

Hole new way of looking at things. Actually the proof of the complete team involved in any ICO should be provided to the users. Also, I would always like to be anonymous in crypto field.

I think people do not just invest on coins that are even unknown. The stories about scams are often heard and with this I am certain that investors are really asking about the team especially the CEO. But there are other circumstances when people  will fail in correctly choosing the ICO. One big factor could be unpredictability of the market and the competition between new and exiating coins. Even good ICOs sometimes fail and it is not because they are just scams, it just they did fail.

A lot of people were thinking about idea of Know Your Ceo. Of course non company which request us to send documents, will never ever agree the idea of making their ceo and team documents to be available. Seems they take care of their identity but don't give a shit of ours. This can't be achieved so easily, protests must be massive in real life in every country. It's not fair when some people can see everyone's KYC and we even don't know who the hell they are, it's very, very unfair.

Data is valuable in the parallel market as it can be used by criminals to apply punches. We have to know to whom we are sending our data.

I've encountered few project that the CEO itself has passed a KYC verification in well-known sites and it seems that its working to attract new investors to trust the project because they knew that the CEO is real. I look forward to up coming project to do this as well so we can gain more trust from old and new investors.

Most KYC procedure can be fake specially this ICO project CEO, can easily buy fake documents that includes selfie KYC. The best way to create more transparency is to create a team video and saying hi to bitcointalk community.

Actually the CEO is nothing more than the public image of the company. I would be more interested in knowing who are the developers of the project and in general, knowing the team involved in such crypto, what are the reasons that led them to develop it and what regulation are they willing to sign in order to ensure the correct handling of the funds from investors.

If possible, I would like them to be honest enough to return the funds in case the project is not completed in a timely manner; That seems more important to me than knowing in what school the CEO studied and what car he uses.

I fully agree with the opinion that team members and the CEO may pass KYC on forged documents and prove to be swindlers.

I believe a CEO who meets the requirements has passed verification from various sites, which will be very influential when holding the ICO project and the results of his hard work are very good.
If there are some cases that fail to be seen from various aspects, such as the project is too ambitious, preparation is not mature, there are intentions to cheat, etc. which ultimately affect all projects because they make many parties frustrated.

KYC isn't a bad idea but my problem is when you are paid penny for a bounty that also requires, funny enough most of the bounties I did that really paid me well never requested for KYC

KYC is still a tool to manipulate fraudsters, as security is a key issue in the crypto industry. And, of course, not all project managers will provide their personal data on demand. Therefore, it is easier to verify the authenticity of the profiles and accounts of team members than to endanger influential project participants, with the risk of personal data being leaked to a fraudster.

well atleast thats one way to stop scammer. If investor only want to invest their money to project that have KYC of CEO or even their team, then only ICO that have CEO KYC will success. so that you have a chance all the legit ICO will follow that.

KYC talks about know your customer, isn't about know your SEO :P but you are right, to have a good SEO now days is like have a good manager, at least is the one who will send you to the moon but is the one who will take a piece of cake XD

Everyone wants a piece of cake. So it's better than with whom it is not clear. Last year I had too few high quality projects. We need to stop trusting the pieces of paper. Trust those who have long been on the market.

We can trust some of the project which is launched in platforms like KickICO , COSS  recently Kucoin because these exchanges are having reputation and most of the ICO's launched in this platform not a scams . Apart from this we cant make complete check on ICO in crytpo space because most of the Greedy Scammers announcing ICO's.

n my opinion, KYC should not be enforced. because the KYC goal is to collect customer biodata. we as customers send KYC the stupid thing we have done. because we send personal data to parties we don't know.

I love the way you gave a new meaning to Kyc. It's actually the biggest agony of bounty hunters. They're required to pass a lot of requirements and information in exchange of scam project rewards. It's important for us to know a certain Ceo first to make sure that we're not exerting effort for nothing.

if it's for bounties, airdrops, or investors then how can they also think of giving their tokens to people who don't provide their data. what actually happened was that they only wanted to record the community from their part. they are supported by a community that is right there are not just one or two people disguised with a lot of data.

So much issues on KYC, you are right mate, investors are the once so much at risk here, because they do not know who is actually behind the scene, all they see is picture, and they put their money into the project and still undergo kyc for people who they are not sure of. Blockchain should stand by it's anonymity, the KYC doesn't make so much sense.

May I raise a question? What if this Know Your CEO becomes a real thing, do you think it is going to be okay for the people to still pass their KYC? But anyway, I never thought of this move before. Since I believe that the legitimacy of the projects is also crucial like the information that we are giving to these people.

Absolutely, but now project even pop up without anyone knowing the team behind it. You ask about it and all they could say is for anonymity  reason we will not disclose the person. Whom do you want to invest in such project with unknown individuals. It about time we look into things properly.

Any anonymous developer that is asking for BTC thru presale, ICO should be avoided completely..

These anonymous team always rebut with satoshi being an anonymous developer for bitcoin

Seemingly there are such services as civic which seems pretty governamental since i saw it linked with banks aswell, could provide a bit of help, an user mentioned few similar services few posts up.

I hope people starts asking for this before investing, should be okay to hand your data to legit companies or well if you have them by the balls.

I also dislike KYC that process any personal informations. I am not really comfortable with it but others are giving away their KYC infos with some unsure ICOs. I understand some of their point for AML programs but i only trust and give KYC to the selected and trusted organizations only and not for the small ICOs


It is easy to know their CEO, but I also suggest that they have to provide us some contact informations for easily access in case of any unethical act of their team. Also, I was just thinking, they easily point out some fake CEO so I guess it can not help a lot to provide solutions to the KYC problems.

Know your CEO :D
What a creative opinion about the KYC!
KYC is not dangerous for trustworthy projects but  I can't say the same thing about a scam projects.

I agree here. I believe that KYC and AML is innovative and compliant with the different governments and playing safe. I am blown away by the innovation of the companies that are able to help with the tracking and tracing as well. The recent CipherTrace and Binance partnership really solidified that for me

For me i have no problem for any Bounty program that required KYC, as long as it can not affect our personal identity but knowingly only. And of course in terms of payment after all are good and fair to everybody.

I really like the windingtree project with their token LIF.
Their whole team is verified by civic I think and is a very innovative project with nothing more than development and partnerships 0 hype 0 pump.

Expect most shitcoins to sell your data after they certain everyone knows its a scam and their identities safe.

If you don't value your identity then you are free to undergo every KYC procedure ask by different ICO project just to get paid in their bounty programs. Soon your identity documents will end up in the dark web being passed around and sold like pancakes

If you strictly approach this issue, then the participants of the ICO bounty campaigns are not clients of the ICO team. Clients are just the ICO team in front of us. We provide advertising services and the ICO team pays us for this with their new tokens. The customer is always the one who pays, who invest their money.
KYC checks should be conducted to prevent the laundering of dirty money and combat the financing of terrorism. For other purposes, it is not intended and using it for another purpose is an excess of authority. Since in the relationship between bounty hunters and the ICO team, the client is still the ICO team, it must pass the KYC test in front of us, if necessary. Because such checks KYC in cryptocurrency is now brought to the point of absurdity.

KYC method is basically to prevent money laundering. But by times, project implemented this without necessarity which end as useless method. In my perspective, personal documents are in danger of we give to others as people can impersonate ourselves. But this is not available full bad thing, we just need to chose the right person to give our personal documents. Make sure they are not a scammer or bad person.

That step will be a big relief to investors however that can't happen easily and it's not easy as what you think. SEC should be first to regulate ICOs and next submitting kyc documents of the team especially the CEO. However, this won't still guarantee no scam risk though it will just lessen.

Personally, I spare myself from investing in ICOs, no matter how lucrative the project is as we all know how it will end up.
It will be useless eventually.

That's true and I know it's mandatory for CEO to be transparent so he can gain trust to it's users. I also like KYC for customers so during sale we can avoid abusers who will buy tons of tokens and dump when enter in the market.

KYC should only be mandatory to ICO Project owners and team members while those customers wanting to buy more tokens they are taking a huge gamble with the project and buying tons of tokens will help the project reach its funding goal.

Dumping occurs in any coin/token project and it cannot be controlled by anyone.

Checking KYC for the ICO team will not save us from fraudulent projects. ICO teams must undergo a more thorough check than a KYC check and must be carried out by authorized government agencies. At the same time, participants in the ICO bounty campaigns are not clients of the ICO team, because they do not invest their money in ICO projects. We provide services for advertising the ICO project and conducting a KYC audit against us is contrary to its goal - the prevention of money laundering and the fight against the financing of terrorism.

I think that is a very good and useful idea. Among the project teams there are also a lot of scammers and therefore investors need to know who they give their money to.

This is in fact a good idea and I like it. It also gives investor the power to confirm or know the team before investing in the ico. Know your CEO will dramatically reduce the scams in the crypto space, KYC know your costumer on the other hand is applicable under AML anti money laundering which is not the reason of the scams. In addition, IEO has provided a new mechanism of fundraising that has eliminated the risk factor.

KYC is a good and reliable thing to do because aside traders and investors, there are scammers around and so investors need to know who they are giving money too. Its very necessary.

Yes, I agree with KYC. Actually this supports well, besides preventing some KYC accounts, it also enhances relationships with developers with their personal information. Most who don't like to say are scam and risky but from what I observe we are too focused on seeing the downside.

The fact is that only investors can be considered clients in ICO projects. ICO bounty campaigners are not clients because they don’t invest in new tokens. In the relationship between the ICO team and bounty hunters, the clients are just the ICO team. Therefore, bounty hunters should not be tested by KYC, this is contrary to the purpose of such an inspection.

KYC is really needed to reduce fraudulent ICO. And not only for investors there is a need to know about the authenticity of the team, as well as for us bounty hunters when choosing a company to work. In general, everyone benefits from this.

Hey guys, I suggest you take part in a cool reward from the Gexan project!
NO KYC! Payments monthly! The GEX coin is being traded on the exchange!
Bounty started yesterday and will run until June 30th.
May 10, 2019 Gexan project will hold IEO on the exchange, which is included in the top 25 Coinmarketcap. Thus, by the end of the award, the GEX coin will be sold on exchanges.
This is a very cool offer!
Sign up for a reward in the bounty thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5136521
link to ANN thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5136520
Web-wallet Gexan: http://lottery.gexan.io/
Web site: http://gexan.io/

It will not stop fake ICO projects, Nowadays KYC can be easily fake by buying fake documents in the black market. The only way to prove the authenticity of the team members is to do a Video with the whole team and explaning and sharing their company. this is the best way to check if the team members are legit or not.

I never provide my cus information. I prefer to invest in projects where it is not needed. I do not buy shares, I do not conclude a contract, then why do developers need my KUS information? I agree to provide it only on mutual terms.

Project teams are afraid of change and they don't want to be a first person to apply the new rules. The cryptocurrency markets are not simplified but some pro traders can handle it easily.

Yeah indeed, since many things on internet can be easily faked, video authenticity is the good option and can also be trusted. So, if a project can't make the video with all of team members, deserve to be suspected. However, at this time only a few did it, some only made videos because they had been requested.

Unfortunately, projects and the truth very often deceive members of the bounty. It turns out that you spent your time and energy for several months and received nothing in return. This is very sad.

I guess many of us already doing it or have some protocol on how to handle and do some due diligence for choosing a project. I guess we can say that many in the past has been victimized by runaway ICOs and no doubt that the reason for this is the lack of efficiency or researches before they participated. I like how the stuff set up now compared before. IEO which means Initial Exchange Offering clear up some doubts on rising projects snce they are the one doing it for us and nevertheless helps a lot on choosing. Bullish and hype aside, I think IEO is much profound and can be trusted than a regular ICO.

Certainly the level of trust in the IEO is much higher than to the simple ICO. There is an audit, selection, testing and examination of projects.

It's stupid if you're too easy to give your identity. I see the information on Facebook that someone sells photos of other people's identities. From the case I found it, I would be very careful in doing KYC. We must check and recognize the CEO. So we are not stuck in a fake project.

Some people are force to complete their KYC due to monetary reason. Sometimes when people are in need they will do anything for money and KYC is no issues with them.

Most projects that are asking for KYC for their investors should be complete KYC first themselves by showing their real identity that can be verified online if its true or not.

Great post.. Honestly, the reason behind KYC is grossly abused or incorrectly done in this crypto space. Lime you said, a set of individuals from the Investors should nmbe mapped out to verify the identity of the so called team members of a project too.

Well, there are so many projects that the CEO and other team members want to remain anonymous. They do not want to disclose their identity, meanwhile they want customers to disclose theirs before they purchase tokens. I think its a fair deal if both customers and team members know each other.

If the team required the participant especially those investors, it's fair to say that the developers and everyone involved from the development of this project will also provide and submit their own KYC, both needs to verified and to give some little assurance that they will not hide anything behind
while developing the projects.

KYC here in the forum was only implemented for the investors and bounty hunters depending if the project are requiring it to all their participants. But it is good to know that if the team behind the project will also submit their KYC, so transparency to their community will not gonna think any negative about them. Instead, they will boost more about the project for sure.

This is a very good idea actually. I believe it will be necessary requirement for project if it want launch ico in future. I suppose legal regulations will require kyc of all team of the project. That have more sense than kyc from investors or bounty hunters.

I think this is a good idea. Because there is so many scam bounty. Hunter will give time to perform into campaign and when the time of token distribution they can receive a token without any exchange site so it will be useless but when Know Your CEO will implemented that kind of bounty will surely afraid because they will have a personal information included.

I think that we will never see such a thing because in each roadmap it is written that the team has nothing to do with investors and invest at your own risk. Therefore, it is better to choose IEO there at least some sort of real protection against fraudsters.

I understand the team has nothing to do with investors. But it must be remembered that the Investor believes in the project because the Team in the project is convincing, experience in the field. Of course it will be even better for trust in the project. I understand that investment is at its own risk, but if you want the project to be believed the team must do it.

I think the IEO is a great idea to bypass the KYC process, projects can have accurate information of customers from the exchange and investors can also trust projects selected by the exchange.

I am also on the idea that KYC information is not that much necessary. Why you have to know your customer? And if you want to know your customer, what about the project owners? In some cases, they run away scamming investors and bounty hunters. Who knows them and in how many cases, they have been caught and booked? First of all, we have to know who the project owners are.

I am an advocate of "Know your CEO". It will be the best and most important KYC to investors atleast investors should know the the full details of the man or woman responsible for their funds and in cases of frauds, they can report rightly to the relevant authorities

that a really good idea instead of ico team knowing the investor
ICO team will provide proof that they are worth investor trust and will not just run after ICO
well today you can invest in STO instead some of them have company that offering their share or profit

Know your CEO is exactly what is need to clean up the ICO market, there are too many horror stories about exit scams and there is nothing that can be done about it as we don't really know who the CEO is or what safety there is for investors.

Bumpy, the shitcoin market just got more credible, not more useful, perhaps a bit more bitcoin to move around.
Also, a ban because a threat, thats pretty amazing, now the OP is being tagged as scammer.

no strong law makes no protection for investors, with high awareness, an investor must always be careful and always do more research before investing. so this investment is indeed very risky but because so far the growth of this industry has continued to increase, investing in industry is still a good option as long as we are able to do well with wise research

It's time to introduce KYC for those who make ICO. Investors need guarantees that the project will be successful.

it's too hard because few ico listing sites developer can pay them to make positif review about the project.
and developer can manipulate about the team member from ico listing, because for now ico listing site is a way for people to analysis some project, and this is the whole when developer can do what they want

I consider that kind of behaviour as scamming which completly fucks up crypto's reputation.
I just see ICOs as scams mostly, it a great shame for very few projects i miss,i can say I only know of 3 ico operations top that were legit and i still believe in.

yes i know your feel about new project are just launched, moreover the team has no reputation in blockchain community/industry.
and based on the data 8/10 are ended with scamming investor, i know because i'm following the news about crypto project with shit service they offer in the front, and if the project successfully with ICO in future after end ico nothing any update