Bitcoin Forum

I was wondering if it will help solve the issue of ICO scam, if we make it mandatory for all ICO Project developers to compulsorily do skype call with potential investors before promoting any project, or do a presentation of their project and post it online showing their faces, so that we can see their faces directly and probably be able to apprehend them in a case of fraudulent activities. We have to save ICOs.

A good idea, too, but they can't do that because it's just a waste of time, if you want to know their faces as developers, you can see from the results of the meeting they were photographed and published here.

This is a good idea but I don't believe the project owner or team member will not do that because ICO is not regulate by government.

You know what the problem is. That they are so arrogant today that they do not hide their faces. Just countries choose without deportation. And they live there. How do I know this. Because several famous people even promoted fraudulent projects. And they fell into this. Of course, a well-known team will attract more investment, but if they want to cheat you deceive and so. See how many successful people on the Internet in advertising. Fraudsters and actors.

Well. There are so many projects which have not been reveal their team faces yet but they are success, but there are some of projects who reveal their faces but they just at the mid range.

Good idea but making it fruitful will be great issue because projects that have strong background and motivation will eventually survive and will provide good results.Mere video call will do no good to this.Already we are facing different regulations that are ought to come in different countries and many things are to be involved.Once strict regulations and laws are imposed it will be a little safe for the investors.Until then things will continue as it is.More and more people falling victim.

that will not change anything at all! the scammers don't fear anything these days, look at Craig Wright for example who is the biggest one. he is still scamming in broad daylight and keeps on making appearances!

the only thing that matters for a project is the project itself. look at bitcoin for example. we don't even know who Satoshi is let alone seeing him but there still are millions of people around the world who are using bitcoin as payment or as investment because they see the "project" itself and what it offers.
when all the ICO tokens are creating is a useless garbage, a video is not going to change that.

If they meant to scam you in the first place then don't bother doing things like this. Even the great Satoshi Nakamoto is anonymous but still manage to create Bitcoin and succeed. There are many ICO prject who didn't just need to Skype you online but meet you in person when they are still promiting their token but still they failed on succeeding. No point at all.

In some sense I can say, it is not going to be effective to make a live video, we are just making them do a much harder work for what? To see their faces that we don't even need. We should focus on our businesses and not might their faces. Improvements to the project is enough to say that they are doing their job to the finest.

Who are potential investors? So I guess you meant that they have to do Livestream with community before starting their ICOs. Even they do like this, it won't guarantee that their ICOs are good, and they won't run with money crowdfunding raising from ICOs and abandon their projects later. Or they can develop something stupid as a proof that they actually develop their projects, but unfortunately at the ends their projects fail. In such cases, will videos can be helpful to judge and find them for legal accusations? I believe it won't be helpful at all.

I get the idea of verifying if those people that are posted on their website as a team to see if they are authentic.

But a scammer would always be a scammer and they don't care even if their faces would be posted online. If they have plans to scam their investors, they will do it.

Very good! Alongside this, showing some sensitive personal info about themselves will also contribute greatly in shooting up investors trust level, hence, making people interact with them and their projects on open grounds.

This would be almost impossible to enforce, there will still be many scams around.
Besides, that should not be a requirement, how much time would be wasted if every ICO dev had to make a skype call with potential investors.

How about you just do a bit of research of your own and stop throwing money at everything you see?

what do you mean by mandatory?
how do we make it mandatory?
I don't think we can make the system to demand all ico to do a live video, however I do believe every investors have their own standard to decide which ico they want to invest. And live video could be one of them.

That still won't stop people from scamming. Scammers will always find a way to get around whatever obstacle they find, to them, the end of justify the means. Plus, anyone pouring money into these ICO projects just because they saw the faces of the people behind the project can't be called an investor.

The only way these ICO scams and exit scams will stop is with a solid regulatory framework issued by the governments. That way, the teams behind the ICOs will have to comply and go through a rigorous process to protect both them and investors without the former having to expose all their personal info to the public if the prefer not do it.

Well they'd still be anonymous unless you can verify that they are who they say they are. But compared to how ico teams handle projects right now, i think it'll boost confidence a little. People should at least know how the people they're entrusting their money on look like.

You see, I love this topic of discussion very well and I think it is a meaningful idea, if they don’t do that, then we should not participate, we need to understand something in this investment, they are not our boss totally, we are their boss, we employed their services to look after our investment and not to come here and control us unnecessarily by pushing what is not accepted to us.

If they are serious and they really need our money, then they will abide by us too, we both need each other, they need us and we need them, they have their rules, we have our rules too. If we can give them our own KYC docs too without government regulation, then simply identifying themselves should not be an issue.

I guess that would be a good idea and would assure most of the investors that the project flow would be better but I don't think every Ico developers could do it due to the number of investors. It will also take a lot of time so I guess they wouldn't too much effort to do it. Most developers would love to hide their identities.

Quite the same with my point of view. I am a developer also, and I am not in favor with a live video for a project because in the first place, we should not be the one to be blame. We are just getting paid from our jobs and there are higher project member that manages the core team. I hope you understand that.

I think this will also be good because I believe many dev hide their identity in order to prevent them from being arrested when they defraud investors. However, I personally think investors should also consider investing in projects that are fully registered in the country of origin and the license agreement and other document should be made available for investors on the website. We have seen in the past where project will use photoshop image of individuals and also forge document but with a license, it will be easy to trace them.

Of course, they can do it. Making videos of their meeting and partnership agreement and posting it on social media should not be a problem. I have seen ICOs that have done this in the past. It is never a waste of time. This brings credibility to the project and makes it be more generally acceptable. Some bad ICO does make a video using Illustrations of cartoons. This is very bad and should be a sign of a probable scam. photographed image of meetings can be photoshopped and copied from internets. Thousands of academic conferences are held monthly throughout the world. A properly arranged scam project will go an extra length to steal conference video and turn it around for their own project

This issue should not be argued upon.  This can be set as personal guideline in investing in an ICO but it would be great if they present their photographs, live interviews and activities.  We all know that project with known team can fail or scam their investors if they wanted to, but at least in my opinion doing this kind of stuff showing the actual image or activity of the ICO project developer will limit them into scamming only once since they will be known in the industry as scammer.  The point here I think is to avoid letting them scam people several times.

I think this problem can not be solved in this way. I do not understand what will prevent developers after they publish their faces to hide from the eyes of investors? I think that developers can hire actors and pay them some part of the collected money. And then safely hide.

You are right, photograph will also be good but I think identity is easier changed in a photograph than video, I think this will be a very great idea, and if their identity is known, what is stopping them from being apprehended.

I am sure they all live in a country and with their identity; we should be able to track them down if I am right. If we can trace them to their country, they can be reported to the law even if cryptocurrency is yet to be captured under legal document but at least, scam is scam and should not be entertained by any authority no matter the mean at which they are being done.

At least, someone will be held accountable when the project goes run, I am sure whoever shows his or her face in the video will be much careful not to tarnish his or her image, even if they hired a machinery to do so, there will always be something linking the machinery to the real project owner that will assist the authority in going after the scammer.

This is a good idea, and I think we should not throw it away, it might still go a very long way in boosting other ideas that may be available to help this situation, the idea OP gave might not solve the problem completely, but it will form a part of things needed to really make the market clean.

You can't stop scamming by doing live video. Why? One or two hired team member will do the live stream and the rest people still remain unknown. Do you think you can find them after a scam? never, even not these 2 people, becasue they will change identity. It's not hard to change a face, shape, and gate up to make a diffrent overall look. What if they stream by changing the whole look? The only way to protect is "top team members must get certificates for hosting ICO, presenting their house documents including parents/children/spouse data etc. The application must approve by physical validation. Well now that's a dream, that never gonna happen, so ICO scam won't stop.

No, it does not help. Those projects that do not hide their members, quite actively participate in the discussions, produce videos with developers and team members.
And fraudulent projects can simply hire people (actors) who will act for them.

        I do not think the implementation of your idea will solve the problem of SCAM projects. In the past, members of certain SCAM projects posted video on their social media accounts (twitter, facebook) and where their faces appeared. An example of unmitigation is the Kepler Tek project.
I think it's a more efficient KYC for team members, just as they want for some airdrops or bounty campaigns. Specifically, you can not post any project announcements without KYC for project members. Maybe this initiative would reduce the number of SCAM projects.

but it cannot be a guarantee if an ICO makes authentic videos like that will succeed in the project, many ICOs have done doing like that but still the project failed. The success of an ICO depends on the experience of the team in the business and crypto world, their abilities that have been tested before, their vision and mission in building a project.

This will help to significantly reduce the level of fraud. But this cannot give us a full guarantee that the projects will fulfill all the conditions. We must look for another more serious way.

I think it is a good idea though I don't the team or.devs.will do this. If the project is legit, you can notice by their activities such as attending some events, record or live video during the events and other events that showing the team and developers are real. I think we can ask them to post these on their social medias so people will see the project is serious and legit..

Brilliant idea, YouTube also is always available, these days any project that claims they have working product and aren't bold enough to at least show there faces on videos is not for me, I would like to see the faces of the teams or even the CEO only talking about the idea behind the project

Many projects are already doing a live video but in the end they still end up scamming all the investors that trust their project so we cannot say that mandatory live video will really solve the problem in order to eliminate those scam ICO's.

Though we can lessen the scammers out there if this kind of tactics will be implemented as there are plenty of scammers out there that don't want to reveal their true identities. ICO is not yet dead, though there are plenty of dead ICO's out there but if you are a professional investors, you can surely differentiate the scam ICO's from the genuine one.

I think that this is probably the best that could be thought of, because today developers do not pay anything and are not going to be verified, and those people who are deceiving people should be responsible for their actions.

This is necessary to verify the identity of the development team before learning and investing in the project. The development team or CEO needs to pass KYC verification on the credit rating websites before promoting the project. They need to pass some verification before releasing the project and distribute it to investors.