Bitcoin Forum

I first joined the cryptocurrency space as a beginner during the ICO season and i made profit on both bounty and ICO.

However that didn't last for too long and i see a lot of newbies oose their money by thinking every ICO was good then. They let FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) push them into bad ICO investments where they lost money.

Now Newbies are making the same mistake with IEOs.

IEOs are the hot stuff of 2019 cryptocurrency market and while exchanges like Binance, Huobi, Gate.io and Kucoin have proven to have successful launchpads, other scam exchanges are already having IEOs and both projects and investors are at risk of losing their money.

Research is more important now than ever, make sure you do your research and dont follow the crowd when investing.

Put your money where your research leads you.

I should say that put your money after you have decided on what's the best move forward and that will, at most times, minimize the risk of one losing too much money in a single investment. Using other people's analysis and studying them at first before drawing your own conclusion is, by far one of the methods that had worked for well for me for the last 5 years. Yes, it's wrong to blindly trust someone on their predictions, but one can always use it to draw their own and it's not a bad thing. Also, might I add that IEOs even on legitimate exchanges aren't really a surefire way to make a profit. One hyped IEO today can instantly become a flop tomorrow, so invest wisely and never go all in.

You are right, not all IEOs are good ,many newbies really on exchanges now and the blindly invest in IEO because they believe since exchanges are the ones launching the projects it means they are good projects ,newbies should learn to do research by themselves and not relying on others

Speaking of scam exchanges offering IEO's, I just read about the claims by multiple start up projects being scammed or fooled by IDAX.

When it comes to IEO's, choose those that do not fake token sale volumes like IDAX as claimed by some projects. Maybe stick to more reputable exchanges like what's listed in the OP. Better yet, do not join at all and just wait for the hype to subside  :D

I think exchange market is already saturated. There are far too many exchanges, and few of them are reliable.
Why would anyone use a shitty exchanges such as cryptopia if you can use a reliable one such as Bistamp, Binance, Kraken, Coinbase?
it is very hard to compete against those big guys...

Of course IEOs can lead to great profits, but great losses are more probable.

I think storing money on exchanges is always risky. However, it is also risky to store money on computers, especially if people are lack of knowledge and skills to protect their computers, and wallets. If they are lack of knowledge and skills, choosing big exchanges and storing money on those platforms is not a bad choice. Of course, they should remember to activate 2FA for both exchange accounts and emails, then backup 2FA codes. Passwords should be set as strong as possible, and should be changed after a few months. Never storing passwords and 2FA codes on internet is important.

I disagree. Storing funds on an exchange, web wallet, or with another third party is always a bad choice. There are just too many things which could go wrong: the service scamming, going bust, being shutdown, springing KYC procedures, being hacked, rogue employees, having poor security, etc. It is always better to store your coins yourself.

If you don't feel you have the knowledge to properly set up and secure your own wallets, then the correct course of action is to spend some time reading and learning about how to do so, not to just throw up your hands in despair and leave it all to a third party. Using a hardware wallet like a Ledger or a Trezor is a fairly simple and straightforward way to securely store your coins.

And a lot of people were calling Ethereum a scam at the beginning and it increased over 1000x.  People will yell and shout scam at any new project that is competing with bitcoin.  That is just the truth.  Most projects will still fail but the few gems will be insanely lucrative. 

We have some altcoins in crypto space that beats bitcoin in performance but bitcoin keeps getting all the glory ,I don't know how long this will last but altcoins with real use case will have a better future too

I agree with you here. What I actually implied is if crypto newbies want to join crypto, they should learn all those things. However, in their very early days, they can choose big exchanges and use their wallets as temporary solutions. Then, after reading to learn basics on crypto wallets, Bitcoin wallet for example, and find out the most reliable providers of bitcoin wallet, they should move their funds to wallets that they have full controls.
I mentioned big exchanges because even worst cases, such as terrible hacks, big exchanges usually compensate for their users. Of course, only if issues come from exchanges, not from users themselves (such as weak password, lose of passwords, identities and other things).

IEO are essentially a lottery, you can of course spend 10 dollars here and there and wait for the jackpot, but you will most likely lose 100 dollars or more by doing so.


I don't know man, back in the days Ethereum had a clear vision right from the start, just compare it to most new coins on the market right now, the situation is totally different. ETH for me looked rock solid from the beginning.

There are still times when exchanges don't fully cover damages incurred from hacks or other losses, though (sometimes a haircut off your account, some percentage of socialized losses). I would still agree that exchange wallets are okay for very short term holdings, though almost anything is better for storing funds on any other timeframe. Being able to use a wallet's also a very simple thing to understand and you should be able to use a wallet of any sort before buying Bitcoin.

You can take risks by invest in ICOs, or IEOs, and can get massive return from your capital. However, that risky investment approach will have nearly the same ending, with losses. Your capital might be lost dramatically. Just imagine that you can start your investment career with 0.1 BTC, and you might luckily enough to win up to 10 BTC after 5-successful risky investments. However, with the same approach, you might lose all 10 BTC (includes your 0.1 BTC in capital), by wrong investments into 1 or 2 projects. That's the end of your investment story.

I can't say that advicing research is a bad thing, but people often misunderstand what research is. Simply googling about an ICO and reading some (often shilled) articles doesn't count as research. Research is learning cryptography, learning how cryptocurrency protocol works, learning the details of newer protocols, reading technical articles from cryptography experts - this is what almost no one does in crypto sphere, so we end up with millions of investors who have only vague understanding of cryptocurrency and as the result can be easily influenced by crypto marketers.