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Back in 2017, many ICO projects pride themselves of having one of the biggest telegram community. Some of them would market it as a proof or sign that many investors believe in their project. People who have been around all know that most members there are airdrop/bounty hunters who only joined to qualify for the reward.

I also saw one post (https://archive.md/H7aZ2) earlier asking for telegram group members and one of the condition the buyer posted is that it "needs to look real".

Anyway, this post is just a reminder to beginners in crypto. We don't want you to fall for these tricks to lure you into investing into their projects.

In regards to this, there are still highly manipulative practices that occur, that's with groups in excess of 15-20k members.

Most naturally grown Telegram groups consist of 5-15k members, before a sale is finished or finalized. Anything ranging from 20-100k, that was made post-2018, is consisted of fake, accounts pulled from other groups and other highly manipulative practices. These types of crypto groups you should always avoid.

Concurrently, there are a lot of "influencer" groups consisting of a few thousand members, with a crazy amount of activity. These are also highly faked telegram groups, running bots with fake messages and or paid messages for a specific time, to make the group appear active in order to sell AMAs or other public events for crypto teams. If you're serious about crypto in any way, then you won't be in these groups listening to some guy talking about the latest coin he's shilling. It's great for quick research, but always know these guys are in it for themselves, they are ultimately looking to profit from your voice, time and activity; just like any tech company in the real world. "Data is king."


All in all, when in doubt, view groups like Binance's groups, Binance's shilled IEOs and see how many members they have. Chances are, it will denote a reasonable Telegram group community size for any given period in the broader crypto market.


Also, as OP said, never invest based on the groups. A lot of shills, a lot of FOMO, a lot of nonsense and a lot more shady motherfuckers; all there to solely manipulate your thoughts. Even worse are the groups who ban users for giving critical feedback (in a non-shit talk way), because it may cause other users to ask the same questions.

^ I agree that there's a lot of manipulation going on.

I've also noticed the fake activities on different channels. You can easily notice because most of them do not even have a username and that they usually talk to each other at a certain time. Some hired marketers also call this as "growth hacks". From what I have observed, telegram community with legit members ranges from a few hundreds to 5K with active members around 10 to 100. Even that 5K includes bots and spammers.

Not just on the telegram as well as on twitter, facebook, reddit and anywhere else on social media sites. It is one of their styles to attract many investors to invest in their project due to their many likes and huge numbers of telegram members.

But we can't say that many members of the telegram are scams right away but it's just a reminder that we are not just based on the number of people who believe in their project, Let's base on our knowledge on help our self to figure out what ICO actually have a real purpose and real intensions.

Excellent point.  Everything can be faked, exaggerated, just like facebook and twitter followers which often happens with bounty hunters when they have to meet a minimum # of followers in order to join.  You know damn well all those followers aren't real people, and the same thing is true for any telegram group with many thousands of members if it's for some ico or shit coin.

This is an important warning for newbies, op and I have no doubt a lot of them fall for projects that *look* good, and most of them do, even if they're scams.  Those scammers know what they're doing and know they have to keep up appearances if they expect to draw in investors.

Even better advice would be to just avoid the ico space altogether.  How many scams do we have to see before investors and bounty hunters stop falling for the same old tricks?

Infact,  the telegram community will tell you all about that project if you know how to observe things properly, the kind of discussions that place and the people discussing will give you a clue about the standard of the project,
Infact,  from the telegram discussion you can tell if the discussion are genuine or bot or even paid to post users always saying nice things about the project,  all you need is better observation and the telegram group will give you a hint.

But if the fake users come to start their fake discussion then no one get the info about the project and when a real discussion occurs then that channel becomes a more informative channel for the users.
Some telegram channels which have real members have a very great discussion while those channels with fake members are fill of long and useless discussion which only bump the channel.

It is undeniable that the telegram group gives us information about a project. but we really need to really observe the people in it. so many bots, even scam people who sometimes do comments. but, one of the peculiarities, in this case, is it's so easy to know real people, and paid or bot. they must ask about the weaknesses of the project such as development that will be done, exchangers, prices, and others that make the admin quite silent if they do not run the project well.  bots and spam people won't do that because basically they don't know anything.

They usually use a bot to bump a channel or to automate all replies.
Since there are many developers nowadays who developed telegram bot for marketing purposes I think people should be aware of this there are many scam project out there that popups every day. Even my telegram accounts keep receiving a new notification with an unknown project with lots of members.

Only few telegram channel that has real users and real supporters. If they are talking about ICO project well most the members are fake or alt accounts.

man telegram is garbage, i been telling people that forever, it wasent made for thousands of people to have proper discourse
tho i see they remade their UI to look like discords, that helps a bit sort out the spammy mess
who thought putting 30,000+ people of all languages in a single channel was a good idea? :D   what a joke.   Place is a scammers paradise
Proper projects make threads here, plain and simple. HERE is where people can OPENLY discuss projects without being censored/blocked (like telegram channels)

Even in 2017, there were some devs avails bot service to get bots on their "community." And it ends as a scam. It's even better to join that time on a TG group that is only composed of 1k-2k members than joining big community. Remember that bots are rampant nowadays.

They advise the member to invest in certain platforms just to get rewards from the referral programs. This means, they only work for money. So it is not recommended to listen what they say, unless if the platform does not have any promotional programs, it might still be considered.

This was the trend in 2017, i remember Bitcoin White (BTW) Now BitWhite was among the first Cryptocurrency Project to break the 100K Mark in telegram group member, making telegram itself to improve on their platform. It was so nice that they (BTW) have to create other telegram communities as an extension of the main group. But it is what it is as this doesn't guarantee the success of any project. The community is probably filled up with much BOTs, Airdroppers and Bounty Hunters who are in for their reward for carrying out some task. Another then was Rebellious (REBL), but i doubt if these project still exist till date as the developers might have probably abandon the project and run another.

The Crypto space have really seen a lot of Good side and Bad Side as well and telegram member doesn't in any way ensure the success of any project out there. Let keep watching this out and hope the best will come some day. 

You can buy telegram members or you can get them even for free when you run a bounty campaign. So the number of telegram members has absolutely no role at all. Care more about the facts like: already working product or big experienced team.

Is there anyone who actually makes purchases accordingly?
I don't think so. So you can have a 100K Telegram channel for just a few hundred dollars. Thousands of boats flock to your channel in a few days. You can tell some of them everything you want.

At least I don't believe those who follow this forum will do something like this.

Obviously those are scam projects. They make people join those groups and then collect different information from them. They kick people from the groups who realize their plan or say something against them. Once they have gained enough peoples trust, they looks for investors (thoses they managed to fool) within that community and then runs away abandoning the community.
Again, they build those "telegram community" quite easily either through paying people to join the group or by adding bot. They fake the size of the community so that naive people thinks that the community is quite active. That is why it is always better to analyze any project before investing.

It would be an absolutely terrible idea for anyone.

Telegram communities are full of shills, first of all. Not only that, the admin has power to delete all messages that are contrary to the agenda that they are pushing themselves, which leaves room for tons of abuse.

A community should just be a forum for discussion, it should not be the judging or decisive factor in looking at a altcoin project or ICO.

You are right, also apart from bounty/airdrop hunters in the telegram groups there have been thousands of fake and bot accounts that teams can use to show big numbers in their telegram channel just to show the big community and onterest in their project which is all fake because there are hardly any real supporters or investors in their channel.

Many of the members of such groups have been added by someone without their will. Before giving some settings to the telegram, everyday I met several groups that I did not voluntarily participate. I would also like to help the newbies make these settings: https://medium.com/metacert/protect-yourself-from-cryptocurrency-scams-on-telegram-with-privacy-settings-64cbd2c8c7ad

I'm not interested in telegram community for investing because one of I know are those are not real.
On why Its not real cause of this so many bots in the channel and Ill think the only active in a channel its almost 5 or 6 people.
So we need to be careful of this, don't trust of how many members they have. The focus we need is the important of project and have a future if we invest  in trusted project.

Yes, I encountered that a lot. Someone adding me for no reason.
I just delete the group whenever I see one that I'm not familiar of.
I haven't change my settings as I'm too lazy. Thanks for that reminder.

But, I really don't invest based on how big the telegram community is.
We all know that some projects are getting services from third party to increase the number of their members.
You will notice that once the IEO or ICO is finished, most of them will delete the account or not active anymore.

It's good if you care about that and immediately go out and delete the group, but most people don't care about it, they just turn off the notification tone, or because they not active anymore in the telegram, but clearly they were put there unofficially.

Do not make quantity as a reference, it can all be manipulated easily by scammers, pay attention to the many social media that provide services for making certain social media accounts with a very affordable fee.  Analyze the quality, it will be more effective and accurate.  moreover, most bounties and airdrops require participants to join the group, so the telegram group project is not purely filled with interested investors.

Do people still do that? Invest in Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency base on what some people state in a telegram group?
I don't think anyone who have been into cryptocurrency since 2017 would do that but instead those who just started out recently.
Telegram is a great platform but 'never' you trust any community there. Especially those of the trading signals.

True, new investors are looking and interested in the former in their large community that the Kalo Dilogika will help the development of their project.
But the reality is they are just an airdrop or a bounty hunter to get the coins from the project for free. Therefore we can not be patting on telegram but must be of some aspect.

For me it's okay to invest coins based in the telegram, but of course always need an own analysis before to invest use telegram as guide not depending your all decision. Be always wise for the security of our investment to avoid lot of risk and loses.

The weapons they have to influence new investors or new people in the crypto world are with their social media groups such as telegrams. I have seen and found many groups like that with more than 50 thousand members and there are even some double groups that are distinguished only by the numbers group1, group2, group3 etc. and all the members they have are so many that even one telegram group can no longer accept members.

Just as you mean, when we as group members join and make critical comments they will not be happy, they will immediately block us or kick us from the group before other members think critically too and comment on the same thing, this is what they avoid. Admin and bot that they have very much and are always active.

From the many experiences that I have gained, a group with many members does not guarantee the project is genuine. They just use it to do "BIG ANNOUNCEMENT", whether it's for FOMO, large-scale project promotions with lots of discounts and more. The most important thing is to continue to do research first and discuss together with members in this forum.

I agree that we should not invest based only on the size of the community in the telegram group. The number of members in the telegram group does not reflect the project or investment interest. In my opinion, it's better when deciding on investments, based on liquidity and active trading in the market

As I remember when I joined bounty project some of them want us to invite those friend we have and they give us tokens and in the end of their tokens have no value at all. When the bounty runs for long period of time their projects are so mesmerising and try their best to convince and unfortunately they didn't response in telegram. Hopefully each of us must aware this kind of strategy.

Telegram is really bad for one thing, fake accounts or bots to make the group full like they are real people, this can't be used to judge a project, when i was a newbie i used to look at how many people are in a new project group but later i detect its all lies

Every one should be aware of this. The only potential victim to this kind of scheme are newbies. This is a good thread to remind the newbies that it does not mean that because a channel has many members, it is already legit. They need to be aware that members in telegram channels can be farmed, bought, or created for the sake of having high numbers.

In one side telegram or another social media which being used as a group of crypto user is really needed. They (the people on the group) can easily turn their information each other, so as through this group their understanding/knowledge against cryptocurrency will increase. Then I think, if I compare when we read an article will be hard to understood if we read it by ourselve but if we make a discussion on the group (telegram and etc) it usually will be easy to be unsderstood.

Yeah Indeed, in another side we can't disown that the scammer will be easy to join and try to scamming the poeple there. And I think it will be good the user on the group must be aware and fight against scammer. Also, they must know that the project is scam or legit and he can tell to another user to avoid it. Unless, if we come the telegram channel which was filled by scammer then I'll bet we can't avoid from their offers.

I would say telegram group of any project can be seen from both a positive  and negative part...
The negative part is that as we already know, fake members, paid to shill members that engage in fake discussions in the group, all they do is say nice things all day long, real members ask constructive questions, they get banned..... red flag.
The positive part the possibility of chatting the team up whenever they are online about the project and their plans, get firsthand info about their latest events, meetups and such other activities, lates update of any partnership etc,
in a nutshell, telegram community alone is not enough to make an investment decision.

Having a lot of members on the particular telegram chat doesnt mean the project itself is good, has potential and working. Some admin/members are just adding anyone without permission to grow the number of their members. I often experience this, even I didnt join I was added without my permission.

If you're a beginner you might end up believing in them if you're not careful enough to conduct a research. Scam projects are everywhere so its better to not trust anyone especially those members of tg that shills their coins.

Yes, everything can be made up. Especially the number of people in a telegram group. If only based on the amount that a person judges to invest his money, surely it is a fool, very stupid.
On the other hand, most members there must come because of the airdrop or something that gives free coins. Which airdrop hunters do not care about the good or bad of the project. What they know is how many parts they got. And after that, it will gradually die because the demand decreases continuously.

Telegram community is not good source for your investment on ICO project, everything can be fake by looking their telegram member channel by giving airdrop way. You have check on site rating of ICO project and check how much coin have sold to public. Many ICO use many ways to get investor without give based on how correct information about their ICO site.

There are many telegram channels right now that have many users in that channel but unfortunately, the project isn't successful because even their telegram has many users in it not all of them are investors. Probably most of them are just bots and some of them are just bounty hunters and some of them are waiting for a good news so that they can sell their tokens that they are holding.

Telegram community doesn't make a project a successful one. Yes it can attract newbie investors because they are thinking that most of the users in their channel are investors and it will be a successful one because it has lot of investors but it is not. Investing in ICO right now is hard for me because it can end up being a scam or a fail project. It is best if you just don't invest in an ICO but just to buy it on an exchange if you know that the project will be a successful in the future.

to be honest, I once believed in the telegram community of a project for investment that I did. but I did check on the project first. because it turns out the team is indeed very responsive to all member questions. especially for IEO in large exchanges to be carried out. and I finally decided to try my luck investing in these coins. and I was lucky because there was a profit that I got. but I'm sure, I'm just lucky.

Gathering people is another part of marketing so you don't have to worry about it as it is normal and even genuine projects are using this technique in order to widen their reach, not only to the bounty hunters but also to the investors.

This also applies to social media groups like facebook,twitter, linkedin,reddit and etc. therefore suggesting to the investors that don't invest to the project base on telegram community numbers are not a good suggestion. Instead, it's better to say that don't invest base on hype telegram community but invest in those projects that offers genuine product,good marketing techniques,active team,bright whitepaper,clear roadmaps and has a good number of partners.

yes that's the fact, there are various forms of fraud in the crypto industry as you explained above, fraudsters always do anything to convince investors or attract the attention of crypto users. so don't be surprised if there are hundreds of thousands of telegram users in the project group.

Yeah some bounty hunters are asked to be promote their project on their telegram groups and saying good things to the projects. While the crypto newcomers and just joined the telegram group will look into the chats and thought the project is real good, but the newcomers are not doing research to the project yet. This things are happens oftenly.

indeed like that, the telegram group from the bounty is on average a bounty hunter or airdrop which is their condition to join. so it's not a problem, for me it's only natural when there are bounty telegram groups that have very many members and most of them are airdrop or bounty participants. the fact that you will invest or not is up to you. but while the group still looks active and the admin gives good responses, there's no harm in asking questions and then can start investing.

Telegram communities or any opinions from different online communities should not be a solid basis for investing. Investing is all about doing research and clarifying all of the things before you put your hard earned money into something. If you are only basing on the opinions or suggestion of other people then definitely in the near future, you will be screwed up.

we should invest based on telegram promotions in crypto we should follow our own analysis most of the telegram groups are fake

Most of them are just paid chillers and hypers to make the community active, so don't get FOMO about what they are saying. Let's just enjoy the ride and check what is the real happening in their product, do they really have working product? Or they are just waiting for the fund yet. When they are not working yet as they are waiting for raised fund, then it will be too risky. For me, I am willing to take risk to make money if I know that there's already an existing product and the team behind it also invested their own fund.

now we must be more careful and more selective in joining the ICO project. because fraudsters are getting smarter they have many ways to attract investors. one of them by manipulating the number of members of the telegram. some newcomers or investors think that a project that has many members in telegram and social media is a good and successful project. This is a trick.
so we must do serious research before deciding to join a project.

one reference to the quality of the community is that chat always leads to the core part of the project and marketing, and their admin always says something tangible from every conversation, in contrast to telegram groups that are really full of bot and the admin fails to develop subjective interests.

A lot of constructive communication will make many members believe, not all of them are wrong because most good projects have tens of thousands of telegram members.

yes, I fully agree as explained by agan above. that the key to all of this is not all projects that have maximum members or even thousands indicate that they are bot members. You can differentiate from how they interact in groups. be it conversations or constructive response teams & admins. and keep in mind that good projects always have large members and are active in project conversations.

Its easy to make telegram community, cause you can invite and add people in your group. Everyday I see that I'm a member of a few new groups, someone added me, I cant even keep the track about that anymore. Add to that many bots.
I would like to add one thing, do not invest based on one source! No matter what your source is, check it! Don't relay on just one place, it never ends good. When its about your money don't be lazy, check informations you got on several places and you will have better picture about the project you wish to invest in.

Investing in a crypto project on the basis of large telegram members will only lead to loss. Reason because most large telegram groups are made up of bots and dormant members with little or no influence on the  project.  Most are not investors that will drive the project forward. Any one wishing to invest his funds in any project should look far beyond telegram group members and take into consideration things like profile of the team, does the project have any workable product,  funding and partnership so as to make timely decisions

That's actually true, back in the days such was the case, that is, many projects have large telegram members which always make their public sale to be successful (on most cases). But nowadays, the reverse is the case, some set ways to attract members so that it will look like the project is heading somewhere while it's not. Let's endeavour to look past whatever the team always throws at us and focus on the right thing or what the project is building.

The large number of telegram followers is sometimes a parameter for beginners to start investing in ICO projects like IEO. But in the group there is very little important chat activity, the contents are only spam chat that is off topic.
In my opinion the most reasonable is the existence of chat activities between members with the admin and founder of the telegram group, it shows that there is seriousness on the part of the project maker to develop into a bigger and faster.

Information like this is indeed needed for beginners to not easily believe what is said and to include some evidence that their project has many investors participating in the project. For beginners it is better to ask their close friends for suggestions on what they are going to do so that from this advice he gets a comparison to decide what steps he will take.

If project is constantly chat and has many good questions, then it is certainly getting a lot of attention from people. As I know, there are many telegram channels that have a high number of followers but do not have any activity and that makes me feel very worried because maybe they are fake users. I always evaluate the community first but still need a short time to evaluate the details of the project.

In any case, you must always be careful because the crypto market has many risks that you need to be aware of and should consult with others if you find the project is not good.

Indeed, there are so many advisers in telegrams that the question immediately arises, where did they come from? This is just a hoax. They want to make money with us. It doesn’t matter to them whether we earn. Such are the people now. Be careful.

the purity parameters of a profitable project are not from the many communities in the telegram but rather the whitepaper they make. there are many factors to consider, and if you have the view "that the project will succeed when it has a large community" it will not help much. it is better to focus on the platform on which the project will be made, useful or not

The success of a project does not come from any single factor, not the number of telegram channel members, not even the whitepaper or the team. The success of a project will come from all the factors taking into perfect harmony and play. The team should be composed of quality people united to launch a brilliant project which creates a product that is going to help a lot of people in their daily lives or companies in their daily operations.

Although having a large community is not a guarantee that a project will do well when invested in, but seeing a telegram group with only 300 members is not a sign that the project will attract big investors either. I'd say everyone should DYOR and not develop sentiments based on telegram group's population

Yes, the telegram community is very crowded, but there are probably many projects that add members to increase the number to show that the project has a lot of followers, do not overly believe in it, please update all social networks. like facebook, twitter, medium and everything to keep you informed about a project, telegram is growing in popularity and ease of use so take a closer look.

Good point. Assuming all the 30K members were legit and really interested in the project, it's hard to maintain a good discussion among members there. It's like combining all topics in one board from off-topic, technical, investment-related, and others. That's really messy  ;D

This is also why some projects who wants a real discussion have migrated to discord and slack. Although there is still censorship, the topics can be discussed in a more orderly manner.  

I agree on the part that many members make irregular discussions. coupled with the telegram community which many users sometimes think of a good project, even though it cannot be determined from that alone

I suggest if really finds that telegram community helpful and sees it beneficial, since some might be community used in bounty as ambassador or paid community to post links of projects, after reading a certain token. Research it properly since the community is not responsible in what ever decisions you'll be doing. Research and make a list of should point out before investing.

Yeah that's right i saw it, way back 2017, when most of the ICO's are successfully raising funds out of thin air, and they are often use its Telegram groups to boost that they have thousands of community members and investors as well, during that time many new investors that was looking for some opportunity to invest in the ICO's and because of the ICO hype was spreading like a wildfire many people was join without noticing the risk. But that was before in the 2017, but today i don't think people just easily fall that cheap trap most of them are already learn the mistake of past.

Lots of things have been changed because of the long run of bear market. Once we really care about a large active telegram community, but now the active telegram group is another tool of scamming people. Because now you can buy active members who will chat regularly between themselves like the ICA group! Whatever happen, those bot guys keep praising about the project! Lol! Therefore once we cared about the Icobench rating which is another scam tool now. So, to make a profit from the new projects is very hard nowadays. You have to be pro if you want to earn ROI from your investment!

In general, we must think many times before deciding to deal with any investments. Telegram sometimes helpful in gathering updates from a desired project on a certain community, but not a helpful source of trusted information due to scammers.
In confirmation to a legit community, the manager should be held liable for the serious discussions and nobody should interfer other than the admins.

of course , that fucking real, dont believe to project wich have high numbers of telegram members.
basicaly bounty hunters around 100-3k , and 3k its totally huge .
so what the left of members ? of course they are a dummy robot.
i even got a private message from spam account about service to increase the telegram members,
the price is depend about how much u want to increase the members, from 20 usd up to 500.
any service is can be worth of money on crypto world btw  ;D

Telegram is a way to communicate to investors, bounty hunters and the followers but not one should use telegram as their basis for investment. Expert investors knows that trusting someone is too risky, and telegram is full of scammers. Maybe if KYC implemented on Telegram, the volume of scammer will be lessen then you can now consider to ask people about your investment but still you have the job to study the project.

Thank you for a very good reminder. But you are right. We don't have to invest over a short conversation. Make sure that you study first and have some research and most important thing that you will check the page or site of project not only in telegram but in the forum. We need to be knowledgable before you invest.

Of course, no one is using telegram that way. It is not actually a good basis for investment, Telegram group is just a source of information or updates of a certain project. Every decision should be done by the investor itself and not because of the information he gets in a group, investment should be done with more research.

Most of those very large groups have bot members, very true sir. I was astonished to see an advert by someone saying he adds fake members at the rate of 1000 members for 5$. This means one can easily add 10k members with just 50$. Some bounties even have telegram activity, aside from the bot chats you mentioned here. Investors who get carried away by "large community" will always fall prey when they see these large telegram groups.

Check the services section and you will see there are a lot of services, that offer telegram promotion, and instant members of telegram channel, telegram is very popular among Crypto projects, and it's become a big target of scammers, and those who offer dubious services, that is why I seldom post on channels that I joined because of the projects I've invested and supported, and I always report those channels that added me without my consent.

In my opinion, Telegram is a place to study, share knowledge and experience about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology or other, and I haven't found a telegram community that advises or deals with investment.
but it all depends on the Telegram community where you are, if there is incitement or about investment advice that you think is unconvincing and you suspect why you are not leaving.
and the good or bad of your own Telegram community evaluating it and having the intelligence to think is very important when you are on any social media.

Looks are really deceiving. They are all using their tools they can use to attract potential investors. They are hyping up the group which is the telegram that at first stare you will be thinking that "this might be the best and worth investing for" dropping money right away without an appropriate investigations around the project itself. Because they got impressed with it first.

In 2017 I remember some projects which used the large telegram group thing to create hype and easily hit hard cap for their ICO.  Nowadays crypto investors are wiser, we all know telegram groups can be increased by paid means to add fake members. Are there people who still invest merely because of large telegram group presently? I doubt.

Do you think that moving the project discussion to a different platform will sort the issue, i have not seen many projects that are successful and that means not raising money but coming up with the proposed project and delivering the final product and many projects i invested in the past have shut down because of financial crisis even though they raised a lot of money and i am not even sure what they did with the money they raised so i do not trust any projects.
@OP you cannot invest in anything that has huge followers because you can purchase anything now a days even members in any social media.

Telegram is only a messaging app/platform and it's not a community because I think a real community means just like a forum . Telegram groups and channels are not also to be easily trust because most of them are only compose of bots . They need to buy telegram bots just to make their group or channel become lively just to attract more potential investors    . Investors should only based on the quality of the project if what its objectives

I don't see the number of members in the project group telegram as a reference if the project is good, because many telegram members now join because of airdrop or bounty and can even buy bot members so that the number is increasing
So it is very important to do research first before investing in crypto

That's right your statement, because in this telegram there are too many projects exposed through telegram tricks and most are telegraphed for bounty hunters, airdrop. Or there are indeed some ICOs that require verification of participation via telegram. But my opinion, when it comes to ICO, is really not reconciled to ICOs that were built by telegram. Because in the telegram too much manipulation and fraud.

From experience I have noticed that most of the successful projects don't even have a bubbling group so when I see a project that still wants to hold it's sales and there is so much buzz in the group, I automatically assume that it's not natural, there are services which offers these services to project owners, some would add members, some would help to chat and keep the group active and such, all in a bid to sucker investors into parting with their funds.

If you have good telegram community it will be an excellent community to invest. But there is also a scam telegram community in it so the one who is interested to invest based on telegram community should be very careful about it.

So please check before you take up any such project.

Not only that other group is paid people for mass adding ,its means  that they are just adding a different persons to a group to make it more look like a legit project  and have many investors. 

fraud is the biggest problem, including in this crypto room. everything is always related to money and fraudsters always have various ways to manipulate their victims, as the example explained by the OP is real enough so that most of the groups in the telegram are not natural accounts or they are fake accounts. this is a kind of trick to convince users or investors, especially ordinary people will think that projects with large communities even up to thousands of people, show that their projects are legitimate.

OP is correct because there are some paid marketing services that offer to increase telegram members when in fact those said members are all bot or alt account of them so it is not recommended to rely upon the numbers to know if the project has a lot of support in crypto community.

I'm seriously in support of this, do your research before investing on any project. Best one do is not to listen to speculations and do research so you would be sure of what you are going in for

if they don't buy the service, there is still a fast airdrop mode requirement by asking to join their channel. I prefer to assume not from the number of members because that is indeed a must-have clause, but at least 40% of their members actively conduct question and answer with a focus on goals. Investment decisions can also be seen from how often the admin responds with logical answers.

This is spot on and entirely true and anyone investing because of the number of members in the project's telegram group is causing himself harm. Like you said, back in the days, a large telegram community signifies how strong the project is because members shares knowledge etc but nowadays the aim is to have a large community which will be used to attract investors and nothing more; while the project in question have nothing to offer. I have seen a project with less than 5k members doing well at the early stage then naturally grows which was even after listing.

Thank you for bringing this up and wish that the whole crypto community especially investors will learn this hard truth so as to make better decisions. The truth is, the era of taking telegram members into account when investing in any project is long gone, because nowadays it's either it's filled with bots or otherwise. Large number of telegram group doesn't mean a project is legit or trustworthy might be a cover to attract investors, although there are projects with large numbers but they are already built. Let's be careful...

You can’t fully trust telegram because of this and we all know that telegram is just a mode of communication and if you’re a member of a pump and dump group, then its better to leave now than to follow their advice. Investor should know how to invest on their own, know how to study every project and know when to buy and sell.

Such large groups in telegrams then simply turn into nothing. Therefore, this is not an indicator of the success of the project at all. Besides not the fact that there really is the actual participants, even if write about it themselves the members of the team.

I honestly never understand even why they wanted to buy people to channels or reward them in any way for being there. It only brings bunch of idiots talking about bounties and nothing else. And what ever quality that channel had goes trough the floor because these people don't even know what the project is trying to achieve. I had to leave some channels for good just because of that.

Indeed ta volume of members in the Telegram group does not translate the success of the crypto project. And in my opinion,  reputation of telegram communities having big members is not very legit anymore and even becomes a way to scam people. I have seen many successful projects that does not have telegram communities but use other social network platforms like Reddit and Discord. Knowing and researching other the project is still a better way to invest in the project than it.

I believe everything has been covered already that's why I am locking this thread. Thank you for all the feedback.