Bitcoin Forum

Let's define first what is Initial Coin Offering or ICO? 

ICO is an unregulated means by which funds are raised for a new cryptocurrency venture.
My idea on ICO is CROWD FUNDING .

Now let's move on how can we avoid ICO SCAM

      Crowdfunding is shaping the future of finance. No longer does investment belong to the few and no longer does launching a project mean having to go through all the required conditions of Venture Capital investment. There are now multiple platforms where users can crowdfund their dreams and projects into reality.

Observe this things to avoid it.
Unrealistic goals
Buzzword salad
Whitepaper
No Code Repository
Team



Unrealistic goals
     
       If the project does have that potential, professional developers will never make such promises. They will let you know about the potential of their project and that’s it. No serious team will ever make a price prediction about their token or claim it can fix the world.

Buzzword salad

      “Our decentralized blockchain-based platform will disrupt the landscape of cryptocurrency investment while building a trustless network of pseudonymous users that leverage swarm intelligence technology to provide real world financial services in a tokenized ecosystem.”

       Some people may have a tendency to use buzzwords as a means to turn a boring text or announcement into something exciting. However, these will have a certain amount of information on it, even if you have to filter out some of the nonsense. Still, if a project needs to do this, then the project is likely to be as boring as watching paint dry.

Whitepaper
   
         Whitepapers usually explain how the platform works both on the high-level and specifically. This often includes charts, calculations, simulations, specifications and so forth. If your project claims that it is building some sort of decentralized service or token with new features and actually provides no explanation of how it works specifically, then just close the document and walk away.

No Code Repository

      This is what matters. Like someone said before “Code is law”. Even if the project announcement and whitepaper are complete trash, you can always count on Github or Sourceforge to put an end to all doubts. If the project provides no link to the code at all or if the project is nothing more than a clone with a few changed lines of code, then it’s not worth your time nor money.

Team

      This is very important. Who is behind the project? Is the team made up of well-known members of the cryptocurrency community? Are they known in other areas? Have they been involved in previous projects? If the answer is yes, then this may be an interesting opportunity. Just remember to check if the person is actually aware of the project as scammers may use famous names just to get people interested even though these are not part of the team.

Source: https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/guides/how-to-avoid-scam-icos/

Sometimes the initial look of website or whitepaper is enough to judge a project because professional and serious projects will not compromise even on the quality and design of the website. So we have to check the ico project from all aspects before looking to invest.

Yes, obviously the appearance is the main thing that the project must show to the crypto public, so that they can be attracted and glimpsed by investors, but don't forget about performance and how to build projects are also very necessary because at this time there are so many projects that only rely on their outward appearance but in origin they are a scam.

this can also Help since scam and blackmailing is really happening nowadays and they are rampant specially this season when December is coming
and people desires to take advantage of others.

https://bitcoin.org/en/scams#blackmail

and also this thread that has been posted last year that is a good help also in fighting scammers in this forum

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5210409.0

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Just be careful in everything we do ,specially in engaging with others because sometimes Looks can be deceiving ,those who
 pretend to be helping is the one that
 will attack us soon.

Although for some we may think that ICOs are already outdated but they are not. Projects in ICO are still existing but you can see a few of them go into success.
The new scam for these projects is now inlining with the Defi market. They can easily create a project and will just list it on swap platforms and it's up to them how they will do the trick.

But scammers nowadays are good at it,sometimes they look more professionals than the right one,ICO scammers now are growing and learning.
so they tend to mislead people and cheat them in their looks,Some of them copying Good whitepapers to  look good,or hiring professional people for them to become a legit looking team and projects.
they are really deceiving the victims.
exactly the Popular Defi projects now are the target of these scammers because there are many noobs investing on those also.

OP, perhaps you can say that you are a beginner and do not know the rules of the forum. But explain to me why post a copy of the 2017 article, even with the original link?
https://i.ibb.co/RCJQ46n/Screenshot.png (https://ibb.co/YtVfTd9)

As you know, the time for ICO has passed, and all this information has been rewritten here several times. As Defi projects are gaining popularity, reviews with new types of scams will be more useful.
Your topic does not contain any of your own thoughts, but only copy-paste, which is not welcome on the forum. What new have you discovered just by copying everything?
This is more like a search for merit than a desire to inform the community about something new.

Swap services allow you to create a pool and sell your tokens, but creating a pool requires a minimum of several hundred thousand dollars.
If the price of the token falls, then the liquidity providers will lose money.
Read this article
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5276515
Every day 20-40 projects were listed on uniswap, but this does not give any result, except for saving payment for listing on the exchange.
Therefore, the creators of the project need to look for buyers for their tokens.

Your suggestion does look good to see the details of an ICO project before investing, the method above is absolutely mandatory if you don't want to be hit by an ICO scam, but for now ICO is no longer used with projects, because now all projects have used Defi to convince everyone and invest in their projects, so always be careful and always see first if their team has social media, such as LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook and the projects they are on are visible on their profile or not.

ICO is quite dead already, IEO and Defi projects are what we are facing right now, and so much flooded on the market. It could be nice OP if you are making a guide to avoiding IEO or Defi projects.

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But anyway, ICO and the new projects today have a few similarities and it was obvious to see by then the strategies that these scammers had use are still the same. These things aren't new to us, to the market, and I know even newbies have some ideas about this. Just only for them to know more about the market and have their own understanding of scamming, then it was not difficult for them to find it.

This was the case before but those crooks learned some method that will also completely changed these things and make it look real until they run away with your investment. Most of the time they just plagiarized their site and whitepapers but right now they can completely make a new one and make it look like legit. Right now we need to be vigilant when choosing some ICO, the only thing I can advise is look for those ICO that promoted by the known bounty managers like Hhampuz and the others because of the bounty they've been promoted has some highest success rate.

People are ready to do everything to get merit :D But this guy is too late with this hints. The era of ICO is more dead than alive. I don't even remember anyone that ran an ICO and had finished with success (speaking only within this forum).

I would not mind if he would write his own thoughts on this guide, but editing an introduction was all he could...

Aside from the given pointers by OP, the best thing to avoid ICO scam is not to be greedy.  Greediness nullifies all sorts of reasons and risk thinking only an unrealistic profit promised or falsely conveys by a scam ICO project.

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I am curious what rule does OP breaks?

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ICO is still around, it is that IEO and DeFi outshine it.


This kind of posts has been a practiced by sometimes now, you better get use to it.

Are you interested in reading old articles? What new have you learned from it? I can agree that not all old information is out of date. But if everyone posts information on the forum that is not unique, not written by him with his own hand, but simply copying it and then uploading the source. Wouldn't that be considered a low-quality post?
I can provide a rule in Russian locale.
Use a translator for your understanding.

Indeed what you mention are red flags when investing in crypto and newbies and new investors should learn to watch out for. Also I would add to that the social presence and community support of the project. Scam project normally does not have a good community support that would aid investors in answering inquiries about the projects and the people running it.

Since the emergence of DEFI, ICO (initial coin offering) has been rebranded by many projects in many form after ( IEO ) initial exchange offering  hype by reputable exchanges, this encompasses  bonding curve, believers reward offering and many more for early adopters.
ICO comes with high risk and high reward because of the bonuses and less price when compared to public sales, however, one need a proper research before enrolling in any project that offer this form of crowdfunding.
Recent DeFi hype has left get quick rich investors in darkness because of immense profits, their laziness to read the warnings on the forum and lack of interest on news blog about the recent scam in this field.

For me this is very important we are talking about capability if you are going to hire someone to build your house he should have the credibility and the expertise to show that he really can do it and he has clients and projects to back it up.

This is where majority of the ICO fail they cannot come up one so they create fake their team members and their credibility, no coder will let other use his credentials so they cannot hire these good coders, they resort to photoshopped team hoping that they can get away with it, unfortunately there are members here that are good in catching fake credentials.

Yes I am, sometimes we forget things that were written in the past.  So it is a good thing to refresh once in a while.


Sadly this isn't a Russian locale but whether this is a low quality is subjective.  Each person do have different views on what is quality and what is not .  Report to moderator link is there if you think this thread shouldn't be here.  I believe that is much better.

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Most of the time scam project have paid shills.  The moment the project have an ICO goin on, their community group are very active with people that are paid to shill the project.  So somehow it is kinda hard to determine especially if the one they hire are professional shills.  I think asking sensitive question that have something to do with the credibility of the developers and verifying it can also help to determine whether the project is a scam or not.

Its defi season so guide to identify defi scam project is more important than ICOs which is almost died in 2020. :)

By the way good compilation of existing information in single thread but still you can construct it better for more visiblity.

Why you avoid this two point?
1. Compromised Escrow
2. Fake pictures?!
I think you try to do something by yourself without copying/pasting directly from the website. And as long as you can't do that, spend more time in the forum and gain knowledge.

We have very good quality topics related to your topic in our forum.  Please have a look ..
1. 🌍 Guidelines, how to spot a scam ICO & report effectively. ✔ (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5004397.0)
2.  🌍[Guide] Prevent scam!!! Some useful tools for find scam / fake ICO team 🌍 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4586576.0).

Well, yeah, now, ICO is outdated and there is so small amount of ICO that can be seen. But, the scammers do not stop there. They may still have many more ways to scam and get the money from their victims. ANd many ore ways are newly likely scams in:
- Airdrop
- Youtube CHannel
_ Social media
- Sites with very great profits of investment
- And more
Sometimes, the projects are also likely very legit and they may also have IEO, But the IEO is not in the good exchanges so that probably the scammers still can make scams on there.

With the increasing number of ICO scams, we should have an idea of the things that we must check to determine the credibility of an ICO. Examining the white paper is significant, as it contains every detail of the project. But I don't think it's a sufficient basis to verify if the project is legitimate because it can be easily plagiarized.

Like this one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5171613.0

Specially the unrealistic goals part, that is one of the most important parts because there are tons of coins and tokens right now that already achieve something awesome and they are legit good ones so the scam ones try to outdo them and claim a lot of features on top of the ones that are legit, if they do not claim great deal of new innovation they will not get any attention so that is why they have unrealistic goals.

If we believed all innovations to be fake we wouldn't have any new innovation so some of them turns out to be true and achieve but the odds of finding that one are lower than 1 in 100 so there is no reason to go for all those unrealistic projects. Others are good suggestions as well but the highest and most important one is to check the goals.

It seems to me that the creator of the topic fell asleep back in 2018, and woke up just now.
The fact that most of the ICO scams have been known for a long time, moreover, if you look at the ICO market, you will not see almost any projects, and those that you see do not receive any funding because they are suspected of being a scam.
Now we need to look at the market for DeFi projects, not ICO. It is HYIP DeFi that is now repeating the same thing that happened with the ICO in the past.

The hype is very much with defi projects but I think it will be gone just after one more week or eventually there's no more hype on it by after a month.
It is the target of scammers because they know that a lot of newbie investors are going to go there and have their cake investments. While the newbie investors not being vigilant, they are prone and likely to be scammed if they are not practicing to research.

The patterns are similar so make sure to keep doing a hard research before doing any participations.

DeFi re making it's way and many investors are fomoing to participate, from that views scammers are also taking advantages
to avoid being victimized make sure to learn first everything regarding to the DeFi project that you are looking to invest don't quickly
jumped do your DYOR,.

Now this is the trend, we should know by know how to identify scam projects and a hype projects. Newbies have to do their job to analyze before investing and don’t just listen for big profit promises. Old investors knows already that a lot of ICO is just a scam, but now that DeFi is on a hype we should also know that many scam project exist and better to avoid joining those projects.

Defi is bit more complicated to analyse because many project team wants to stay anonymous so it is impossible to check the legitimacy of them and also they doesn't have problem with listing because now they have decentralized exchange so they can just make money and fades away in no time within this hype.

Defi has produced many crowdfund with anonymous team and that has reduced the scam, whatever the hype in the space I will never acknowledge a project with anonymous team. It does not cost a team anything if they got nothing to hide. A team with track record in the space is more attractive to raise fund. Go beyond the Linkedin information to verify the authenticity of the team, Linkedin can work with any date and we know older account could be easy to accredit.

While you have shared some valid points through which people can find scam ICO (better ti avoid every ICO lol), there is another good article made by forum member coolcryptovator which I found very interesting as it has some more different approaches. You may find it interesting- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4586576.0

This is a good way to go and not regret in ICO investment. A research is needed always before any further step can be taken. Some ICO team have the purpose to only run with investors money. So you need to observe the whitepaper against any duplication or dubious content.

The exchange doesn't care, because some new projects also make a fake announcement about IEO. Newbies can't safe from all these scam sites. I think some newbies obviously get involved in those processes. Or do research on some new scam coins. Now we are relying more on the DeFi projects instead of some good exchange IEO.

Yes. It's always good and advisable to DYOR first before investing in ICOs. We are not sure where will this project go so to be sure, we should be more skeptical in choosing which projects to invest so we won't be making regrets if we found out late and they have already stole our funds. Studying on the whitepaper alone is not good enough. We should go on the details on the staff behind the project so we can confirm if those people are legit and not just scammers trying to fool us.

A very informative and very substantial information and sentiments which is really very useful to all the newbies who needs to have a very good guide in order for them to avoid several ICO scam. I totally agreed to all the following important highlighted information to be considered in avoiding those scam project.

It's caused by the instant return and easy requirement to particiapted in the defi. It was happening last month but this month the popularity of defi has already drowned caused by the exchange sites have already launched the launch pool for the defi projects which have already robbed a lot of demand from the defi project again.

The competition between cex and defi are very strict especially uniswap that can compete with all of cex at once time. That looks so crazy.

Sometimes if a project has an MVP (minimum viable product) it too plays a big role. Mostly the project is only into raising money for the project, but if you find an ICO which already has an MVP than you could pay more attention to that project.

Is ICO still alive? I thought that defi is a new meta

Isn't it too late to provide these tips?
DeFi had been popular and most hyped now and I think investors are already forgetting about ICO's.
I did.
They became just history for me.
Although I still see some good projects on that platform, it's difficult to risk money there by now since they might not reach the right cap to continue.

Okay, that's great criteria to have a clue whether the token you are investing with is a future scam or not. But take note, these can be your guidelines when you are about to join them but what would you do if things don't go well in the middle? What if they said to you that "I'm sorry we didn't hit the hard cap." or "Oops there is a technical error on our codes." Etc. How can you cope with those alibis?

As far as I'm concern, you can't do anything about it but to pray on God that team only encountered a problem and don't have an intention of scamming at all ;D. Therefore, I am not advising everyone (especially the newbies) to become an avid fan of ICOs because the risks are greater than the potential profits. Realtalk.

The ICO era has over, and IEO is also over. And now, the trend has been replaced by DeFi projects. The DeFi project has already begun, and there is no sign of the project to end. But I think the @OP gives the thing that we should concern to find the scam project, but I am sure there are many more to find that scam project. The scam project will search for the other way in the new trend, and they will try to get the new target in the crypto world. We need to be careful to invest in any project.

It seems that this is not the time for ICOs this year, in fact all projects are no longer using them because the trust from the community has faded, and even if there are projects that still use ICOs, they tend not to be as successful as their era, they are even more likely to avoid these projects, because of that many projects switch to using IEO or DeFi even though it is a trend this year, but everyone is still wary of the existing projects at this time, actually it is very difficult to tell which projects are scams or not, because many smart projects hide their bad intentions , so the good solution is to read a lot and be more careful to choose a good project to invest in.

I appreciate your efforts above but I'm not surprised by the ICO scam project. in general, fraudulent projects are always around us and not even just ICO. like last year IEO & ITO became a tool for fraud. and now the market trend is supporting the DEFI project. and what we need to pay attention to is the current DEFI project. DEFI is still young, and it can be used as a new tool for fraud. stay alert

It’s that last point for me: this thing of scammers using the face of famous people and pretending that they are part of the project is a very serious issue in this cryptocurrency space and I don’t know why people keep believing anything they see without going to the right source to verify whether it’s true.

If you see a project after checking their team you need to go to the social media of the people that were mentioned and team and check their posts to see if they have posted anything in relation to the ICO you’re about to invest. If you don’t see any post, you can ask question to know if they are part of the team.

sometimes displays can also be deceiving they could just put famous people on their team,most ICO projects are aimed at fraud, and few ico projects are good and successful.I myself find it difficult to judge what is good and which is a fraud.

Well, one thing i feel is that there is nothing like unrealistic goals or targets in crypto currency, what we have is dishonest investors and most times those type of investors always have a rekt in the long run.

My keyword is this; as an investor either newbie or expert; your job is to guard your capital investment, and the best way to do that is to set realistic profit targets for your tokens; the best way to do this is to be sincere to yourself and your research results. Always do your own research

Now with the popularity of DeFi, much of the above is not relevant. Projects are created that do not disclose their team, their code is not audited, there is no access to github, and the most amazing thing is that such projects collect a huge amount of money and even allow investors to earn))

To my knowledge, Defi themed projects always keep their code open source. It's too stupid to invest in defi projects when their source code is closed.

I don't know, take for example: OIN Finance, Linear Finance, Power Trade - try to find data there on github. This did not prevent them from closing the sale.

Commonly what often happens here is that many newbies are so easy to be trapped by the scammers with only a small amount of the rewards that can be got. As newbies, they will commonly love collecting BTC or crypto by doing something so easy and getting high rewards. This condition is utilized by the scammers, moreover for those who are greedy ones.

Commonly they are offered certain activities and also tasks very easy to be done. They will be shown up that there is any other participation. And then, they are trapped to send some mbtc or satoshi into a certain wallet in order to withdraw the amount. ANd the engine styles,

Newbies should consider the potential earnings from those tasks. Because most of them will turn out to be pennies where they can't even pay for the gas fees. But anyway, ICOs are dying because a lot of people already learned their lessons. But there are still few projects trying to run their ICO campaign, so yes, maybe this thread will still be helpful to noobs.

What has been explained in the opening post is indeed good for avoiding ICO project scams, But why should we do this if the fact is
that now the ICO project is over. So I think right now we don't need to invest in ICO projects anymore. DeFi projects is a trend now
that is booming, My advice is to focus on investing in DeFi projects if you want to generate large profits.

Just avoid ICO and that's it you can avoid scam. Most of the ICO are scam and with that avoiding them will help you to avoid the scam.

I am not against the ICO but only to those scam projects. Anyway, not all ICO projects are scam for there are others as well that are doing good and if you are a bounty hunter they will pay good as well. Anyway, what matter here is that one can avoid scam. There are defi projects also that could be doing good but for now I am trying to check if this defi projects are just hype or something.

Not all ICO but most of them and we heard so many advices now on how to trace scam project so don’t get any excuses if you get scam by any project. ICO and DeFi project are both risky, almost every investment are so DYOR always and never depend to any investment signal or advice. If in doubt, don’t invest or go all in and you can also wait for the exchange listing of that project since it will always go up and down, an opportunity to make profit.

It depends on reliability and practical value of each concrete solution or token. What makes sense - some aspects that stay for new trends. For example, I am pretty disappointed by more bots attacks on website and low level of security, only captcha helps a bit on the field

From my point of view, the alternative is usage of technically advanced solutions. But in here, of course, you should be choosing the most advanced solutions only

Yes. hCaptcha is coming with real solution. hCaptcha is designed to solve the most labor intensive problem in machine learning: labeling massive amounts of data in a timely, affordable, and reliable way. More data generally produces better results in training machine learning models. The recent success of deep models has led to increasingly large datasets, almost always with some human review. However, creating large human-reviewed datasets via Mechanical Turk, Figure Eight, etc. is both slow and expensive. hCaptcha allows websites to make money serving this demand while blocking bots and other forms of abuse

Though you state valid points, This topic has been discussed, dealt with and created awareness to help many during the days of icos. Market awareness and focus has shifted to defi projects, and awareness or discussion about that would really be helpful and more topical.

The above you stated gives good realization to those who wasted their time and effort and most of all money in investing for a scam project. We need to be careful when engaging to an investment. No matter how the team supported the project it is not only the basis of a good project there are lots of things that we need to put into consideration before we can say that the project is highly recommended.

I think you forgot 2 point in your post.
Checking the website and how active their project is social media is important.
- Check the website how long the project run. Most of new project is give high potential scam.
- Project Social Media, social media is also important, a good project is always active on social media so that other people know that the project is really active.

Good advise and pointers for newbie inventors. It is said that to identify simple unrealistic project is to check the team. Because scam ICO projects has their team as fake. They hire some people to be part of their staffs or team with same person to other unique projects yet using different names. Also the scam ICO projects may copy some unique project's whitepaper.

Community as well. When we're speaking of community, we're also talking about communication. Does the team update well in any social media channel? Forum? Telegram? Because even if those teams have good reviews in sites like ICOBench, but they don't update the project progression, that's still a red flag, at least for me. Some reviews are paid also, and people should be wary of those.
Repositories are kind of an indicators as well. How many pull requests were made within a month? One would be too unrealistic considering that even the most updated softwares, although non-crypto related, are being update almost daily.

Very important before you release your money to any investment is to know the business / project much deeper.

every developers have promises but to value your money investors needs to take time in dealing with research, never to blindly
invest your money as it will hurt you once you become a victim of those so many scammers inside this industry, be very vigilant
and skeptical, better than being sorry after you made a mistake and loses your money.

Good reason sharing information to newbies about Scam ICO's I think the community would appreciate if you would create Newbie's guide to avoid DeFi scam since ICO's hypes was few years ago also if your target readers are really newbies then you can post it to beginners and help section.

Absolutely agreeable. The appearance is the very first thing that people are always seeing including potential investors because they are being attracted on the offering included in the ICO itself. But the appearance must not be just the one being observed for looks can be deceiving most of the time. Better go deep down on tracking necessary information about the ICO before doing any engagement to avoid wasting your time, effort and of course not to get victimized by a scam ICO. Some scam ICOs are indeed easily to be determined by just a glance but that does not always apply for you might be having a wrong judgment or impression with regards to their appearance making you to stay away without taking into consideration other information. But yes indeed appearance is important for it shows professionalism and sincerity so at the glance it must be appropriate already.

Very well explained! Apart from what you have mentioned, I would like to add a point of telegram channels and community of the project. Before ICO, everything will be realistic, very active admins, developments as per roadmap etc. But once IcO ends, you will see delay in response and total silence down the line of few days.

ico for today really should be avoided because too many scams to fraud no prevalent in ico even if those who want to invest they mostly lose the money they had been long enough ico almost forgotten and investors prefer to buy coins IEO in large exchange for safer and more profitable.

Unrealistic goals and being greedy are two main problems for new investors, they want to believe in the get quick rich schemes. Investing wisely requires experience and a deep understanding of money management, newbies investors are inexperienced in both field. Profit will flow after the experience, getting experience can't be done without losing in the market too.

Very informative thread and very useful guide for all the newbies in the forum. A very keen observation which is totally true that mostly all scam ICO are having those ideology.

I think this particular point really depends on the type and nature of the project, i have seen projects who do not have or i have not seen their code repository because mainly they are on eth blockchain and still do well with a great and dedicated team behind it,
You did made some valid points but scam project have different method to scam, some project may possess all this and still end up a scam.

even vitalik said that defi is hype, so many projects will take advantage of this moment, and create their own defi project and will follow the ongoing hype, especially projects with the initials Y, which mimic project yfi.
be careful if you buy one of these coins, and make sure you have made a profit then immediately release it because we don't know when the form will end.

This exact logic let down a lot of people who thought "oh this ICO has fancy site and a decent whitepaper, also a lot of people already invested in it IT MUST BE LEGIT".
This only allowed not so stupid ICO runners to scam people for millions of dollars.
Always check the code and trust yourself only

On any type of investment primary concern is, the more you get familiar with the more you're permitted to contribute. Decentralization is key factor, in case you're not investigating your coins and their teams you're fundamentally in a difficult situation. Beware of hype tokens and most importantly thinking about the future, please don't overlook the point of crypto investing.

to avoid the ICO scam, it's very easy if you want, I just give you a few ways,
the first is you don't buy ICO outside of the trend, like now, Defi is a trend, and Defi ICO is certainly a trend,
you can buy it, and secondly, you have to buy an IEO or ICO that is completely informed, or is hosted on the best exchange

It is hard to see some successful ICOs nowadays because there are only few ICOs.
IEO is more common than ICO, we should know how to avoid scam IEO as well.
I think we better to join IEO on trusted exchanges to avoid scam IEO on unknown exchanges.

If your a newb forget everything about ICO's or altcoins, you probably dont even know what blockchain is yet.....

I have introduced so many people to cryto, and almost none of them have heeded this advice.

sure invest, but only buy Bitcoin, trade bitcoin, research blockchain, research exchanges and decentralized exchanges research, research, and research some more....

learn how to trade,  learn what blockchain can do to simplify world trade, to record data, to create inventory and rid us of redundancies, learn about all the major scams in this space, learn about the successes.....

when your no longer a newb consider venturing outwards, but only into waters your very familiar with... take every piece of advice with a cube of salt, and every piece of critisism should be taken as truth until proven otherwise...
dont sweat the missed opportunities.
but get ready, when your ready...
this is the wild west baby..
newbies need to learn before they go shooting from the hip.

bitcoincarpenter.

Unfortunately those people who still fall for these type of things are not people who read these type of warnings. They are people who see something that promises them 100x return and they think their 100 dollars could turn into 10k and if they find one more it will be 1 million dollars, that is all it takes to get 100 dollars into life time guarantee of happiness, just two big winners if you can find them.

This logic makes them lose a lot of 100 dollars along the way, they do not realize that now they are down few hundred even few thousand dollars because they believed they could have made a million dollars from these. They just get caught up in all the hype around some projects and they fall for that hype, which causes them to leave all the caution out of the window and get in without much thinking or research.

Don't be a Guru here because all you've said are basic in finding scams in ICO yet it is not completely perfect.
there are many coins hosted by Best exchange than in the end comes to be scams.

same as what you send is trending today but in the next days will dump drastically .

the truth is no one really knows perfectly so never say it is easy way.

The best way to avoid ICO scams is not to invest in ICO projects, after all, what is the use of investing in ICO projects if they are
no longer profitable. Since 2019 ICO projects are no longer worthy of being followed, almost 99% of ICO projects are scams. If you
want to invest, it's better to choose IEO projects or DeFi projects which are more profitable, but keep doing research before investing
in IEO or DeFi projects. Because not all IEO or DeFi projects are good, and for newbies, you should first invest in Bitcoin which is
definitely safe and profitable.

Have a look at the amount of money they are trying to raise. If the hard cap is too high or if they promise guaranteed returns then thats usually a big red flag. Also look at fully diluted market cap after full circulation. It should not be too high.

Nice topic and some useful tips but these unrealistic goals is what people fell for and invest and it is more like something that is too good to be true is usually scam but people because of being in crypto expect big things and when a project is promising big things one feels like if he does not invest now he might miss a big opportunity and hence the FOMO brings more and more victims.

I personally never invest in any ICO that does not have any model ready but is planning to change the world very soon because a team that is actually interested in their project will always have something build up and at least some progress to show to their investors. Promising too much for the future and having done nothing in past for a project is also a classic sign of a scam or at least dull project. The developers might never work on the project since all they wanted was money.

That is so true as the hype train investors are riding is the DeFi coins and people are just blindly investing into any new project that comes and without even knowing how it will operate what the team is behind them and if even there is a real use for the coins.

I feel so funny and sad at the same time when I see innocent investors being tricked away by fake coins by various means, funny because being an investor one should have at least basic knowledge about the coin they are piling up with them. I was there on a telegram group where an investor was asking that he has sent funds and when he will receive his coins while actually if you know how DEX works he should have had his coins already so he got scammed in simple words.

Code repository is very important too. If you are a developer, you should be able to detect the red flags from it.
Although ICO is usually based on existing blockchain like ETH, we should be careful of new coin ICO too.
In announcement board, there are many scam new coins has been created, they put the link of wallet download there, and it was a virus!

I believed this unrealistic rewards and goals made a lot of gullible investors fell for them, they promise bogus bonuses in such a way that greedy investors can easily be tricked, this is now the trend in the presently hyped DeFi projects, in few months time we shall reading news on scams projects related to DeFis that is why any new investor should thoroughly research and follow the guide by the OP such that the investor will have the opportunity of scrutinizing these projects to know the genuine ones.

different stages as developer works on encountering message with the work on mediation and promotion of project, as newbies might gains of proper information on commitment with the use of work with tasks on anchoring to secure of least of risks with waste on dispute of funds to put on customs issues with work on crypto investment.

We cant avoid scam ico in crypto but we can prevent investing in those projects,like promoters will be looking a good project to promote so if investors will go to invest they asure to have the good bounty to promote.

Basically what I do to avoid being scammed by ICO's is to apply my experiences and instinct while scanning the project. I start with the whitepaper first and see the tokennomics, how the team handles the allocation of the token if it is fair or not for the investors. Usually, you can already spot the scam projects when they have fully unlocked most of the token for the dev team and the marketing team. This quite means that they might sell their own tokens or (rug) the project. Another way I can suggest is to check their community, anon team are quite more likely to scam people even if they say that bitcoin's creator was anon. Lastly, try to check their site. If it was a clone of another working site or original.

Newbies is mostly getting scam by the ICO because their knowldge about it is not enough or they are blind because the scammer offer high profit so they still losing their funds and not earning money they need only is guide so they prevent on how to avoid scam project but ICO is obviously is not to trust anymore because a lot of scammer there . This is very informative that will be helpful for us ofcourse to the beginners.

besides that, you also need to do research both from the team and the dev in managing previous projects. A good project at least has a real team, is not anonymous, public sales are running smoothly, products are performing well, have large partners and communities, marketing strategies and much more that you need to research before taking part in them.

Unrealistic goals have psychological background and the emotional illness drains the energy of investors to make quick bucks. Information is important for educating the new investors in social media and the challenge is to reach the millions of investors in a short time. ICO book is closed by scammers and investors are no more inexperienced to put their money where team members convince them.

I recently felt the ICO was getting less and less. As an investor / bounty hunter we are only able to do our best because it is not uncommon for an ICO to be not a scam, but BM (bounty Manager) is cheating. some are honest BM, but the ICO project is a scam, some are ICO scam and BM is cheating. all have risk.

I don't these ones matters anymore, cause scammers know their flaw and they have already did something to cover those up. Whitepaper might be a something to look at but it is not a big deal anymore. I have been any many token sales, with great looking whitepaper, but still the project ended up scams. If the projects evolves then the scammers too, they will create and double their effort if necessary just to scam millions of money from investors.

Right now have famous with ICO farming coin where they list on uniswap with good price, they have little coin supply to make investor like and interested with their coin but not guarantee will give much profit later when you investing, first time know to public many people interested with this coin like YFI, YFII and many Y coin named, but now day by day have look not interested anymore because many investor are tired with lower price and never back up or recovery to higher price again.

These are a good tips. Newbies should be aware of what to look for in ICO projects. Because even a scam looks legit nowadays.

Thats right as long as there are people who can be easily convince and greedy that the only want is to earn, they might really become a victim of such projects.

Reading through the white paper and even just by looking at the website can give you a hint about of project. There are projects who promise unrealistic returns or even sets unrealistic goals. Take note that all the projects that you are seeing successful today had spent years of development and took a lot of time before they reached where they are today. Just check the team and the community how legitimate they are, if a team has sketchy ways or cannot address the question asked by community members, it can be considered as a flag that they are not really aware pf what they are doing.

of course for now we only need to follow market trends, if indeed self farming is in demand then it will be booming and you have to know and estimate when to enter and exit.
and get ready for the next trend.

defi is that bubble delivered by vitalik and cz also approves of it.
still it is a good opportunity to take advantage of it quickly, as most projects take advantage of fomo defi to take advantage just be careful and be prepared if you want to try it.

Yes, and the investors who are first interested in what you say are beginner investors who still don't have experience and are very likely not to do research at first, because indirectly the one who built the farming coin ICO is to get profit by taking advantage of the situation and current market conditions.

Yes, one even pointed out that this is just a copy and paste forum thread. Well good information but came from a different source. So it is not coming from the original thoughts of the poster. Anyway, many times this has been discussed over and over by many forum members that this is no longer important information but rather more of a redundance in the forum. Still, I would applaud the effort since this is also for those who are lazy researchers and just want to view the first 5 pages of the thread.

I forgot ICO by now and I have no interest to participate with them either. It was getting tired also searching legit project among hundreds of scam projects. yeah, we can easily avoid scam by simply looking into those things that OP has mentioned above but I don't see these things could help to changes the mindset of greedy individuals.

It some instances that most noobs got into this scenarios due to lack of knowledge but I don't it will be just easy nor they come into an investment without knowing anything they do, of course, the know that already but they just want to be blind and think more on the easy money than the possible scam.

As a newbie in the areas of exchange there are some guide you need to follow to avoid ICO scam in the market. Scammer are everywhere in all cryptocurrencies, looking for who to scam and many newbie always fall victim in the hands of the scammers by failing to follow the guide to avoid ICO scam.
Here are some guide the newbies have to follow to avoid ICO scam such are:
1) Information: If you can follow the information your got from the platform it can help you to avoid ICO scam in the place of Investment. Many people invest their coins in a wrong place because they lack information from the platform.
2) personal research: as a newbie you need to do your personal Research to know how to avoid ICO scam in the market not to be scam your coins.

Some solid tips in the first post, that is for sure. I tend to gravitate towards being especially careful when it comes to the "team" section on the websites. If they provide their real pictures, their LinkedIn profiles in which it is stated that they are indeed linked to the projects etc. If there are no red flags there, there is a much smaller change they will pull a blatant scam as that would maybe reflect on them in their personal life as well.

Many ICO have a good appearance only in the surface. Be careful and keep seeing their performance too in their project, especially in their website. See what is their goals, is it realistic or not and you should do some research before investing in their team.

Many developer use fake team, fake profile picture on their website to make investor interested, I know some project who use fake document and looks really true to make investor more interested with their ICO coin. I think how to get profitable with ICO investment is waiting how road map are clearly when publishing and how long ICO coin sale running until listing on exchange market. Will have new ICO make schedule when listing and which one market become destination for listing their coin. When you get an ICO project not clearly how long time for selling running better left and join other ICO project.

Thanks for sharing the information, with this little contribution we help on long way to invest on Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in cryptocurrency community, hence it requires to make a research before making any investment to avoid scam project.

not all ICO projects are scam for there are others too that are doing good and on the off chance that you are a bounty tracker they will pay good also. Anyway, what matter here is that one can evade scam. There are defi projects likewise that could be doing good however until further notice I am attempting to check if this defi projects are simply publicity or something.

I think these are something fundamental to analyze once you want to review before joining a crypto project. But if you make it simpler, all of them are only about the whitepaper. Well, it is true that we need to analyze deeply the project through the whitepaper. If everything looks okay, then why not join? But if you find something strange or suspicious, kindly forget it. It's too risky.