Bitcoin Forum

ICO is acronym for Initial Coin Offer, it is also like the public companies call Initial Public Offer (IPO). Just as it is to raise capital for the company for its operations, it is for crypto the same thing alike. The difference however is that you can see the public company, visit them or make enquiry about them from regulatory bodies and most times the government won't allow them to scam the people. It is more secured compared to ICO.

ICO is quite riskier to invest on because it is less regulated and that is why it easily scam you off your money. This is the reason you need to be careful and research more.

While researching on ICO projects, you need to focus on

1. ICO organised by existing company already: This is because that such companies have reputation to protect. A good name always carry customers to your domain so they may not scam.

2. Search for ICO that has the support of reputable company or are in partnership: Just like number above, same thing can apply here, the image is greater than scamming you. Ensure the company has a great history, anticident and performing.

3. If it has the support of a reputable user on the forum: At least the user know that they will be legit before supporting them because of reputation.

Always remember that above all, ICO can scam you so be
sure to research and invest in the tokens of companies with a strong reputation with clear business model.

ICO is such as supporting a vision and you don't need to ride on a car rode by someone with blurred vision because you will be destined for dome even before it started. You have to invest in a token which shows exactly how the project is going to benefit you as an investor.

It would be useful information, but I think you're few years to late. We're living in 2021 and ICO isn't a thing long time ago.
I looked at your trust page, and from feedback left by @actmyname it seems that you're just chasing merits.

What I'm looking into ICO are those who have goals and product. Yes there are lots of fishes new projects there but  let me just remind you that ICOs can also died when the market is bad and hasn't much cash inflow.

I would like to comment on ICOs created with reputated company? You mean some of the team came from a good one and existing already? That's actually right but we can't say because that's a team project if his just an advisor or part timer we still not sure.

Crowdfunding is risky and ICO, IDO, IEO are only different types of crowd-funding.

I feel more safely if I wait for projects to list their tokens on exchanges and wait for one month to have price basements for my entry. I would prefer to see resistance and support on charts from which I will consider potential entries for my investments.

Invest in too early phase is more risky and I don't have enough ability to do my good research for crowd-funding so that I can not have protection for my investment decisions.

The biggest problem with ICO that people ignore (because they all care about gambling) is that there is absolutely no link between the tokens and the creators of the token.
First let me say that there is never a "company" or a "product" behind any ICOs that has ever been created but lets say there is, if the company does well the token can still be dumped hard. And if they do terribly the token can still be pumped.
That means it doesn't even matter if by some chance a real company with a real product or service actually created a token. The token is still not worth buying since you will lose money in it all the same.

There are over 9000 cryptocurrencies existing today, there were many successful ICOs when there only only few cryptocurrencies, but the more coins are created, the more there will be unsuccessful ICOs, some ICOs are scam which I believe you know about and know how to avoid, but not all, some will only result into pumping the price of a coin and dumping the coin later which will make many people to still lose, there are some with good project but yet failed as a result of bear market. The team behind ICO really matters also, like if a famous person like Bill Gates has an ICO project, it will certainly be successful, but there are good ones but because of the team behind it are not famous result the ICO into failure and deemed scam to people. Some ICO can truly be successful but many more are failed projects nowadays. I couldn't believe StudentCoin would even result to scam until the bounty manager post about it that people should report the project as scam on different platforms.

In my opinion, the success of the campaign does not mean that it reaches a certain price, because once it reaches that price, many users are selling.
Success in continuing with the idea and solving a reality problem facing everyone. Otherwise, all that happens is speculation that may not last for long.
As long as you solve a fundamental problem, the value will come sooner or later, so don't worry about profit.

I heard ICO if I'm not mistaken in 2017. It was the easiest place to raise money in projects. After that I heard IDO, STO, and IEO. In their mass they look very successful, but for now I don't think this project is as much as it used to be. Today it has switched to Defi, then Multi chain, etc. Yes all will be great on the mass. But it won't last long if the dev doesn't get serious about developing it.

If you are talking about ICO at this time maybe it is a delay in knowledge even though it is history as you might mean for people to understand.

I thought ICOs weren’t much of a thing now…

Just to point out on the quoted fragment of text, that support from a reputable member of the forum I figure could be read as explicit support (i.e. within the ICO’s forum threads), or by lateral association due to managing the Campaign/Ann or even by bearing its signature. Whilst the reputable member does stake part of his reputation in some of these cases (one could easily argue that Campaign signature bearing will conform a very lateral staking, if any at all), he generally won’t really be tied enough to the project to know its ins and outs.

More often than not, such conceptual associations could create a false sense of trust for the project, that is not really intended nor backed by facts, and placing trust on a project from an investor’s point of view, based on who’s supporting it here, is a risky assumption that should not be made in broad terms.

The last paragraph completely threw me into a stupor. What did you mean? What kind of car are we talking about? Do you believe that if the organizers of the projects come up with a beautiful name, this builds up the trust of investors :o? It is strange to hear something like that from a participant with a 4-year presence on the forum.
None of the points you describe are appropriate for judging a good project correctly. Therefore, listen to friendly advice, if you do not understand the correct assessment, then do not mislead people. At least don't do it affirmatively.

I have seen examples were reputable forum members write a disclaimer informing the community that they are not to be held responsible for the success/failure of the campaign. They were only paid to manage the ANN/bounty campaign, etc. That tells you everything you need to know. Do your own research and don't trust me just because I am "reputable".

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When we are on the subject of ICOs, can someone name a few successful ones from 2020/2021 that have liquidity on exchanges, haven't lost 50 or more % of its ATH, and have a working product? I am curious if this niche is still alive today...

I think that it would be very hard to find altcoin projects that meet all the above criteria, especially the one about not losing 50% or more price since ATH since there is some correction happening at the moment, but there are quite a few that managed to make decent ROI compared to IDO price and i think that's what most of the people care about. IDOs (Initial dex offerings) are slowly taking over ICO model, in which sales are organized on decentralized on platforms Polkastarter and trading starts immediately after tokens are distributed to those who managed to get allocation.

From what I could notice, another big difference between IDO and ICOs is that allocations are much smaller, and projects usually raise from 500k to few million USD, compared to ICOs in 2017 when similar shitcoins were raising tens of millions. So instead IDO investors getting screwed (like in 2017/2018) usually those that buy when trading starts lose the money. Bottom line, its still very risky business.

If interested, here you can find some info about ROI
https://cryptorank.io/ico

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@OP above everything, you should check does the projects you are thinking about investing in has any reason to actually use blockchain and does it solve any real issue. In 99% of the cases, you will find that an answer is no, therefore avoid.

Is it? Studentcoin become scam now? I wondered how, cause I see on different social mediums their ads, even on dextool before, and in here and some twitter ads too. As far as I know they completed their ICO, but for me it's kinda weird as they already have trading on exchange and now raising funds.

What did they scam? Hunters? Or investors and traders?

ICO's are not famous right now so I don't think it will be successful if scammer will do the same scheme since many people are avoiding it now. Maybe you should look on what happening on BSC ecosystem right now there are so many shitcoins conducting a token sale and many innocent victims has been victimized by rug pulling scheme, Maybe newbies should be aware of more scamming happening on that area and never go hold a BSC shitcoins once someone tell us since its totally a scam only few of them can be selected and if I rate them to 100% only 1% of BSC tokens are little good to held for short period of time.

It has become a den of scammers during 2018 and that's why the fall of it has been known and there are only a few investors left that are interested in it. If there are still investors interested in it, probably they're really newbies and thinking that it's still the same as before but in reality, it's not.

And that's why scammers have taken advantage of the scheme, they will give the token that has no value in return of their investment.

If we are to make analogies with the stock market then we need to consider Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) of shares, which is what these ICOs are based on. Any seasoned investor will tell you that IPOs are very dangerous and a large portion of them will lose money. They are definitely not advised for anyone new and should only be bought by experienced investors. There is a lot of money flooding into cryptocurrency at present and it can be extremely hard to distinguish a unique original idea from an over-hyped project. It may be beneficial to beginners to stay away from ICOs entirely for the first year of buying cryptocurrencies and only start to buy after they have spent a long time monitoring how they work - if you must get involved then come up with a "fantasy" game where you pick 5 coins you think will win and track how they do over the next 6 months.

It still lived up to its memory.
I can still recall that there were a lot of threads back in Alts Board about if ICOs are scam. Seems like those good ol investors are smelling something fishy to many ICOs that year already til they just kept their money for hodling til IEOs started to replace them. :)

The worst ICO reputation was when in 2018 there were many scamers who ran away from investors' money so that this trust was difficult to return to even someone who considered the ICO to be illegal fundraising because what they feared was held by them without a third party that was always used. real product ingredients when their intentions are bad.

But for me now it is different, there are many changes happening. To be honest, I am also a whitelist IDO hunter because all this I do is of course research first, therefore the risk must be prepared when you want to enter the initial phase of investors where the main sale begins.
I only see now that IDO / ICO has a high ROI, it is my interest with all the risks.

Hunters because they are not paid as expected, this project is said to be a scam by the manager who manages the bounty.

This was a major set back of ICO in retrospect. Many scam was associated with this it and almost made ethereum like getting less hype because most of the projects of ICO where under the Ethereum blockchain. The investors too who bought where either having their coins locked up and not release while some outrightly didn't fulfill white paper promise to investors. It was really a time to learn about investment in tokens not in exchange and it's risk.

i remember that golden period of ICO days. i even invested in several ICO projects before but ended up screwed. to think that i did my job of researching the platform itself, even investing with published team members with their profile links posted, as i thought they will not screw people. but unfortunately, they never developed their platform and their site just disappeared without any notification to their investors. you can never tell what these people are thinking. but most of them just wanted to pocket the money.
this is why researching properly will not assure you that you will not get rekt. but it will trim down your chance of being screwed.

Many of the projects were like that.

Because of the crowd success that many projects did, some of the developers have also rode the enjoyed the run by making seems to be a good project.

But in the end, they didn't finished the project.

I agree. It is absolutely important to do a strong research about an ICO before participating in it. We've seen so many scam projects so far in the end. Noone would like to come across them.

It's true that it is unfortunate for hunters they can't get paid.
But, isn't that a reason why they are "hunters"? They have to hunt the legit projects to actually get the money, so if you think that hunters are the one that the most unfortunate amongst those choice, then you are wrong.

Investors/traders are the one whose get scammed. They were willing to invest on unknown projects just to fund them and hope for the best, but they got scammed. What a shame.

Well ICO era is already over but it is helpful you just need to change the title a bit "Investment and it's risk, research properly".
It isn't just ICO or any other initial offering type of investment but all the investment have a risk so research properly to know how it works and how you could earn properly on your investment.

In every move that person made there is always risk. However the gravity or how hard it affect by it is the thing we should consider. In Crypto or particularly ICOs, DYOR is very important and with due diligence.  Some projects are legit while majorities are for a quick buck scheme . But dig what technology or protocol the project is having and weigh in whether it is useful or not in real world application.

It may be classic ways to research good ICO, in fact, many scammers can also make their scam projects as very smart and interesting as [ossible, very trusted, but in the end, they are scammers. And we can see how many scams using the ICO.

And I agree with many members here. Today is not the era of ICO. IEO itself is also likely not very popular again.
It is better to join in certain launchpad done by bit and trusted exchanges with reputable launchpad systems and experiences. Or the IEO that is done in the middle to top reputable exchanges. they will be more promising and trustworthy to wait and of course, we must also be analyzing about the project itself.

Actually, even with a proper DYOR, it's still not an assurance. Even a good project with a good case and tool isn't getting the attention of some investors.

For me, newbies should stay away from any ICO's if they don't understand the risks. I'd rather pick from the current coins that are already listed on exchanges compare to gambling my fortune into ICO that has no market value until it got listed to exchange.

Joining ICOs is for advanced people only that know its gambling and chances of not getting back their invested money is possible.

I don't think there are many projects that want to pursue this form, now there are too many ways to attract capital with new projects IEO, IDO, ITO all bring better results. But in general, for new projects that still retain this form, there are not many good projects, and it is not easy to access large projects because of competition.

I agree. Traders and risk takers are the one at prone to scam since they are investing real money and chances of failure due to price down or rug is a possibility but in the case of hunters, the only thing that loses is their time and effort for promotions. Yes its also important but if we compared that to the loss of money, isnt it much painful right?

There are now too many tools that we can take advantage of to know if the project is good or not.
For ICOs at the moment it's not very attractive, we are in 2021 and there are many ways to approach like IDO, since when this market becomes active, I don't see many successful ICOs.

Previously ICOs were startups and they didn't have an actual product. Investment is like a risky bet.
Currently, projects to raise ICO have been prepared, usually, they have raised capital from SeriesA, Seed grow... and have their own products. Such projects ICO will be easier than brand new projects.
Investors have been dodgier than they were in 2017-2018. That proves that the perception of the cryptocurrency market has changed in a positive direction.

When it was famous before, ICO seems smooth and most of the investors have been well focused on this ICO projects. Not until those scams spread and just use this kind of initial offering to just fund raised money.

I am not saying all of those ICO were not legit, there are still few who actually made it into successful listing. Just do some research about the project's sincere objective and those teams behind it.

Trend of ICO is changing to IDO (Initial Dex Offering) and IEO ( Initial Exchange Offering) now, ICO is popular only in 2016 and 2017, then in 2018 many ICO failed and turn in to scam. But currently findraising model of IDO and IEO is trending now because promising very high profit. I think IDO and IEO is more safe than ICO because the tokens is more guarantee to trade on the exchange.

You're right, ICO has done already and I can remember many people got crazy joining ICO before and very unfortunate that they mostly turn scam and many got to lose their money.

But have we ever think IEO and IDO are different from ICO, they are still the same, many of these projects are worthless and scams. Making participation with them is a huge risk and certainly, it needs research but couldn't assure everything that will be fine.

This advice is good but not timely, well ICO is quite popular but this happened few years ago. Currently the popularity is not the same as before due to many scam ICO resulting to lost of interest of many investors. I remember 2017 is the year wherein ICO is really popular and many projects are legit thus investing is really profitable. But it didnt last long, more projects turning scam or unable to reach their target funds resulting to failure.

Anyway, even on other opportunities becoming popular, its a must that we do a research to know what we're getting into. Its better to fill our minds with knowledge to be aware of what to expect.

This is one of the biggest factors for me to decide when I want to join a campaign or an ICO. If that project has the support of a well-known user on the forum, then I start trusting the project much more than before.

Even if you do your work and research the project of an ICO, the team Members and all that other stuff there is still a chance that you lose your funds. I for example investend in the ICO of DimCoin back in 2017 like a lot of others too i think they raised like 14M $ or something because the project and the Team looked solid. Then only a few weeks after the ICO the CEO resigned and since then everything went downwards and that coin is dead which makes it a 100% loss for most of the investors.

it's true, most projects supported by famous people in forums with good popularity can be considered. even that is what is often used as a measure for many members like us.
support from famous people as well as support from partners will greatly affect the ICO project. they provide greater confidence.

but many ICOs have provided comfort for investors and suddenly became a scam after a few months,
there are many projects like that here, we don't know what the future of the project will be,
ICO investment is also very risky in my opinion, there is no guarantee you can win profit, be wise and don't be too rash

any fundraising, investment is risky for any investors even if proposed (investments) by teams or trusted people something along the way can always go wrong, that the minimum investment required is not reached or the project fails or any coin does not meet the interest of the market, perhaps it is better to invest in the ieo that in some way are guaranteed by the exchanges

If you purchase on ICO of a legit company, You should not worry if they didn't meet minimum amount of investors because there's a refund which is indicated on there license to do ICO. The only risk on ICO was if the project is a scam because you don't have any means to retrieve your funds since there is no legal documents binding you to the team.

This is a very nice piece of information as I find it rich with enough guidelines to direct people who wish to venture into ICOs, but however I believe for a long time now, little to nothing have been heard of ICO, in fact I can't remember the last time anything was said about ICO or people running after them, all because of the painful past of ICOs.
In my own opinion, I think ICOs have lost it in all entirety rather IEO and IDO is the main thing now; in the case of IEO it makes sense going for those on top exchanges like Binance, at least to an extent one will be sure there won't be exit scam. Nowadays there are IDOs on decentralized exchanges which is also making huge impacts so far it is handled by prominent IDO platforms.
So in all ramifications, ICO is kind of gone, and it's better going with what's in play which is IEO and IDO.

Recent I see lots of project taking capital from investor then they are going to under ground.so it's very patatic for small and ordinary investors.

Crypto becomes a bubble for many people. New investors just saw a youtube video about a crypto project and they throw full portfolios in those projects without knowing where they actually put their money into. The only fundamentally strong project has a bright future in crypto. So do proper research before investing in any ico or IEO in a launchpad.

I think that the era of ICO projects has ended and investors are no longer attracted to it due to its risks and the large number of scam projects that collected investors' money and then stole them, it is better if you are not professional in examining the ICO projects to invest your money in old projects whose currencies are listed in the markets.

Kinda barely recall already when was the last ICO launched.
They were booming and slightly declining back in 2017. I even recall a lot of discussion in here that many ICOs are scams and that the trust of investor just went poof because of it.
Then another trend came up, and that we call IEOs.

When absolutely all coins are growing on the market, there are no special risks, because almost every ICO will have at least a little bit of a popular project.

But when there is a bearish trend in the market, you need to carefully select the projects in which you want to participate in the ICO. Since this is an investment, there will always be risks.

I don't think  so because there's still an ICO and some of them still succeed on raising funds, I guess it will still depend on the project itself and ICO is just a way to raise funds not the real scam. There's always risk if you are going to invest on a new project without any product or services yet, so don't think that IEO, IDO or any kind of way to raise fund didn't produce any scam project, scammers are every where so we should really do our own research.

from this we know that market trends change frequently. ICOs were very booming in 2017, many projects were successful at that time, even shitprojects could make big profits even if it was only in the blink of an eye. then scammers appear, market confidence decreases, moreover the market becomes saturated so the charm of the ICO fades. Then comes the trend of IEO and IDO, with scenarios of attracting investors by giving confidence that their coins are listed on the exchange, and yes... trusted global exchanges are the only guarantees of profit rather than just trusting in unclear exchanges.
ICOs, IEOs, IDOs, and the like have their respective advantages and disadvantages, all of which were popular in their time, we just need to adapt by understanding the risks, so we can anticipate the worst risks. what is clear, the principle of investment should not be forgotten, we must do an in-depth analysis before joining any project.

Did you still care about ICO? Now, ICO is still here, yeah. But many know that ICO is no longer interesting to reach the fundraising or even selling the token.
Moreover, it is now about IEO, DeFi, NFT.
The concept will be always developing, no matter what and we must be going to follow the development and changes.
We know that ICO has many weaknesses, especially about scam projects and also failed projects in both raising the token sale or even listing on exchanges. Many ICO projects are failed to enter the top market and end up as shitcoins.

The ICO market always contains some risks. Therefore it is very important to do a proper research like you indicated. We shouldn't trust any projects blindly before making sure about them. Of course, we can still have doubts after even doing the research. But we will have a clearer thought that's for sure.

Correct, that's what I'm saying.

Most of the time, hunters are crying louder more than traders/investors. But, they are literally just losing the time when they promoting stuff. But, compared to losing money from the investors, those hunters are just nothing compared to those investors and have their ego checked.

ICO is pretty much dead anyway. It's been exploited for scammers to get some quick easy money.
Although someone said ICO/IEO/STO are just another type of crowdfund system, but still some of them are just pointless to run for the developers.

I agree scams can happen anywhere, so not all ICOs are bad, it all depends on how we do research and analysis when choosing a good ICO.
There are still some ICOs that I find profitable for investment, because the developer team is very active and promotes well. And the ICO was
successfully listed on popular exchanges, so don't judge badly first against the ICO, before we actually do research and analysis on the ICO.

ICOs are outdated, because many choose to follow IEOs and IDOs, yes because these systems are very safe and convenient, oh yes,
one thing you should know that if you follow IEOs and IDOs make sure to follow the best exchanges, such as pancakeswap or Binance