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We all know that Crypto industry is full of scammers l. But everytime they able to cheat newbies and sometimes more experienced ones as well.

Is It Really Possible To Identify A Scam Project Right At The Beginning?

Many projects launched on daily basis. Some are extremely successful while others are less. But many SCAM projects are being launched as well just to pull out money from the pocket of innocent people.

Recently a Scam project "DXSWAP.NET" did exactly the same.

They also run a bounty campaign on Bitcointalk forum tu prove their legitimacy and gain more attraction. But ran away right after the pre-sale ICO.

Bounty Thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5373220.0

They took heavy amount of money including my $200 in a false manner.

Proof:

[image height=400]https://i.ibb.co/2tX43XB/Screenshot-20211201-132429-gateio.jpg (https://ibb.co/YkvsBvG)

I am not much worried about my loss but I want to prevent others from being scammed.

So please share your experience on how to identify a scam project at or before ICO.

There are basic steps to identify the legitimacy of a start up project but they are not 100% guaranteed effective as you already experienced. Learning from the lessons of 2017, a verifiable team is one of the best deterrent and it's at the top of my list. You never really know what they have in mind but they would think twice before scamming if people know their real names/faces. Having an aggressive marketing campaign is a 50-50 for me. It's either they are serious in securing funds to develop the project or they are desperate to take your money.

I usually joined their group chat and see how the project teams answer the questions of the investors, see if they are helding AMA in voice / video chatt regularly and see if their answer is in line with their project's target.
But this is just a few factors, scam projects is hard to detect when the owner of the projects is not gonna scam at first and they really want to build the project. But when something that they not expected happen, like technical issues or something happen while on the way, they might be change their mind to scam the people.

Could you ever believe that I was an admin of their chat. But still could not identify. They have team as well with faces on their site as well.

And moreover I am not the only one cheated, almost 3,4 people serving their community been cheated ☺️.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestions.

Sorry to hear about your loss probably you will have done deep research by your side about this scam project but unfortunately became a victim of this scam which also gives you an obvious answer of your question, investing in new projects after deep research doesn't give a guarantee to not being a victim of scam it's all depends on our risk taking strength that's why I would suggest you to invest your money in old and quality projects instead of investing in new projects which have no determined future hopefully you will recover your loss through other options and move forward in life.

Discussion about fraud in these topics

[WARNING] DXSWAP Plagiarized Whitepaper
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5373159.msg58594963#msg58594963

DXSWAP IS ANOTHER SCAM PROJECT
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5374347.msg58585193#msg58585193


Advanced users won't fall for this kind of scam, but I feel sorry for newbies.
You don't need to spend more than $ 10 for testing.

Well, it seems that they got the better out of your judgment. One thing I've learned in dealing with new projects is to see how are they planning to attract people to support them. If they are planning a massive airdrop, with no regard for tokenomics and coin supply, it might hint that they are just there to create hype and dump on the buyers. Second, if the ones behind the project are unidentifiable, and the project itself isn't associated with any organization with an already established crypto reputation, tread with caution and wait until these things are clarified.

Oh and better check the whitepaper. Most of the time, they are just bits and pieces of previous projects rolled into one. And if what they state there doesn't make sense, then it's best to stay away from it.

Thanks for your advice mate 👏.

I don't how I fell into their trap although knowing all these things.

Anyway, next time I will be extra careful.

Did you get paid to be admin on their chat group? I see that the bounty manager of dxswap has been closing the campaign caused by the team was a scammer.
I'm sure that if they will not try to reveal their face even they may be only using the fake identities. The scammers will always remain anonymous and that's why you should never trusted a project that runs by anonymous developers. The probability to be a scam project was very high.
Is that means all of admins that got hired already cheated?
There are some suggestions above me but the best thing should from the identity of team and code.

Actually I was hired two days before they commit the scam. I was promised to pay after 1 week but on the 3rd day they ran away and deleye every thing.



Yes, there was 2 other guys that I know as well working from some time. They also been the victum.

Correct me but identifying whether a project is a SCAM even before its ICO stage is impossible to do.
Just think of it. If we know that there is a method to identify scam, do you think that SCAM projects still exists until now?

SCAM projects are always there and will always be there. New projects are the ones who are mostly the scam projects. This is also the reason why I'm not investing into new projects. Not because I'm afraid to get scammed but because I don't want myself to get scammed.

There are some projects in the past that seems to be legit. Whitepaper looks good and the team is great and they are responding with every question. Things are looking good but after a few weeks, they are getting the money and run with it. Right now, there is no proven method to identify which new projects are scam and which are not and I doubt if there will be ever a method to prove it.

A lot of money does not get into your wallet and this is a consequence of the fact that you identify all new projects as scam. The easiest way to choose a new project is to evaluate the venture funds that invest in project. And if you see among investors, for example, a16z, 3 AC, Alameda Research and Coinbase Ventures, then you can boldly invest.

Scams are becoming more and more common in the crypto industry and they may involve anyone from an general public to an infamous entrepreneurs. So if you have to choose one project to invest in, don't be so concerned about profits. What you should consider is the nature of the project and the work that is being done. Some projects are genuine and they are being carried out by people who really want to make a positive impact on their community. However, others are not. There are people who have gone to great lengths to get your money, and are just looking to line their own pockets at your expense.

A potential scam project may be easy to spot by just looking at how much effort has been put into presenting it. For example: Does the website have a professional look and feel? Is the White Paper unique or do you find it contains copied parts? Is the project/product name used as the "generic" name or "hype" instead of the trademarked name? These questions can help you to evaluate if the project is legitimate or not. Another clear sign of a possible scam project would be the lack of focus and a lack of involvement from the team. This is typically a red flag that something doesn't seem right.

If you're in doubt, it is always best to take caution. Especially if you want to protect your money.

New start up project is so skeptical mate, i mean no one can identify if it's legitimate or not since there's not yet history that can prove they can totally guarantee a good return after all.. It's like you're trying your luck on it for short. Actually some say it's base on the team behind and the data but mostly results of new projects with a good idea are not good.. Probably that's the reason why mostly investors preferred top crypto not a new alts just to prevent losses..

Is It Really Possible To Identify A Scam Project Right At The Beginning?

Mainly interested in social media. But if I want to learn deeply about the project, then I use the instructions that were written by experienced people. Here on the forum, there are such posts, for example, one of them. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5125435.0

Luckily you have missed judgement by the mods of this forum as promoting ICO projects are strictly punishable. Shame on the guys who constantly get easy money put of people who earned it hard.

For OP too bad for you they've got ahead of you and it is lesson not only for you but for all of the people whore planning to invest on new projects. There are top notch people here that could give you answers and they are as good as gold. It's another wake up call for us to not fully trust and do our own respective research before we give them free money.

Well, as bad as it sounds, unfortunately, there is no proven way by which scam projects can be identified before or during presale or ico, you as the investor have to read between the lines, weigh every option on your scale and know if they meet your prescription of what can be considered legitimate, scammers have gotten so intelligent and highly sophisticated that sometimes, it's very difficult to spot or suspect anything until it finally happens.

I recently bought a token which rewards 3 selected holders in BUSD ones every week, I never knew how they get the BUSD which they reward this holders with, but when I discovered, I had to sell off the tokens at a great loss, and this was to save myself from loosing more in the future.

You must learn from others' mistakes. If you go through this forum then you could find lots of similar experiences shared by other forum people by the times of 2018/2019. I mean you could not identify any scam projects from the initial stage itself but the only solution could be just staying away from all ICOs. Because, if you keep investing in some 5 to 10 project then only one might get you good returns and all others will end up scamming you at any stage. I have seen many projects go up to the stage of listing in exchanges but you will not able to get back your invested money as heavy dump will happen before they open deposit option for their token.

So, identifying at initial stage or at any stage may not help you but just staying away alone will secure your hard earned money. Invest only with bitcoin and enjoy 99.9% assured returns in long term holding.

Ah well, I'm not surprised because admins/mods doesn't usually have insider information.

Regarding faces on the website, there are some projects putting up fake profiles there and some have been caught. It's the reason why I said verified identities.

Like I said, no method is 100% guaranteed effective.

Another reason why it's on top of my list is the option for the investors to sue them.

It is necessary to share all bad experiences with scam projects so that the rest of the people are warned against falling victim to these fraudulent projects, unfortunately Crypto has become full of these fraudulent projects that have caused a lot of abuse, it is very difficult to determine whether the project is scam or not while it is still in its infancy because Most of these scammers have become highly experienced in deceiving people through advertising and using methods that attract people easily, the best thing is to use the review sites that use specialized experts to analyze these projects.

My method is a careful research. I investigate documents, web-sites, partnerships, audits, community, social media. Also I rely on some bloggers that give their own opinion. I know that it is impossible to protect yourself from all scams even if you investigate it carefully as there are some scammers who act very sensibly, so it is difficult to identify their fraud, so the main thing is to comply with risk management and not invest more than you can afford to lose.

fraudulent projects are hard to detect when the project owner will not cheat you at first, I say you should invest your money in old projects, such as projects that have a guarantee including a strong support team on the project they are working on. You have to be extra careful in investing in new projects so they don't happen again.

Well first of all you can reduce the image size to optimum range by putting [image height=400] code before your image URL. This will help to see the whole thing in one go and would look nice too.

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Answering to your question as everyone stated its very hardship to pull out this job you will almost most of the time end up with the projects which are scam. Crypto is all about deep research these days and more or less your luck to enter into perfect project. It's better to see the project go live on an exchanger and which has good volume of trade. If you get tangled into low price pre-ICO schemes then definitely its huge risk. Obviously this risk can give you pretty decent amount of money as you are buying at special prices, but its not a guarantee. With that said, its better reach out projects which are already in the market, having good social presence, good support center. That gives you better probability of hitting profitable portfolio. You may need to wait for the returns but surely you will minimize the risk almost next to zero.

It's possible as long as you are taking enough time to research if the project is worth investing, check out the team, their roadmap, their whitepaper, the source code, it will take time but it's worth it as you save money and your expectation, and you can also save other investors from investing, also be sure to look in the scam section and see if the project that you want to invest in do not have a scam accusation there.

Thanks a lot for all of you for sharing thoughts.

Personally I find this free tool 👇  very helpful to analyze a project.

https://tokensniffer.com


Best thing that it can do in my opinion is this 👇


https://i.ibb.co/YyhsPtt/Screenshot-20211205-204136-Chrome.jpg (https://ibb.co/Tbt3YHH)

After reviwing, you can have good amount of idea about a project.

It certaily looks like a good tool to analyze new projects. Can help to identify a SCAM project.

It's not that easy to identify a scam project while it's not that easy too if you are little clever. Scam projects will always have a shit idea to share which they can never make live and they will leave things unorganized. This is most common things. However, you have to check out the team carefully and whitepaper whether they have copied it from anywhere else.
There was a guideline by @coolcryptovator which I can't find at the moment. I will update once I find it.

I don't think that there is a way to 100% avoid investing into a scam project. Of course there are ways or things that you should do to minimize the risk of picking a scam project to invest in but you can never be 100% sure. I would advice to always look up the whitepaper, look if it is well written and not only a 10 page copy and paste whitepaper. Then look at the team, check their linkedIn or Xing profiles and see how old those profiles are. Ask critical questions about the long term goals and how they want to accomplish them in their telegram group and see if the Dev Team is answering and what they are answering.

This has been discussed several times in this cryptocurrency forum, like really, a lot of times. Like some. People have said, you should know the team. Knowing the team is in important. These scammers have to hide their identities and they do that by impersonate other people who are well known in the crypto space. They use fake identities on their websites and social media pages.

So, it is up to you to do your research and dig further to know whether they are genuine or not. If there are some icons they claim to work with, you should visit those icons page and know whether they are really involved in the project, always try to verify things.

There are  many strategies that allow you to identify the majority of the projects that are scams in the market, but it is impossible to detect every single one of them, but why is that? Because projects that could be legitimate and that pass all your tests can still eventually become scams if one of the developers goes rogue, however a few of the things you can do to avoid most scams is to look for anything that has been copied from other websites, things like the white paper, the website itself, pictures and resumes of their developers.

You need to also look at their claims and see if their goals are reachable, for example there are many projects that promise profits and this makes them a scam by default as any serious trader or investor will tell you it is impossible to guarantee profits in any market.

One red flag for me is if the team is using fake photos, so you have to do quick browsing of their team members over the internet. Once you found out they are using fake photos, then, that project has high chance of pulling a disappearing act once they got a hold of money. Also, if the roadmap or whitepaper is very generic in nature, like copy paste from someone else's project, then, it means the team didn't put much effort so they can easily abandon this without warning.

You really have to analyze properly to know if that is a scam project or not, you can also ask the community about it and this seems more effective especially if you ask people here about their opinion on that project. People who might not know this forum are more prone to a scam project, especially if they just ask on social media where there’s a lot of fake accounts. Knowing a project as a scam is not easy but you have to do everything, don’t invest easily.

nowadays projects become more evolved scammers for example it became normal for scammers to create a project, after that they have all real team members and after collecting funds start not working on the project quickly, they leave the forum and just stay on twitter and telegram after a long time people realize that the project is a scam

Started by squid coin, this trend is becoming outrageous. Many scammers are coming here in the forum and lots of people are being scammed. Well, there are lots of thread here in the forum that offers comprehensive information to avoid scam project. First of all, do your research. Doing your research about the project will somehow reduce the risk of losing money. It gives you the hint wether you invest in professional team or just a typical guys who could create a website then offers something out of nothing. There will always be a silver lining.

Any sign of low effort coming from the developers should be taken as a red flag and should not be ignored, fake pictures and resumes are very common among scammers as they want to make it seem as if the supposed team behind the project has a lot of experience when this is not the case, so in the case you find any indication that the developers somehow are illegitimate then this should be more than enough to disqualify that project from your list of coins in which you could invest, this may seem to be way too harsh by some, but it is the only way to avoid most scams in the market.

COMMON SENSE!

This is what you do need because you could really determine or notice out whenever;

-poor quality project
-anonymous devs
-unrealistic goals or roadmap
-high token price
-Inactive responses and other shady behavior.

You could determine these things if you do make use of your common sense.

for me, i saw a project from a team that handled it whether it could be trusted or not. after that I will monitor the tele group because there will definitely be a tele group there. a team that is good or not can be seen from how they answer questions from people in the group. it can be one method to see if the team is trusted or not. but now more scammers are getting smarter here so it will be more difficult to detect whether the project is a scam or not. What is certain is that knowledge and experience here are also very much needed in choosing a project so as not to fall into a scam project.

There are several signs that investors should look out for to determine whether an ICO might be a scam.
...
6 Signs that an ICO May Be a Scam
Weak Website or White Paper. ...
Absence of Named Developers or Team Members. ...
No Clear Roadmap. ...
Skewed Mining Structure. ...
Uncapped Fundraising Goal. ...
Evidence of a Pyramid Structure.