Bitcoin Forum

We used to call projects scams if the devs did a 5% premine now it seems devs can take 90% + and 12M dollars and think they can get away with this kind of make your own markets self enrichment schemes. The old "scam" coins with their premines and insta-mines have nothing on these new self enrichment schemes.

Let's keep a track of the projects with terrible initial distribution - these projects are highly manipulated and most probable self enrichment schemes at best. Best to avoid giving into fomo upon which they play upon. The drastic rises and volume are probably fake and mostly  just the few whales /insiders that control it selling to themselves over and over.

ICO coins


GNO - gnosis - the worst one yet - do your own dd

Golem - another insta ICO - do your own dd

RLC - another Insta ICO - do your own dd

Qtum - do your own dd


POW -coins

Dash - large captive instamine - do your own dd

more ???

Please add projects to this list. Let's keep track of these new insta -ico projects and any other projects that think they can make their own markets and control the price and volume.




This is to compile a list of coins that have a terrible initial distribution not other scam factors that of course can cause a project to become defined as a scam. This can include POW coins and ICO coins.







If a coin is listed here you think you have evidence did have a good intial distribution post in the thread and we can examine it.

Add to this list Dash and Ethereum.

It would be much easier and faster to collect all the coins that doesn NOT have terrible initial distributions...

Dash yes everyone knows this but even they are not as bad as some of these new projects.

Eth i have no idea what the initial distribution was like but since they have a 50% pow this one is debatable isnt it? But perhaps it was a poor initial distribution after all.

What would actually be very very useful for the entire community is a detailed comparison of each ICO in a list.

Name   % kept by dev team  advertising conducted duration of ICO  amount raised

This would be very useful at spotting those that want to make their own markets and manipulate and control things to self enrich themselves at everyone else's expense.

@cryptohunter Which investments do you recommend then?  I see you bashing a lot (which is fair enough) but I would like to know which ones you think are promising and fair?  Thanks!

It is not a matter of what I think is fair. It is a matter of avoiding coins that have a terrible initial distribution because they are obviously open to gross manipulation and scamming.

Let's force projects to distribute in a reasonable manner or else make them pariahs.

ICO's should be well advertised and open ended in terms of giving everyone a fair chance to invest if they wish to.

POW fair launch protocol is the most provably fair way to distribute tokens but if we must go ico now insta ico is a no no.

Interestingly enough traders/investors seem to not care about premine/instamine issue. People would back anything as long as they will be promised profits.
Both Golem and Dash are really successful projects - at least when we are talking about their marketcap and Gnosis is not so far behind these two.

Make a list and maintain it.

But it is much easier to make a list of well distributed and fair launched projects first.

Yes ETH, XRP, NXT, Steem, and most evident DASH all had shady insider releases.  

My current revelation is that Stellar was 90% held by the original Ripple investors.

I think the markets have signaled that is fine.

The deference is that these (coins) are more like IOUs, a kind of bond or note in a centralized and small organization, think enterprise.

With the NEW scam, there is no clear way to PROVE a fair distribution,  but it is possible to make better windows to look thru.

My current question:
Do any of these ICOs have multisig (Treasury) that locks in the BTC/ETH raise?
Do they have budget plans, and T&C on payment/rewards?

You have to realise what you are saying is based on what you can see only. Of course if a few people have a huge share then they can make it appear to have high volume and rising prices. So your statement regarding their apparent success just proves that people are easy to foil and suck into their schemes. MC is another tool they use to endorse their insider success. You can never know what success they are having because you do not know how much they own and how much they are just trading up between themselves.


Dash has actually created some things that are useful so this can explain some people over looking their instamine in some way.
Golem was perhaps not a full scam since ICN bought most of it in one hit and maybe that was not golems fault.

However ico's can not be closed ended because it leaves it open for super manipulation by a few whales.

TBH icos on here are totally open to manipulation anyway. Just wide advertising and open endedness makes it a little harder for them to make their own markets and manipulate everything you see.

if my memory helps Ethereum ICO was 60,000,000 coin and someone once did some calculations based on the money Vitalik and Ethereum foundation earned from their initial dump during the first pump (gathering all the statements they made like the percentage they sold and the money they got in return,... and comparing with the price,...) and came up with a 70 Million+ coins total in their possession as of last year!

XRP is a corporate coin, what is targeting financial institutions and buyers but not "investors". Actually they had their real investors long before they launched the coin.

Let's see the true story of NXT distribution. Once upon a time NXT was project cheap to buy in and free to support, (you can find the topic around here) but only very few people were interested in it. After the distribution for a long time stake holders sold their coins here for peanuts (you can also find that topic somewhere here), but again only a few folks wanted to buy. During the beta tests they gave away lots of their coins for testers. Still very little interest in it. They kept developing functions and services and the coin hit 6-9K sats. This was the point when ppl at first started begging, later they started crying and shouting because of the scammy and shady and ninja and unfair and terrible distribution. Of course all of these complaints were absolutely honest, free from greed, only for the good of the community... ;)

1. define long period of time it was not a long time. I bought some on the 2nd day after distribution and it was always magnitudes more expensive than the ico price.
2. exact number given away and retention of coins by the 21 people that initially held all of the coins?
3. begging crying butthurt - these words mean nothing. The initial distribution was either wide or very narrow FACT. It was narrow and therefore very open to being manipulated.
4. people should not need to rely of a few giving them some crumbs if they feel like it. They should have simply equal chance as everyone else at attaining coins at the very start. NXT had a terrible initial distribution. 100% of the tokens were distributed to 21 people.

However, nxt was kind of the first ICO here and some of the inital whales did sell for perhaps 2x 10x what they bought it for for a time. It was not the worst ico here because it was kind of the first and nobody had risked really handing over btc for a future project back then... but again you can not compare this distribution at all to a fairly launched POW coin. It was still open to a huge amount of manipulation and market making.

whenever you hear the words crying, butthurt , whining , ninja, instamine, etc etc there will be a poor initial distribution. Then there will be those that gained from that poor distribution and those that were manipulated into handing over magnitudes more btc to attain the same share that those that were on the right side of the poor distribution.

If a coin is given a fair pow launch then you will not hear these words mentioned. Even a hugely advertised long lasting ICO where everyone knew about it and had ages to invest if they wanted will not suffer being accused of having a poor distribution unless super whales are making it obvious they are buying up huge %'s of the minting.

snail2 merely takes this pov because he fears IOTA being put on this list in which he is heavily invested or perhaps even a puppet account of CFB however do not fear I will not suggest it is added there with these new crazy insta ico;s because although its initial distribution is narrow compared to widely advertised icos it is nothing near as disgraceful as these new insta icos.

So slide away snail no need to pop your head out from your slimy shell. I have encountered you before and well know you will say anything is fair so long as you are able to benefit from it.

1. Weeks as far as I can remember. The price was moving somewhere between 100 and 300 sats most of the time.
2. I can remember a 750 a 350 and a 250 handout for beta testers, they also had bounties for finding bugs or translating white papers, I can also remember a couple of giveaways up to 1000 NXT, and the bounties for new services were quite substantial sometimes.  
3. Well, and why it was narrow? Because of as I said nobody was very interested in NXT.
4. It wasn't their fault. The "project launch" was quite open, the buy in price wasn't high. I was also hesitating between NXT and eMunie. Opted in for eMunie :/.


Fair POW... well... Perhaps you didn't realized that but POW distribution was similarly "unequal" as most ICO coins. A few big miners and the pool owners controlled the majority or the coins while the rest got only scraps.


Actually I didn't invested a single satoshi into IOTA. I went for Lisk and Waves instead :). Wasn't you the guy who wanted a second IOTA ICO round or some handout because of you missed the first one? I see you haven't got any.


That's correct.

From your answers I will pick out the most relevant points.. that the distribution was NARROW. The reasons for nxt having this is kind of more understandable that now of course for having 21 people getting 100% of the minting since it was kind of the first ico ran here.

And that admit you will argue anything is fair so long as you are able to benefit from it so I must disregard anything you have to say on this matter.

I suggested they run a 2nd Ico so that the distribution was wider and they could raise more development funds. I never said i should have a free handout anymore than the other 99% of the board that missed the ico.

I have no interest in discussing iota unless you wish to go through it. Refer to my previous comments upthread since i wish to focus on those projects with even worse initial distribution. Unless you are suggesting i need to add iota to this list in which case I shall at your suggestion.

nxt was the first so nobody was used to just handing btc over to a person and waiting for months for some product. Yes it was a very narrow distribution and can be added if enough people think it should be there.

This thread is designed so that we can identify those projects with a narrow initial distribution so that people can be aware these projects are very open to manipulation and market making. These projects need great caution and treated as pariahs in most cases.

If you are not here to suggest a project then do not post. This is not a thread for giving your blessing to those projects with a narrow initial distribution. So if you cant contribute to the nature of the thread post elsewhere.

What would be even better is if someone would create a thread with a very detailed examination of those with obviously narrow
distribution so that a ranking system could be introduced. Green yellow orange red. This thread is primarily for red

IOTA and Nxt should absolutely both be on this list.  Neither were really properly advertised before their respective ICO's, I think I remember seeing a figure with Nxt that less than a hundred people bought into the ico, (can anyone confirm that?) not good.

Not sure about Iota's exact distribution, but I never heard of it once until several weeks after it was already concluded; and I am in this industry full-time, so if anyone was going to hear about it, I should have been one of them.  It seems pretty clear to me that the people that run these ICO's generally under advertise in order to buy into their own projects and pick of huge amounts of the supply early on, they can then say that "anyone could have bought in" and as a result it looks better than having a flat out premine.  I think Ethereum is guilty of the same general strategy.

While I don't have much in the way of "proof" for my above claim, it really just feels obvious.  I honestly think 99% of ICO's should be on this list.  The only one I can think of right now I would exempt would be BitBay, given that the price cratered after the ICO and the price stayed low for 2 years.

You can also add Steem to this list, they had a ninja mine early in the distribution, again using under advertising to their advantage to be able to effectively have most of the mining to themselves.  @Smooth was able to get ~1% of their coin supply just because he figured out their plan early, how much could the devs have mined?

You can also add both Ripple and Storj, those are two project where I know the dev's have the majority of the supply.


Lol, you unfortunately might be on to something.

MobileGo is underway right now. 30% for the devs. 70% ICO.. Oh wait.. They're calling it crowd funding now... What a freaking joke this place has become. lol

I would also add a Ripple

Even though I am not yet here or not aware when the distribution of the projects you have there, but I am sure you have your reason or reasons why a project is earning a spot on that list. However, the one that is still fresh and that I have seen is the Qtum. I will want to know your reason why that is there and for you to conclude that 'highly manipulated schemes' . I will prefer and appreciate a response.

How about the highest funded crowdfunded project in history?

One small thing: ICN only invested 5,000 ETH out of the 820,000 ETH raised by Golem.

Indeed, you picked the most relevant points what fits to your agenda :). OK, I'll leave you alone with the offtopic stuff.

BTW if you want to pick all coins what can be vulnerable because of large holdings I suggest pressing Ctrl-A and Ctrl-C on the Announcements board and then Ctrl-V here :/. Maybe you can remove XEM and the already dead coins to save space.

RLC seems fine. They clearly let everyone know the time well in advance. Everyone had 3 hours to buy. I'm in Australia and it was inconvenient for me to wait for that time and I did.
I think that anyone who wanted to had a fair chance to buy.
It's no surprise it sold out though. They have a great team and have been working on this for many years

This project is open to gross manipulation and market making. This is a trustless arena we are trying to create. Ico's of this nature have zero place here. If the distribution is wide open for manipulation and market making then it is unacceptable and very likely a self enrichment scheme for the insiders and devs.

Why?

 How was the distribution wide open for manipulation? Didn't it sit there for three hours, giving all a chance?

I can understand why it went so fast. the team is very impressive. the lead dev has ...

co-authored more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers and won two Best Paper awards.
http://graal.ens-lyon.fr/~gfedak/


At the time of the ICO Golem was around the $100M mark, so this project got snapped up quickly at a much lower valuation, but it still sat there for a few hours.

The fewer people that the token is distributed to initially obviously the easier it is to manipulate the market.

Would you not wonder why any ICO is not open ended if they are wanting to attract development funding?
The only reason to create a closed ended insta ico is so that devs and insiders get to resell it for magnitudes more.


If you had a one year distribution open ended so that people could buy at any point for the same ico price then it would not be highly profitable when it hits exchanges because anyone that wanted some at ico price would have obtained them.

Now when it was a 3 hour instamine the devs and insiders know that 99% of the board does not have these tokens that they sold to themselves or insiders for way cheaper than they know they are going to resell them all for on exchanges making themselves rich with no accountability for a huge sum only a smaller sum they made up as a closed ended ico. Also it is far easier to pump it when only a few people hold the vast bulk and collude together to make the markets they want.

In a trustless system there should be a trustless transparent distribution end of story.

Insta icos are geared up for max scamming.

I also find it strange these insta ICO's get straight on big exchanges when many other great projects do not.

POW or a more transparent highly advertised very long duration ICO is the only way to go anything else is geared up to be a scam.

Which one is that?

Although really we just want to make sure we are not conflating raising huge funds with insider scams that oftern deliberately do not want to raise huge funds initially. Only when they anonymously resell later on exchanges for magnitudes more when they collude and pump.

IOTA was announced in advance. The only reason it raised relatively small amount of BTC is because it was the end of the bear market and all coins were very cheap, interest in ICOs was very low. Besides, the team haven't really delivered with their previous project which raised even more concerns. It was a long wait until IOTA even went live and i thought several times that it may have been scam. Many initial investors sold part of their stake to hedge the risk. Anyone who were interested in buying IOTA could have done it as their was more than enough time. If you were in this full-time and didn't hear about upcoming IOTA ICO, then you did a poor job, no offense.

None of that excuses them, and that last sentence is just plain wrong do not insult me, they fucking under-advertised and it looked pretty deliberate.  If anything, their inability to get their coin listed on any exchanges looks like a clear play to be able to pick up more of the supply OTC before market release (if that ever even happens).

Besides it's not even clear if they can get the thing to work without centralized servers anyway.  Anyone that wants to invest in a DAG should invest in ByteBall, which is already live and running on exchanges, and it far more realistic with what it aims to accomplish.  Iota is pie in the sky bullshit.

When it come to old coins, is always good to read this one
http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=a_massive_investigation_of_instamines_and_fastmines_for_the_top_alt_coins

A huge investigation on many coins out there, it helped me (even if it was too late for some bitcoins)