Bitcoin Forum

How to identify whether an altcoin is scam or not?
This happened with me today. I bought ACRN coin from yobit yesterday for 0.01btc and today morning its price was 1 satoshi :-\ Doomed!!

Do research on it.
You must thoroughly look up it's price, how it reached that point and seriously consider why it will increase in the future.
Also look up the development team and all the people involved and how skilled, active and consistent they are with updates.

These are some general guidelines to follow when looking into investing a coin.

I never heard about that coin, especially you bought it on yobit so i can say you bought one of dead coins. Be aware if you still wanna buy some altcoins in yobit, they have a lot of dead coins which got mostly dump and pump. Just open coinmarket and look at the top 10 or 20 for altcoins and you will be safe.

I never heard about that coin, You are trapped by the shitcoin. What the hell just in a night and the price of the coin worth a satoshi. Do your own research but that will take a lot of the time. I think you must try to watch the miningbox on youtube to get the way how to do a research on altcoin.

Scam or not is the risk we must deal with it, but we can identify coins become scam, it's just happening. That's why you need to read some books, join group with altcoin as a topic or make a demo account and test your strategy there. I suggest just hold your coin and see next month, but if you want to sell it tha's your call. Good luck.

If something is solely on YoBit then it is a scam. About anything on Poloniex is safe according to me, except maybe Bitcoin Plus and the very low volume altcoins. On Bittrex this is a bit more the jungle, so see on Coinmarketcap if the altcoin you are buying is worth or not. The greater is its rank the safer it is according to me.

To add to what the others have said...

1) Look for over hype, especially from multiple people in troll boxes saying all the usual noob stuff like "to the moon".

2) Watch for dev pumping and support, it's not hard to spot. Look at the buy orders, if there is 10 BTC of orders on a coin and 9 BTC of it is sitting at 1 or 2 sats (or any number that is so far away from ever being fulfilled that it's obviously just an order book prop up), don't touch it with a barge pole.

3) What are they offering? If the coin only has a basic windows qt-wallet and promises of everything else you can be pretty sure that the "team" behind it have just watched a "how to clone an altcoin" video on youtube. Again - avoid.

4) Have a look at the source code. If it's just a clone of litecoin or another alt with just the name and numbers changed (in some cases they don't even bother changing these) the chances are it's been knocked up in 30 minutes as a pump and dump coin.

5) Don't trade on yobit fullstop.

There is no easy way. The best thing you can do is look at their whitepaper, the team behind it and the latest updates.

Research on any coin you want to buy before you do that. spending some time to do the due diligence will save you that money. Dead coins are all over please dont fall victim to it

Yes! Almost all coins on yobit are scam and shitcoin I have no idea why people still kept their money on that site and still buying coins from there. There are a lot of better exchange sites and they are even listed good coin only.

There are lots of exchanges but you do end up on buying shitcoin on that Yoshit site. Im sorry for your loss and this should be a lesson learned for you. Dont be decieve on cheap coins that you see on exchange because you wont know if they would pump or dumped forever because mostly coins on yobit are being pumped and dumped and also been triggered by bots which if you do get in on the wrong time then you will surely end up on holding those shitcoin forever.

It really depends on the altcoin that you bought if it is a scam or not and it is very advisable to DYOR or do your own research before buying a coin in any exchanges because there is a huge possibility that the coin will turn to scam if they don't have a great team and strong foundation on their market. Bitcoin is one of the best example that shows great foundation because of the community and the support so you need to find like those things in altcoin that you are buying so you can tell if it will last for a long time or not.

Jesus just seen the chart for this coin on YoBit.

If you want a good laugh (not for the people that bought it sadly - but for the rest of us) check it out.

https://yobit.net/en/trade/ACRN/BTC

Went from 0.5 BTC to 0.00000001 BTC in 8 hrs lol.

Amazes me why people still trade on this site  ???

But to answer the OP's question, yes this is without a doubt a scam coin. Sorry mate, you just lost your money :(

Yeah and i have decided to shift from yobit  to either polo or bittrex. I do like the investbox from yobit . So probably that will be the only thing i use in yobit.

Trading those coins with very low volume is extremely risky. I'd suggest to trade on a major exchange with coins who have a much higher volume.

Altcoins are not scams, they are quite a few good ones, of course those copy-paste coins are usually scams.

I hope it is not a scam...  Because i already joined some campaign that is altcoin...  I hope not...

Make a research before buying/investing in Altcoins read some news about coins you want to buy. Read the white paper also to know the roadmaps of the coins what is the roles if this coins in the community. what its used buy doing that you will have a knowledge about your coins planning to buy. Turn your failed Into lesson learned so for the next time you buy some coins you will be carefully

Yes that's true! before investing in some alt-coin you should research first! or invest only what can you afford to loose!
Alt-coins now is worth of investing, invest in known and already in exchange alt-coins.
I think you just hold your ACRN coin for now maybe because it will pump someday!

Of course easy. You should be able to analyze the coin. And it is safer to buy a guaranteed coin such as eth and ltc. Even if its price falls but at least it reduces your doubts about the coin.

First you need to choose the right exchanges and yobit is not a good exchanges based on the feedback that I read, if you want to
invest with legitimate coins and you do not have a lot of time to research then simply buy coins from poloniex.com.

In my opinion, yobit is not the best alternative to start trading. A lot of coins there that end the scam By just collecting some votes alone can put new coins to trade Better to use a sure market, such as bittrex or poloniex. There are plenty of altcoin options with good volume and clear credibility

before you buy the coins, you need to find more info about the coins in many places so you know how good is the coins. in yobit, there are many cheap coins but we don't know how good are the coins. the only thing that we can do is make a little research while we can analyze other coins for better chance to reach profit.

Yeah right, most coins on yobit is shitcoin. trading in there the same as playing gambling. better to avoid yobit. at least trading in liqui better than in yobit. liqui has a good coin, let alone almost all coins based eth and certainly always have great projects.

Liqui is just new compared to yobit but it has gain the trust of the people and you can already see they have a great volume
and they are growing. But, the best part here is we can shot different coins in different exchanges so it's up to us what coins we will buy.
Just always buy with caution to minimize the risk.

Before buying any coin first you need to do proper research on that coin on this forum only you can get so much information about any coin so before buying a coin first you need to check that is that coin has a good development team do they have a good road map do they really look good and many more important things to research then only buy the coin I do not recommend anyone to buy any coin without any information about that coin so be careful before investing in any coin.

You will never know is it scam or not. You should better collect information about the project, founders and their reputation. And save our money, The Great Crypto God :D

Always do a study before buying any coin and yobit have many coins at 1 satoshi, if you buy them, in many 1 satoshi coins have even big wall of upto 200-300  btc. If you want to buy good coins with high liquidity, then go with top 10-15 coins at https://coinmarketcap.com/ (https://coinmarketcap.com/). They have big trading volume and high liquidity.                  

Pretty sure this 'coin' can be called a scam, I don't understant how it got listed in that exchange.

Only mention of this is by Yobit twitter account:

https://twitter.com/yobitexchange/status/879481061994098688

Announce at altcoin forum:



Why did you bought some of this?

For me,  to know if it is a scam...  Be updated on altcoin that you have...  Because that is the easy way to know if ever that is a scam...  If there is something wrong about it,  then that is the time that you are scamed..

Do some investigation or something like research about it then wait for the time that will something  happen on it...  If it something wrong happen,  then that is scam...

A good altcoin backed by good team and good promotional are the ones which will exists for the longer time. Also if you read whitepaper you may get the idea about the project and its future plan through which you know if they will have any value in future or not and accordingly you can take wise decision.

I think the best way to identify if it's scam or not is thru gathered information. Research,talk,even ask about it to your colleagues. Read reviews about it or watch testimonials.

If an altcoin is so high but it has no buyers, theres a 70% that it is a scam. But if the altcoin is high but has a lot of buyers, then it has a 30% scam. Theres a difference about the two. The buyers has the instinct for that altcoin but it depends actually. Even high price altcoins today is already scamming their investors.

So far I've just been reading into everything I take notice of even going as far as talking to the devs. Usually works.

Why are you considering the shitcoin to make profit,use the big exchanger like poloniex and bittrex
In big exchanger,only trusted coin is listed and almost no scam is sighted,i know you can make quick profit with shitcoin,but the risk is not worth taking

It's not just about the price though, it's just about the team, projects/products, the development team. You can do some research about them if you already know their team members. Everyone on them.
Then you have to look for their past project if it is successful or not and especially by looking to their ANN Thread you can say so if you look carefully what the other people is up to.

More than 90% of alts are scams,hypes mostly created by the same devs,many people are aware that thay are hypes,buy low sell high,but it is risky game

That's your fault which idiot told you to buy some random coin from yobit , on yobit daily people pump the price by 1000 times and just setup sell walls then wait for idiot like you to buy and then dump it. If you see on yobit half of the coins are not even listed on coinmarketcap nor they have a basic ann thread on any forum. If you are serious about trading stop using yobit or trade carefully on the site with proper research of random coins.

Maybe you can detail the characteristics of the ICO scam, I noticed ICO here proved to be good and maybe no 90% is a scam. I've joined ICO several times and so far been very profitable.

Whats that coini never know of it i think you buy the dead coins specialy in yobit a lot of dead coin and token setting there so you be very carefull nextime in yobit my advice to you is you have to search first study the coin and the price is moving upward and downward and also double check the status of the coin here in bitcointalk furom you can alsways check it here

Yes next time be careful advantage if you do study first before you buy that coin so you can avoid scam.

did they had a website?

was there a whitepaper?

what about the team members? Any names?

You need to do a lot of researches, before buying something. At first check the team members, than deffinetly you need to know what is the concept and read a lot of information about this project. Even here on bitcointalk forum, there are a lot of bounty campaign scams >:(

Look for parameters:
1. Dev activity (active site, new releases, active twitter/blog)
2. Community (live thread and slack)
3. Multi OS wallets (Mac wallet must be
It's enough to distinguish dead coin from coin that has a chance for growth.

I never heard that ACRN coin before. You should be careful from buying a coins because some coins are dump or dead. You should check all the top ten list of coinmarket or in tidex, so you could see what coins are really safe to buy and to avoid scams.

Here's a nice visual overview of popular recent ICOs with tokens issued, token rights and viability of business model:
https://medium.com/@StorifierCo (https://medium.com/@StorifierCo)

It could be worse.
Look at the price of opening.

One can easily know if an altcoin is scam or not, especially in yobit. If one wants to know if a coin is scam or not in yobit, just look at how much it's pumped. If it is pumped hard with at least 400%+ gain, and has no good roadmap or even an announcement thread of it's own, then it is sure to be a scam coin. Also, try to search the particular coin on coinmarketcap and if it is not listed there it is sure to be a scam.

ACRN? Never heard of it. How do you find shitcoins like this? :)
If the coin don't have a good project, good team or good money we can say that it's scam. You may be bought abandoned coin. We don't even know that coin. Don't use Yobit exchange, it's notorious for shady business.

I'll suggest you to first make a research about it before engaging yourself on buying it. Also, look and analyze if the price is close to reality. Further ask those who are old on this 'business', because they know and they are awared of the coins, changes perhaps and the modus, more like consulting. I never heard of this coin that you've said, in this intance, it is suspicious and weird at the same time.

Yes, it Scam.
https://image.ibb.co/bvCHqF/altcoin_price_history_by_year_250k.png

Acorn ACRN coin has no much info over web but it's pumping hard at 1 satoshi on yobit, new is that this coin may go over 10+ sats soon, Github src code 4.25 billion coins max supply. Yobit pump can push any coin up. I also bought few mills at 1 sat with hope like Bstar went 14 sats from 1 sat. Coins looks legit but no much info by dev. If dev works on project this coin may go up high.

About this matter here, it's a better idea to check coin market capacity of the coin or maybe if you cannot have a source where it's been traded. I think of that coin that it's a shitcoin which is not yet been introduced fully to investors, that's why it happen it became suspicious. Of course we wanted an assurance for it because were serious about this matter here, money always been a vulnerable asset as well. With regards to scam, we can't be certain if not proven yet so better read other's feedback's.

I agree with previous posts.
All the indicators to monitor are available in the forum.
Due diligence is fundamental in order to distinguish scam from genuine projects. Sometimes is more difficult, but still possible.

Lol it is not a scam. Well it is your fault in investing in a shitcoin. That thing you put your investment on is a shitcoin and if it is a shitcoin it has nothing to do, it will just dump its way down. Try to invest on something that has a good team running it and given that, you should look for some signal in order for you to succeed and not get rekt.

I am sorry to hear that, but it's really hard to figure out if a coin is a scam, scamers are playing very well in their roles until you find they abandon their projects,but when it's too late for us .

You have to look at all the sides of the coin. Seriously dig deeper about the project itself. Look and review and read about the background of each member of the team that composed the project as well. You may also check their website if it is still active, their social media sites if they are responding promptly and posting updates.

I don't think ACRN it's a scam coin, you just buy at the highest price, and that is the wrong time (in my opinion). When the prices is at the top or half, you should wait for prices to fall and after that you can decide to buy or not. CMIIW.

Think of alt coins double or nothing. Most are no good and some can get you alot. So you have to "read inbetween the lines"

The easiest way to find scam is go to website find out developers profile and vision if you don't find them there is max chance for scam.Even find the community of coin atleast related article.

Have you researched?And it is now impossible.It is now known to the world cryptocurrency market.so there is nothing to worry about it,that's its scam.

I highly agree. Look for well-known and reputable crypto news or business news and if these coins are featured in their articles then it is another additional point to them as not scam. Because some websites appear beautifully made that it looks not scam at all. Profiles can easily be stolen. That's what other scam projects do.

Altcoin is not a scam. You just happen to mistakenly buy wrong coin or you are not reading carefully. First of all you must read carefully and research as much as you want to know if you want to buy a coin , you must know if its safe and it has a value but we all makes mistakes so just be careful next time and dont make any haste decision that you might regret.

if the coins is on the market, then the coins is not scam although this is not guarantee but as long as there is any movement of the coins in the market, then the coin still have a chance to go up. I think he make a mistake when he bought the coins at the highest price and I think the coin is new comer and it makes people to buy in rush and suddenly the price is drop to the bottom. next time, maybe you don't have to go to new coin if you are not sure. I think its better to buy for a coin that already listed in the market than buy a new coin which getting temporary pump.

There are maximum numbers and big capitalization on altcoin and there is no any reason to scam altcoins,

This may be the stupidest question I have ever read. You should know thoroughly about bitcoin before joining this market

Your money, you have to secure it by yourself. Before invest in any coin, you should spend a little time for researching about it. You can go to coinmarketcap and find its informations. I usually interest in coins which have high volume, new, trusted developer,.... Or if you just want to trade coin fast, you just need to buy coin which have up trend or at the bottom of its line. lol.
Good luck!

Oh please accept my condolences, next time you must be carefull to use your money in a good ways, maybe you can spend a little time to find and read the website, whitepaper, developer and many other information about your coin before you make a decision

Your situation is quite funny, but anyway let just hope that the 1 satoshi will change to 1000 ACRN in a weeks time. For you identify whether an ICO is a scam or not, you should read their whiterpaper, understand what the project is all about and determine the benefits from investing in it. The project should be transparent enough to give you hope that the team will deliver what ever they are promisng, I hope you get your outstanding coins. ;)

No one knows altcoin future, even we have knowledge and experience, the real market has their own answer. Most people identify coin to replace their money depending on their own experience and news. They have their own opinion and we can't control it, their money their call. Altcoin also has risk and people should understand before starting invest/ trade. Keep learning and deal the risk. See you next time.

Reading is a must here in bitcoin world most importantly when you are in here trading you must read and make a research for what coin you would buy it is important it would be your advantage when buying some coin.

You can really judge if a coin is scam now atleast. In past developers posted a thread about the details about their coin and some people even started running signature camapaigns for their coin now those type of coins are legit eg byteball.
Nowadays a new coin means ico the passion of creating coins for the community is gone not saying all coins are scam but now for all only the money raised matters and nothing else

The situation you met is normal in crypto world, thinking about Mtgox, that's the disaster .
It's hardly to distinguish scam coin or not, I think it's up to luck, there is not any way to clear that.

This is a silly question. Get it thoroughly before asking questions

Not at all!Just make a research about altcoins and you will know about it.Because in my personal info I am having benefits in altcoins and earning it.People think that altcoin is a scam because it is in an online or just a cryptocurrency.And many managers or investors were cheating on it.Thats why they think it is a scam.But really it is growing now and becoming successful and well known in the crypto world

SInce altcoin so massively being born recently and it's often scam people
But not all altcoin did that but overall I can say that owning altcoin is more riskier than bitcoin so just make sure that you're investing the good one based on community feedback

Not at all!
Just make a research about altcoins. I think it's worth checking first, than buying anything.
Check new project https://blackmooncrypto.com/  Is promising.
 

It depends on what altcoins you are going to invest. There are many altcoin that is profitable and not so let's do our own research before investing our money. It is still the best to check thoroughly their project if the outcomes is nice and good.

Investing on altcoin could be a good opportunity and investment to get profits but knowing the fact that lots of scammers are promoting investment in form of altcoins to scam people so before making any investment make a research first.

I wrote about ACRN after seeing that it had a huge volume. The coin seemed new and looked interesting. I was onto a scoop, a coin getting lots of attention. Then I downloaded the wallet and realized it would not pass a specific block. Not much information on the coin and have to dig deep to even find the wallet.

Some lessons learned.

What you need to do...

Due dilligence.

• 1. Find the wallet. Virus test it. Is it safe?
  2. Synch blockchain, does it sync fully (note ACRN probably would have been a great coin, but not fully sync of wallet says that it is pure shit)
  3. Is it on coinmarketcap (there are some that are new and so high risk/high reward, but coinmarketcap usually a good start. Lot's of shit coins will not bother with adding to coinmarketcap
  4. Is the code on github?
  5. Don't go by volume or sudden interest (yes, I did learn this from ACRN, I thought volume signified importance. In the case of ACRN, I think it was 50% premined, so owner offloading his coin for a quick buck)

All depends on your risk level really. If you are looking for some coin that is going to be big because of actual applicable uses, such as Ethereum, then you have to really dig deep and find out about the team, the roadmap and what is happening. In this case, getting into a coin slightly later can be more beneficial. Lot's of people say I wish I got into bitcoin earlier and many people did see bitcoin years ago, but it took time to notice, because it needed more time to develop. Same with all coins. Early may be great but later can still make great results without all the worry of if it is too early for a coin.

There are 2 sides to this research because some Dumb Coins as I call them can be big, think bitcoin, litecoin, dogecoin. Dumb because they don't have actual features. Whereas Smart Coins, such as Ethereum have a real world application outside of just being a way to account coins to users. Dumb Coins are important, and so are Smart Coins, and they both can make you rich, but if going into these coins from an investment perspective, the last paragraph about digging deeper can be very important to find the new winning coin for a particular usage as Ethereum is showing us.

in my opinion not all altcoin scam. it's just that you have to be more thorough in investing. see from all prespektiv. The proof of ETH, LTC, even Doge still Survive.

There many altcoins out there. Use its popularity as a basis, ethereum and litecoin are in my opinion, the best coins for investment as of today because of its great potential.

Please take your standards a little higher and stricter when it comes to investing in ICOs. Carefully study their entire project, from the whitepaper, the objectives, the roadmaps, the actual plans on how to actually do their vision in reality, the people composing the team, and so on and so forth. There are so many ICOs that are scam although appearing great.

Maybe yes, maybe no. Since there are also altcoins that is legit, having an existing business that is earning and on profit. Some really needs funds for expansion. But there are also fly by the night Altcoins and that what we should watch out.

why altcoin can be said scam? I think not all altcoin is said to be a scam, indeed there are some kin that scam :)
and need a strong analysis to assess it

An existing business generating revenue at the time of the ICO---this is the key thing. Otherwise, the Altcoin is only connected to a concept or a few lines of code never put into use.

Check out LakeBanker ICO. Our Crowd-Banking business model has been operating in Beta within long-standing crypto-exchange LakeBTC.com (http://LakeBTC.com) (top 20 in the world for Bitcoin trading volume). This is already a serious business generating revenue. Now it's ready for the world.

If you’d like to know more check out our ANN thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2028648.0) and formal whitepaper (https://lakebanker.com/whitepaper.pdf)

Our Token Sale is in Phase 1 right now (2% of the tokens on offer at a big discount).