Bitcoin Forum

When it comes to the question of investing crypto into this or that ICO one has to review website, White paper, chat with the team members and advisory board, watch official groups in Telegram, Slack, study smart-contract and Bitcointalk thread.
But this is a huge work for one person, taking into account the amount of ICO that is being held lately.

Except for your own study of the upcoming ICO, which sources of ICO reviews and ratings do you trust and why?

Usually i do not notice icos found in an external extent than the bitcointalk forum. The aspects of ico you are committed to review before investing in it are must to trace the reality of ico developers.
But why i beleive only the icos which are advertised here over this forum, is because one can wholly understand whether it is worth to invest with it or not by reading different reviews based on the investigation of other members.

Thank you for the important addition! Expertise and experience of ICO developers should be also checked.

Maybe you can name Bitcointalk members whom do you trust in their reviews?

Never trust others with your own money. Why not invest a lot of time in doing the research yourself? Personally I don't trust anyone else with my money. Always do your own diligence, always. Yes, I am not saying don't read about what others have to say. But trust none other than yourself.

i never trust ICO rating and another platform for review about new projects
i just buy tokens in 3rt party exchange after coin/tokens listing

Previously, I was looking for new ICO on the BitcoinTalk forum and on the Internet, but every time I missed interesting opportunities. Therefore, I decided to create ICO Drops (https://icodrops.com (https://icodrops.com)), useful ICO Calendar.

I don't like classical ratings (4/5,  9/10, 90% and etc), so instead of the "rating" made "interest levels". It's just a combination of statistical data. This "rating" only means that which ICO should be looked at first and all, no investment recommendations.

I don't like ICO Reviews. This is not a game or a movie. I'm only interested in what can be measured. (Hype level, Risks level and ROI level in comparison with similar products)

We are still in the development stage. I'm open to dialogue

Our focus:
Make a complete database
Highlight the most interesting projects

I am using this one:
https://www.smithandcrown.com/icos/

They do not rate but it is starting point for ICOs.

Usually I read this site:
https://crushcrypto.com/

But they rarely update upcoming or ongoing ICO. CrushCrypto site just review their personal opinion about ICO, and I like how they are delivering ICO with different point of view. Maybe this is just for comparing for another ICO rating site like icorating.com

And the last, this forum on ANN thread have huge information and more objective than the other ICO rating site.

I alwais visit tokenmarket.net I think ICo review in tokenmarket.net is the best. Many ICos make succesful crowdsale when the review is listed in tokenmarket. I can invest in the ICOs after reading the review in tokenmarket.net

How about shit token Exchange Union (XUC) by Tokenmarket management ?

Yes research should be done to get a good project. so it would not hurt us to waste time to research or analyze a project before we join in its ico.

Unfortunately, I believe that trusted members of the forum rather review altcoins (the most famous of them) and don't look at icos. I am saying that because I've seen a list of worthy coins by Theymos, some reviews written by iamnotback. Any solid reviews of icos? Not really. They still have a bad reputation of being total scams, so some time has to pass before there'll be a good source on icos. For now I try not to invest in them and just look at what they offer from time to time to be up to speed.

This is a very useful conversation, how to see successful icos is quite difficult and requires more attention from knowledge and self-study.
Because after all we can not trust anyone at all without learning and jumping into it.

frankly, never trust such website to put my investment into an ICO, most of them are giving their good rate only to ICOS that are paying them bitcoin. basically, not worth to put my trust on.
i'll better join some slack or telegram group and gather people's opinion about the best ICO at the moment rather than trusting these website.

I agree. "Trust no one" like in X-Files )

Have you noticed that your own opinion about several ICOs coincided with someone`s rating or review?

How do you choose which tokens to buy from the market? Do you buy them instantly after tokens are listed on the exchange or you wait for some time?

Resources like icorating.com, smithandcrown.com, and icobench.com seem to be a good starting point to get an idea of what ICOs might be worth checking out and digging into, what strong and weak points they have, etc. To a first approximation.

After that, of course, only your own analysis based on your own criteria will work best, those that are meaningful to you within the framework of your understanding of what exactly you want to get in the end, how soon, whether you know much about the target market of a project or not, and so on.

There's no need to do all of that with every ICO.

You can make your search far easier if you filter out the majority of coins.  It's easy to do this with 2 simple filters:

1)  Does the project have anything built? No? Move on. Forget about their big teams and fancy titles. Most projects have these and they cannot prove that they can build anything. Writing software is much more difficult than creating a one-page website or video. Several projects raised multiple millions and still haven't delivered any software. Let me know if you want examples.

2)  Is the team from a corrupt country? Yes? Move on. In corrupt countries, ethics and honesty are more lax, which means that they will have a higher propensity to exaggerate or lie.

https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2016

The third filter is harder to implement. You need to be able to do critical thinking. Does the application make sense? Jesus coin is an extreme example of something that doesn't make sense, but most are leaning towards this. Crypto currency is good for some applications (transfer or store of value, save fees, save time, gambling) but not all applications.

Most projects are trying to squeeze square pegs into round holes. There's a project that wants to connect locals with travelers to enhance the travel experience. You have to do mental gymnastics to figure out why an altcoin is needed here.

You have "Tokenizing Rising Tennis Stars: tokenstars.com/ace" in your signature.  That sounds like somebody is trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole.  Why the hell would you have that in your signature?  It's getting close to the Jesus coin.

I also browse such sites with ICO, namely - Icorating and Icobench

Be careful with some of these.

Several of them charge to be listed.  Some give higher standings or visibility to those ICOs that pay more.

Before the housing bubble burst (financial crisis of 2008), Moody's and S&P gave high ratings on mortgage backed securities because the banks paid these agencies for the ratings.

In this case, you need to trust only themselves.

I often read the reviews at crush crypto because it is a good summary of an ico and the guy who writes it lays out the weak points of each ico. I use it as a sort of filter to see which icos i could look at more in depth. What I don't like is that he never gives a negative recommendation. He'll be really critical in his write up of an ico and the verdict will be "neutral". It's like he's afraid of sticking by his criticisms.

It's an interesting question, like some have said, most if not all of those ico listing websites are asking for money to list ICO projects.

So let's think about it, Project team are doing an ICO to get funds and develops their idea or in our case (see my signature (http://see my signature)) get money to spread the solution.

My point, is that if ICO projects owner are looking for money, they probably do not have money enough to get listed in those expensive listing.

You will say, most of them propose free listing, ok, been there ... more than 2 weeks ago and still 80% of the ico listing websites still did not list our project which is mature, with existing team, giving good rewards and bonus...

To summarize, I believe the best opportunities are probably hidden gems that are still in process inside those ico listing websites. And when they get published, it's probably already too late, as the most profitable bonus are off the table already ...

One exception is https://icobench.com/ico/selfpay (https://icobench.com/ico/selfpay) we have been listing very quickly with them.

This ^^^^^.  Is right on the money.

Just to add a few more to jlp's excellent advice.
1: Does it solve a "current" real world problem?
2: Are the founders greedy?  EG keeping a large percentage of the tokens for themselves. Releasing a huge amount of tokens in total. Is the token sale uncapped (big red flag right there)?
3: Does the token have an intrinsic function of the platform etc?  Many ICO's are just tech startup's who cannot get funding via the usual channels (perhaps because it fails the basic test) but then think, hey why don't we add a token to it, and launch an ICO".  Once you cut through all the fancy marketing BS you find the real world value of the token is worth the same amount as a recipe for ice cubes.  And once you've paid for said cubes, the project evaporates just as quick.    
 
Someone suggested https://icobench.com/ico/selfpay
Interestingly, out of their top 10 projects only two have a working product.
I checked out 5 of my current investments who all have a working product and most scored terribly (under 2.5/5)

Not to overemphasis the point but in real world terms, if someone came to you and said "We have this idea for a new smart phone.  It's going to solve this xxxx problem. It's built on a telecommunications network that is 5 years off being useful and by the way, we've never built a phone before and we don't even have a working prototype to show you because as I said, we've never built one before".
This is what most ICO's are asking of investor's which is why most will fail.  Heck, I'll be happy if just one of mine pays off but you just never know so never gamble more than you can afford to lose.

One final note. These ICO evaluation sites are all good for one thing.  A "quick initial" assessment of an ICO that you may be interested in. Like panning for precious metal, there are so many ICO's being released that it's hard to filter out out the silt and crap and uncover the real gold.   Don't rely on just the one resource and as always DYOR to see if it satisfies the above criteria.

cheers
NFI.  

Look and MVP and use cases for the ICO.

I don't use any sources personally. All sources are somekinda biased. I look bitcointalk ann page, official website and whitepaper. These 3 are enough to realize what is good or bad about that one ico.

Some people here touched upon the issue of paid ICO listing websites. As I see it, basically, there are two sides of the same 'coin'.

On the one hand, people might think paid listings and reviews are biased and therefore lack reliability.

However, on the other hand, if a project pays (big) money for such a promo, the team behind it believes in its success and that this activity will pay off, which might mean the project is worth it.

Of course, it is hard to say in advance what 'hand' should be actually true in each case, but obviously, the world is not simply black and white, you know.

One thing that sends a red flag is when they email me about the ICO. This forum was hacked years ago and all the users email addresses were stolen at that time. I use multiple email addresses and it's obvious what I receive from senders who have purchased that list.

Frankly any ICO that's purchasing email addresses from a stolen list I don't even read the whitepaper.

i trust ico review site
ussualy i use tokenmarket or icocountdown if want invest in ico peroject, because ussualy ico selling big success and listing in market is good price too and then can get profit

Agree with most of what you wrote.

What review site do you trust, if that's not a secret?

Icocountdown does not publish reviews as far as I know but I also use them to see what ICOs are out there at all.

Icocountdown charges $1000 per week. I think a lot of ICOs will not be listed there.

Exactly, but do you think that's a lot of good ICOs, bad ICOs, or both and it is not as meaningful? I mean, is there any correlation between whether an ICO can afford being listed on such a website and whether it is worth following, supporting, about to succeed?

By far the best source of information I've come across so far are Slack channels of several crypto projects. I also follow few streamers on youtube. Based on the their recommendation I typically choose 2-3 projects per month I want to look more closely at. Then I read the whitepaper, evaluate the team, join the slack and all that jazz.

Why most of ICOs posted on your site have been rated "not rated" and only a few have "MEDIUM INTEREST" rating?

Thank you. I did not know about this one.

I looked the link. Yes. They don`t rate but it`s written on their site: "We provide several tiers of research at our own discretion."

https://www.smithandcrown.com/important-changes-smith-crowns-token-sale-listing-policies/
Thay have very good reviews as thay are recomending ico's to his community,i have my own rules done,oneof them is whan at least mvp will be ready,if too long price will be below ico

Any kind of new facebook,amazon,google play,using words like that is pure scam

I don't think there is a strong correlation.

There could be some ICO project started by 25 year old geeks, laden with debt, that won't be on that site. But they're brilliant developers.

There was an ICO project started by a doctor earlier this year, who knew little about software or technology, but he would've been able to afford to pay $1000 per week. Now, there are people such as Paris Hilton and Floyd Mayweather (a boxer) getting involved, who can pay to get on that site. But does Paris Hilton or Mayweather know how to pick the best crypto/blockchain project? Do they know the difference between POW, POS or POI? Do they know what Raiden, Lightning Network or Segwit mean?

Yes, they are free, but it'll take a few weeks after you submit, before they'll list you.  If you want to be listed in a day, you have to pay.

There are many sites that list ICOs and token sales.  However, they are a subset of the list on Bitcointalk.org's Announcement (Altcoins) page, for the following reasons:

• Not all of the project teams will know about all of the ICO sites, but they all know about and will announce on Bitcointalk.org's Announcement (Altcoins) page
  
• Not all of the projects will pay to get listed on these ICO sites

However, Bitcointalk.org's Announcement (Altcoins) sorts the announcements based on which ones had the most recent comments.  Therefore, on the first page, you'll see announcements that were originally posted months ago and even announcements whose token sales have ended.

To find the most recent announcements, go to Bitcointalk's advanced search page and enter:

• ANN in the "Search for:" field
  
• Change the "Between 0 and 9999 days" field
  
• Under "Choose a board to search in, or search all", uncheck "Check all".  Then click on + to expand the list and check only "Announcements (Altcoins)"
  
• Click Search

This will show the announcements for the days that you selected.

Crushcrypto.com for me, they provide additional level of insight and a fair analysis, not always align with the one's own view but a quality source. I also like to read some ICO review from youtube, not for the advice but for the laugh

Actually, as we are actually in the ICO process for our project, I would not mind much to share a list of each of those token listing website with their prices and policy. Some of them are paying one, but even on those one and even if you pay you can have surprised and not been listed...

Kindly tell me guys if it could be of any interest ?

It`s a very important addition. Can you name some of this chat groups?

I trust only disscussions on bitcointalk, all other reviewers are definitely got paid for there reviews.
I'd recommend to read whitepaper of each ICO where you want to invest.

Can you name them? I mean slack channels and youtube streamers?

Thank you for sharing how to search for the latest announcements!

It`s like a lifehack for me )

Yes! I am totally interested.

And maybe not only me )

There are SERIOUS problems with some of the ICO listing sites.

• Some charge money to elevate the visibility of the ICO. When you see this, you think that the ICO is of higher quality, but it is not.
  
• Some ICO listing sites are staffed with mainly people from one country or region, such as Russia. Are they giving preference to ICOs from their country? Russia is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

Good to know. We are currently working on gathering the data and will publish something soon.
Hopefully it can help the community and people preparing ICOs on their side. :)

If that something is related to the topic could you please also post it here?

Yes, we will also post something here so you can have access to the data of course !

Yes. Could you please name examples of projects that raised millions and still have no software.

About that transparency index you mentioned. I think there is a very low correlation between country index as a whole and a certain team from the country.

What about the real SCAM projects?
Tithecoin - from USA (rank 18 from the index)
Ascendancy - with anonymous team
EBITZ with anonymous team

There are many projects with Russian teams (rank 131). HMQ, Chronobank, TAAS.fund, SONM and many others.
They are serious working projects even if the teams are from Russia.

I totally agree with the third point that everyone wants its own ICO. And no matter if blockchain is needed in their project.

About TokenStars. The team is mostly from Russia. The project is already working as I see. And they sure need blockchain platform to fulfill all of their plans. If you want, you can dig into it by yourself.

So it`s definitely not a jesus coin )

As requested, here are examples:

EOS raised $230 million and said that they were going to release something by end of summer.  Nothing yet. With $230 million, EOS should have solved world hunger by now.

Gnosis raised $12.5 million and their website says that they are releasing their game by first half of 2017. Nothing yet.

Qtum raised $15.6 million. I don't see anything produced on Qtum's website.

After raising $50 million, Cosmos's website is still pitching its white paper. Come on. What have they produced with that $50 million?

MobileGo raised $53 million. Here's the roadmap from their white paper:


However, I don't see any of that on their website. They're mainly bragging about how their token is on exchanges. What are they doing? Day-trading their own token?

NOTHING MATTERS MORE than proof that they can develop software.  EVERYTHING ELSE IS USELESS, including team, fancy pretentious titles, references, roadmap, video, fancy animations, escrow, blogs, Slack, Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and white paper.

Andreas Antonopoulos said that 99% of the ICOs are shit or scams. There are some projects who have already built software, albeit a small percentage. A good way to filter out most of the risky projects and reduce your risk is to ignore the projects who have not developed anything yet.

Yes, of course there are going to be some scams from the U.S. and legitimate projects from Russia. But the average is the contrary. If there are an equal number of scams from the U.S. as from Russia, then there would be MANY more successful companies in Russia. But there aren't. Russia has almost twice the population of Germany and has only slightly more than half of Germany's GDP. There is a reason for that. Eastern Europe has pumping out phishing scams to consumers for over a decade now. You can ignore this statistic if you want. But you just need to be cognizant of the risk you're taking.

Putin hosted Vitalik Buterin in Moscow. He wants to grow the crypto industry. He has killed journalists and opponents who criticized him. Facebook just said that they sold $100k of ads to fake accounts from Russia. Don't you think Putin will fund ICO projects through the back door? Don't you think he will fund ICO listing sites and ICO ratings sites to favor Russian projects? One would be naive to think otherwise. The site doesn't even have to be staffed by Russians. If not, all the better to deceive you. They just need to be bought or bribe-able.

TokenStars has no explanation of why the current currency (EUR, GBP, etc.) needs to be replaced by a token. Their site says "you support a promising 14-16 year old player - player spends money".  This means the player will sell the token to get EUR to pay for rent and food. What good is the token? Also, who is to say that the player or anyone else will honor any agreement to repay the supporters 2-6 years later? If you're a token holder, are you going to wait that long, only to hope that the player repay token holders?

Also, most people (not all) who give recommendations on Bitcointalk, are doing so because they are getting paid via their signature. Ignore these, especially those comments that sound like they are pushing themselves out to write something.

What do you mean when you use the word scam? Speaking about ICO, it`s when somebody collects money, closes the project and just vanishes in the air with millions in a pocket and a crowd of deceived investors. That`s what is a scam for me.

As an example of a good project, I also forgot to mention Waves as a perspective platform with Russian developers (#17 on coinmarketcap).

Could you please name real scam projects from Russia? I don`t know any.

Do you agree that any project needs in-depth research before making assertions and 5-minute quick glance on the website is not enough?

So what projects have gone through your strict filters and gave profit to you?

I found this links. Maybe they could be as useful as they are for me:

The Ultimate List of ICO Resources from Coindesk
https://www.coindesk.com/the-ultimate-list-of-resources-for-researching-and-launching-icos/

ICO Resources by William Mougayar - frequently updating
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q15zswSHaG8YYFfqMXfOW_0TuNICBbUd-HM7MhI5hyA/edit

You can add a small step:

• ANN in the "Search for:" field
  
• Check the "Search in topic subjects only" box (but I'm not sure if this narrows down the search results)
  
• Change the "Between 0 and 9999 days" field
  
• Under "Choose a board to search in, or search all", uncheck "Check all".  Then click on + to expand the list and check only "Announcements (Altcoins)"
  
• Click Search

Note that some projects might announce a couple of months in advance.  (We did this and probably announced too early.)  So I wouldn't enter a small number in the "Between 0 and 9999 days" field.

Thanks for adding!

I just went through your instruction and found ANN threads that were very hurried. No site, but ANN topic is here already.

Well, yeah, I got your point, but to be fair, if Paris Hilton and Floyd Mayweather can afford to pay websites for listing their projects - we know they can - then they also can afford to hire real masters and experts to elaborate on their ideas and transform them into, like, a real project.

However, I think I agree that there is no such a strong correlation and we should always look into a certain project we potentially want to participate in, not the amount of money the developers have to pay for anything from the very beginning. Well, at the same time, not enough money at the beginning makes it harder to quickly attract 'the first' attention of people who are supposed then to push your project by simply spreading the word.

So if developers are well known in crypto world and have a good product then they do not need to be listed on these websites.

You can see lots of scams from all over the world here:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0  (Search for “russia”)

Yes, there are scams from countries that are not corrupt and successful projects from corrupt countries. What is important is the probability and if you are willing to take the extra risk.

In corrupt countries, ethics and honesty are more lax. Does this mean that the likelihood of exaggeration or dishonesty to be greater? If you do not think so, then go ahead and invest.

In non corrupt countries, people grow up with lots of regulations and enforcement. Though there are exceptions, the people feel that the way to get ahead is based largely on merit. In corrupt countries, there is less regulation, less enforcement and more people trying to find ways to get ahead by working around the system. In fact, they see that the most successful people in their country, usually in their government, are those who get ahead by lying, cheating or working around the system, instead of based on merit. If you do not think this is a risk, then go ahead and invest.

ModulTrade
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2240518.0


This means that they are selling a security and will be on regulators’ lists. Maybe ModulTrade doesn’t care about regulators because Russia does not have extradition agreements with other countries, but what happens if regulators ban their token in Europe or North America?

Countries without extradition agreements make teams feel more invulnerable. Therefore, they are more likely to lie and cheat investors from other countries, because there is little to no recourse from the other countries' governments.

I watched a video of a conference. Consensus was warning about selling securities. Waves’ CEO debated this and shrugged it off.

Just because the ICO’s coin is on Coinmarketcap, it does not mean that they will execute. On Coinmarketcap, Gnosis is ranked 52, Qtum is ranked 14 and Augur is ranked 28.

Gnosis raised $12.5 million and their website says:


No app yet.

Qtum raised $15.6 million. I don't see anything produced on Qtum's website.

Augur had Vitalik Buterin on their team. After Satoshi Nakamoto, Vitalik is the most desirable person in the universe to have on an ICO team. After raising multiple millions and after two and a half years, all they’ve released is a simple beta that is barely usable.

Even if there are no obvious scams from Russia, it doesn’t mean that most of them are good ICOs.

Is the Russian government funding Russian ICOs to help them maximize the money that they raise? If so, you should be aware of this risk. Though there are exceptions, in the far majority of time, when a government tries to pick and choose companies, it’s not a good idea. The U.S. government forced taxpayers to give $535 million to Solyndra. It looked great at first and then it went bankrupt. Governments are not educated nor skilled to be Venture Capitalists, investors or stock pickers. Their money is often spent on policies to further their political or social goals.

In the extreme cases when the government tries to centrally manage the economy, they create socialism, or communism which is the extreme form of socialism. Every government that centrally manages their economy have always made their economies poorer in the long run. Think of Cuba, Venezuela, when Russia was communist, when China was communist, etc. The people who are best at picking which business will succeed or fail, are those in the free market.

Yes, of course, investors should spend more than 5 minutes looking at a website. The problem is that many do not and if they do, they do not understand technology, blockchain or business sufficiently.  In which case, they can reduce their risk by using filters:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2243157


As mentioned already, just because they can afford to hire people, it does not mean that its a good idea or that they will execute. When the U.S. government threw $535 million at Solyndra, they raised more than any ICO and I can guarantee you that they had a much more impressive team than any ICO. But they still went bankrupt.

I know icocountdown does his due diligence as much as he can and is really responsive

As promised, and sorry for the delay, we have started to publish a list of ICO Listing websites with some information (mostly prices) that you can consult here: ICO Listing Websites on Medium (https://medium.com/@selfpay/review-of-ico-listing-websites-3c7612f64ed1)

We welcome comments if you have any.

Thank you

I think ICObench is the one that works best for me. The site looks  very neat and every aspects of the project is graded. From the team, vision and etc which no other site that I've heard doing the same thing.

Thanks for the suggestion. As somebody mentioned here they take money from ICO project in order to be listed on their website.

Maybe, of course, they do both: take money + make due diligence

Thanks for sharing. The quality of the picture is rather low. Why do we need to ask the pdf through your email?

Maybe it's better to post pdf, excel or google spreadsheet file on medium right with your article?

Agree. ICObemch is a great provider of ICO listing. Thanks!

I think you may want to consider, and compare these sites' ratings and recommendations:

https://icobench.com/
https://icorating.com/
https://cryptorated.com/

You may want to watch some https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ICOs too. ;)

In all, take responsibility for your decisions and hope for the best.