Bitcoin Forum

dear friends im a newbie did lots of air drops and received lots of coins.some are telling those coins are scam.
eg-piggy,ohni
how can i identify whether they are scam or not?

There is no fullproof method to identify scam coin. But some points indicates that coin may be scan. Coin have any project or not, white paper details, following roadmap or not etc.

The majority of the scam coin will be running by the unknown developers or those are try to hiding their real information. But you can try to a lot of research about the developer's history. Ask the community feedback about. the more people mean the more information for you. That's why community is really important.

its true even a scam ico could have a nice whitepaper detais a good organized roadmap. but there is always something fishy about it if it is a scam.
maybe throw some question to the dev through thread and other group

You stay away from projects that don't answer every question from the community, disappear for periods of time, or don't have good reasons as to why they believe in their project or have an explanation as to what is going on with the funds that were given out at the beginning. Any shady answers? Run. Follow that rule and you'll never lose money.

It's true that you will never be 100% foolproof. You weigh the risk versus reward of whatever project you think might be a winner and you stay with it very closely until something spooks you.

you can identify a coin as a scam if the dev not have clear roadmap, he hide his personal information, new social media account and he ask money for airdrop( some of them claim for prevent abuse). but if you got it from airdrop is fine i guess, you get it for free though

It is quite hard to identify which coin is a scam or not. Most of airdrop coins now ended up being worthless, but it doesn't matter for me, since I haven't done a lot of job getting that free coin. If we got involved on an airdrop, we can also check their announcement thread if they have and see if their team are strong enough to become successful or their project has something different to offer that might stand up at the end. Sometimes reading about them may answer our doubt, but sometimes not at all because we still cannot say if the project will goes well. But don't throw your coins away, it would be a regret if something good happens. But it will not if you just  keep it.  ;)

Track their social networks, responses to people, activity. Write to community managers and ask questions about future of the project, profit from your invests and so on. If the answers are vague and too complicated or unprofessional it should put you on alert. However sometimes even scam could so perfectly planned and organized that it is unable to identify it.

i found this video to be very insightful in regards to this matter

https://youtu.be/v9AkwVHNnX0

You cant identify scam coins only joining the aidrops,scam coin would be a scam if theres a lot of investors who got rekt,or the coin developmen is cancelled or they got hacked scheme.

in my opinion, the whole of the project can be seen if a scam. I usually see the project's website ranking, see the project's development team, in terms of website design and roadmap of the project.

This is a very serious problem, and nobody knows how to tell whether this is true or not, so I'm not going to take any air drops in the near future.

Can it include anything of the real The majority renowned worldwide crypto, Bitcoin? there will be a staggering amount from claiming scamcoins that didn’t generally include anything on Bitcoin’s protocol, they were uncovered forks with one or two parameters changed, Also in the best about cases a few (buggy) code included.

I have to say that most of the project nowadays is a scam, many projects has no relation with block chain, but they force to add the block chain to their project and call for money from the public.

To be honest, I feel that it might be a little difficult to identify now. I mean just look at confido.

This is very easy, you can see it from various aspect. First, you can see their team whether they have a good track record or not. Second, you can judge it in terms of rank project, I suggest you can use website www.alexa.com/siteinfo. From that aspect we can see if the project is scam or not.

As i know its too difficult to know the coin scam or not. But i will say if the coin have no real developers and not following the roadmap so i can say its scam project.
And also if the dont list on the market for long period after ico also showing that the coin is scam.
But of course its not hundreed persen work.

http://prntscr.com/hg7seu

Just look at this picture

Distribution of the most coins by airdrop. Sooner or later it will be pile of garbage.

The first thing I'm going to do is to check if the announcement and bounty campaign managers are higher rank members, otherwise they're scams and dodgy.
Newbie and Junior Members shouldn't be able to manage ICOs even if they're legitimate and experienced managers. But moat of the time I choose veteran managers like Sylon, Yahoo, Needmoney etc.

That is right. The identity of the developers are not real or just a copy-cat on other token's website. So it is very important to have a deep research about a certain coin and their developers. You should also check their website and their whitepaper. Because in there you can analyze if there is something suspicious about the details they put on it. And lastly, the opinion of other people. Do not forget to take that also.

If it's too good to true then it probably is. Remember that.

If it is asking for your investment then always always check and do your own research and determine whether or not it's a good investment to make, whether or not their promises are actually fulfillable or just marketing strategies.

Airdropped coins should also be treated with caution. They will probably turn out to be nothing at all.

A coin scam for is when the coin has no good existing product,developers has no successful projects,investors are not interested with it.

i still have not thighs too about that but as i am now many coin airdrop which is rumored to scam to see project will not scam me still in search for more info.

You cant really determine a scam coin but there are ways to be aware of, be vigilant in what is happening never be caught by the promising words from the developer. Research about the project and who are behind it, some projects put their developers and admin name on it which is good. It will help you know who they are. make questions before investing its your money to spend not theirs.

If the devs are devious and won't divulge any information relating to them, no clear roadmap, ask money (ex. to prevent abuse etc.) and has no clear goal. Before joining an ICO project, check the history of the devs and ask around.

meh not that hard to identify coin as a scam or not, if they not have good team=scam, unclear roadmap=scam, fake identity=scam, fresh new account that ask money for fee=scam
and almost all airdrop worthless (some of them gold though)

for now there is still no very lucrative project in bounty airdrop. and this I feel myself have 10 kinds of airdrop coin that I can but everything is rotten.

If the campaign must have a long time or either no news on that, you consider that campaign are scam when the coin didnt gave to you in the time that they are said only if no anything that they explained something problem.

i think there are so many ico nowadays making us harder to distinguish which one is scam, so we should do research carefully to protect ourself first, make research about their whitepaper, roadmap, and their advisors, if these things is not cleary or fake, then that is scam, or you must check for interactions between investors and their advisors, they sometimes dont have clearly answers for our question and check the review websites.

developers, consultants, the road map is going according to plan, what is the idea of the coin

Isn't being anonimous part of the reason crypto is so popular?

One SURE way is to understand what are they offering. Is it realistic or not. If you do not have a clear view of what it is - do not invest in it.

The most scam coins don't have a real dev team (yes I know Satoshi is also unknown, but this is a exception). They want to be anonymous.

The link below will refer you to an article I read today about Scams, and why we can't ignore these accusations..

https://www.coindesk.com/crying-wolf-cant-ignore-crypto-scam-accusations/

So many scams around but you must be cautious, so do research before investing.

sorry bro for now is still a lot of scam coin so i suggest not to search for more info about it, try reading the project structure it is my suggestion.

Spread your investment. Don't put all in one project.

Don't matter if you hit a scam sometime. If most projects are + ROI.

If the coin don't have a plan to add value to coin I skip it.

I look at Twitter. If the big players in crypto recommend I send ETH.

I have + ROI for following Vitalik etc

If you play safe wait til after ICO. See how it develops. Buy if good.

It is not easy to identify a scam coin. There are new coins that uses name almost identical to a listed coin in the market. Others have alluring websites. Remember scammers are geniouses that knows how to market their idea so well. As for me, I look into the trade market if they are pre-listed and research on the people behind the initial coin offering.

it's not usually that straight forward, it's actually quite hard to identify a real ICO from a fake or scammed one because most of the promoters are putting a lot of effort in making it look legit, and to the untrained eye, investor and trader that won't be visible. They are basically offering a whitepaper, a business model, a legit website but are not serious for the long-term, it's hard to identify these kind of things which is why you have to come in direct contact with the founders and core team. Try to join their communication channel (telegram for example or slack) and start making tough questions, push them to the limits to see whether they indeed have figured everything out and do our own due dilligence before you invest in any of them.

I think the most important thing when investing in ICO is team and its background.

Definitely there is no good way to know whether your coins scam but maybe if your coins has no value in a long time you hold it we can say that your coins is scam coins.

Most frequently airdrops coins is no value and we can considered it as scam.

Alas fraud or where to stay(( since they opened the doors for easy extraction

it is very difficult to identify a coin at the present time because it is very much and the scam at the moment, which can also make us waste our precious time.

Actually, If you are investing in ICOs, it is hard to find out the scam project. But you can focus on some points to know:
- The experience of devs
- The project possibility
- The way to execute.

now is so many ICO, every day always have new ICO and sure its can just scam. so we must know what thats coin is scam/ not, through the following ways
1. ICO team must have experiece peoples in crypto
2. how long thats company are walking
3. have market coin
4. whitepapers is clear

What do you guys think about Lockchain?
https://lockchain.co/ (https://lockchain.co/)

Hotel Booking & Vacation Rental marketplace With 0% Commissions

I don't see much on google about it but more on facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/LockChainLOK/ (https://www.facebook.com/LockChainLOK/)

It become a wild guess to tell if this coin is legit or not. But base on my experience, mostly fake coins have run by a newbie account. It is not safe to have a deal for newly account, unless it shows sincere with your dealings. Because it most probably scammers are hiding on it, especially in joining airdrops that requires us to send donation in return of their coins. It is better if you just ignored it and stay away from them.

There are several definitions/criteria by which you can detect whether a new cryptocurrency is a scam or not.

BLOCKCHAIN
The digital currency was created on the BITCOIN or ETHEREUM BLOCKCHAIN, then it has some level of legitimacy.

LIQUIDITY
It is easy to liquidate the commodity asset of your digital currency asset and turn this into other digital currencies or back to cash.

FUNCTION
The company has a business model/plan within which the digital currency or token will solve a real problem for a large channel to market.

PEOPLE
The people behind the company and the company itself have an ethical background and have not been involved in Ponzi Schemes, Penny Auctions and are operating with transparency and conservatism.

HYPE MARKETING

• The policies of the company meet the standards for advertising practices of financial services and technology, as prescribe by the SEC or ASIC or similar regulatory body.
  Typically this means that claims must be substantiated
  HOWEVER - in most cases, the claims of Digital Currency ICOs are more generally OUTLANDISH in nature and feature HYPE MARKETING which promotes only a potential upside that has no correlation with reality.

ICO - Initial Coin Offering
Specifying terms and conditions of the downside is a legal requirement not adhered to by most ICOs. ICOs divert this by saying they are technology advisors. However, unlike IPO rules under SEC, ICOs only need a white paper about a potentiality and a funky website to solicit millions of dollars in digital currency investment.

It aint scam for those who will just join the airdrop. You are just sending them your receiving ERC20 address and they cannot do anything with that.
It is the investors that will be buying that coin which will be affected. Due to the users that  joined the airdrop and a hype in twitter or telegram they might victim some big time investors which could make them profit.
If you are just an Airdrop joiner then you wont need to worry.
How to know they are scam is they dont really have a team to back it up or they are not real person or copies.

IMO, ICO is more risky project compare with bitcoin trading but they yield more profit.
But if you want to keep follow the project, you can check their legitimacy , their feedback based on forum community or other social media reference !

Some give-aways I like to check:
* bad, crappy or absent website
* copied website
* little social media activity (interacting with followers, not just spamming messages)
* team-members have actual active linked in accounts?
* coin has a contract?
* activity on BCT or newby?

If you did found some coins from airdrops do sell them when they hit any exchange. They probably hit etherdelta first so sell them there if you think they are scam coins.
Secondly there is no proven way to identify scam coin. So you have to research well on any coin before investing.

When one of the team say this magical word "TO THE MOON"  ;D ;D ;D Stay away from that coin, you regret investing it when the team run away ;D ;D

Check their white paper and their official sources, if there is even one inconsistency in between those, they're probably scammer project members. I say this many times before. Their sources should be consistent.

If the coin is too good to be true,developers are not good,if tthey dont have existing product and if they sell their token for 50% + bonuses i wouldnt recommend it.

Many of these are rubbish, but what you need to focus on is not that they cheat, but where they will trade and sell them in time, my friends.

You can identify it by reading many articles and stuffs regarding to that ico and that might as well give you an idea if the coin is a scam or not. There are many experts in finding the coin and they are posting it so you can read it, spend time reading articles that is my advice for you

If it looks too good to be true, then it’s probably a scam. There’s no free lunches

The best way to avoid falling into these various scams and shady schemes is to identify common characteristics such as: no white paper, ghost team members,guarantees of high profit, ambiguous details on how it actually works or minimal to no information on founding team or company and etc.

More importantly, it pays to acquire knowledge and understanding of how cryptocurrencies work and the underlying technology that powers them. Arming yourself with the right knowledge would safeguard you against these scams.
Scams and Ponzi schemes do not possess these common characteristics and are usually centralized and opaque.

if we talk about airdrops or ico then we don't know which one is legit and which one is scam because if the project is still running then they will promote the project to many place. we only know they are scam is after they launch the coin into the market but people dont interested with the coin and suddenly the coin is down into deep.

Take a look at the development team behind the coin or project. Alot of scam coins will have unclear team ehind them, meaning not much information. Read forums regarding the coin, alot of programmers can tell you how well the codes are written or just copy and paste. Also see if they have a road map, clear plan of how they will make the project successful. But unfornatutely alot of dodgy projects or coins have seen alot of price gains on the market. Will theyast thats another question.  Ut in the mean time you see alot of pumps on dodgy coins.

just read there whitepaper and roadmap see there ceo and there telegram if they are always update and check there feedback by the user.. it is easy to know if the coin is scam if you understand there platform....

how to distinguish the scam altcoin is from the absence of a market and the author does not have good communication as there is no communication on the telegram and is rarely seen in bitcointalk forums and does not have bounty managers and uncertain dates when

I also do not know yet, how to know the coin scam, I often follow the airdrop and get the coins, from the many airdrop that I follow only 2 sapai 3 who have quality coins, maybe the project failed, or did anyone commit a fraud to take the wallet, 2 days yesterday my wallet was hacked probably because it follows the airdrop scam

In essence I think we should be really to find out much about that coins more detailed from various ways/sources and trying to prove it as much as possible. Well actually the primary key is we should be more intelligent, and do not be easy to believe. Btw I think.. ask to people that more experienced also very helpful.

.based on my experience around the furom and whenever i want to put some time to read About crypto.  I think there are no ways how to figured it out Cause it has the same looks like the original model.  Yes original model cause i think some of them are clone Maybe there are some reason why they need to make a clone.  Maybe to make a ponzi schemes.

Did you just say airdrop, piggy developer was just dashing it out no roadmap nothing at least some airdrop still develop it. And people earn from it. For you to know fake ones look out for the following things
1. No website
2. No roadmap
3. No contact from the dev
4. No whitepaper

i agree with you guys ,,, it's hard to tell which project is scam or the right one will pay ,,, just after the end we can know for sure ,,, but it's good, to find the smallest information about the project that we will follow

No KYC (ICO that usually implement KYC means legal business), although it may be fraud if really done with KYC and you will lost both money + private details

I would say, just look at the coin ico cap. You can then find out if the team is greed, unrealistic or so.
Check if the project is too good to be real, some offers very insane project goal

I think usually they will have the basic things above but their contacts will be a big mistake or fake.

The main thing you should pay attention to this team. When the project starts, some sections team just icons and not photos of real people. The second is open source on github. And the third kind of road map of the project.

I think this highlights the Scam project. But there is quite a lot of nuances that are worth paying attention to. Sometimes almost impossible to see the Scam project or not because of good marketing

I found this is really important topic to talk on. As I'm too new in the field, I tried various methods to earn tokens by various methods.
If you all can spread the information about known scams, it will be really helpful.

Nice tips.

Its hard for newcomers today. Before there was mining and faucets to get you involved in a coin-token.

These days its just give me money now and you will be rich tomorrow.

Dont invest more than you can afford to lose. The only way to not get burned.

If you fail. Get back on your feet, be smarter next time. You have learned a new thing. Level up. New fight.

make sure to check a couple of things. First if the idea is realistic, many scam coins usually offer unusual promises or things that are probably not possible, some projects will promise something like 100% return in one month, every month, or something crazy like that. A good thumb rule is: if it is too good to be true, it's probably not true. That's usually the case in anything you try to invest  your money in. Scammer will try to get your attention by offering something that looks unrealistic but is actually possible. What you need to focus on is that you find genuine good projects that have realistic goals and targets and to invest in them in order to profit later on. You might not find every project you pick to be a success but eventually you'll be rewarded if you find a good one that works out for you.

Thank you for this post. It is a very important topic. In reality it is almost impossible to distinguish a scam coin from a good one. The best prepared scammers can write down and publish a very truthful whitepaper and whatnot.

Track the history of the team activity in social nets; check their roadmap, but better stay away from all the stuff you doubt in.

It is quite easy to detect scams. Just keep following motivation of coin creators. What are their plans with the coin? How is it going with the roadmap? These kind of questions will be your guide.

i will identify the scammy project with their social media link, such as linkedin, twitter
but linkedin is most important to me, a solid project will have linkedin account in thier team member with a lot of connections and not created in few days

Can see his DEV activity in the group, can also be viewed from the website, the most important in the market if the matket is ugly yes it can be sure it's a scam.

I think we live check the coin whether it has an ico or not.

I think we live check the coin whether it has an ico or not.

When it comes to airdrops, there's not much to give so there aren't very high expectations from developers. Airdrops as of recently have been created on the basis of a new name and copycat development cyrcles, with no real purpose. People go after those in hopes of free money but there isn't much due diligence. I'd say that it doesn't even matter if an airdrop is a scam because there's no way to invest in it like there is with ICOs or in most even cases not even mining.

You can identify it from the bitcointalk ann page, if there's a lot of information about the coin, especially the dev behind it, then it's most likely not scam. But if it only has some basic information about the coin, no roadmap no white paper and no information about the team, it is most likely a scam. Serious project always offer a lot of information to attract people.

It can not be determined whether the coin will live long or die tomorrow. The creators of the coin can develop their project, and can throw it. Beginners should only buy the most popular coins

But not all ico's are scams. Everybody seems to enjoy ethereum as well right..?