Bitcoin Forum

We all are well aware of ICO frauds (https://coinjournal.net/singapore-startup-raises-us8m-in-ico-for-blockchain-fraud-prevention-platform/).

I use the strategy to start with a whitepaper, see team member details and the roadmap.

What strategy you adopt to make sure the ICO is not a scam/fraud?

it is very difficult to distinguish the promising ico and ico scam. researching the entire contents of a whitepaper is also not enough to ensure an ico. I am also confused to make sure, maybe we need friends or local community to ensure or decide an ico that we will choose.

I also use the same strategy as you have., but for me, whatever types of this information that we could get from reading all those information from their website, its the willingness of the developers team is the most important in running the ICO or the project, it doesnt matter how good the roadmaps, the team members or anything, because its just a showcase of themselves posted on the website. so we have no assurance on how legit it was. So i will stick with my always 1 rule, in investing an ICO, a cross finger that the only Creator on earth will guide them to pursue their projects

It may be possible for few ICOs for sure but not with hundreds or thousands of ICOs launched globally.

If we don't have a workable strategy bad guys will continue to steal money.

Whitepaper is okay, check it for spelling and grammar errors. 

Roadmap is almost useless if they are a scam.  They can say anything they want and make it look good.  Basically it's a list of promises.

Team member details though is where you can get the most bang for your buck.  No last names?  SCAM.  No social media profiles?  SCAM.  Not on LinkedIn?  SCAM.

There are exceptions to this though, there are a few Crypto personalities that are known by there crypto-names, like JL777.  He has been around for a while now and is a major developer of the Komodo Platform and before that Bitcoin Dark.  If you can find information about the team members on social media and interact with them before investing then the chance of a scam goes down.  Make sure if you do find them on Facebook or whatever that they have been around for a long time.  If you find team members that all have their social media profiles made the week before the ICO was announced it is a scam.

The code, whitepaper, the history of tema and the community feed back about that. But it will be very important to understand the code. Remember the community is also playing a really important role to determine which is a scam ico. Because you will have more support data.

My trick is always so, I read the white paper, roadmap, website and others about it but there are still lies only some of them who appreciate me, thanks to the enlightenment of senior friends above my knowledge so increased. :D

I was scammed By clout team with sean kirtz. They worked with big name as David Cohen (David was a member of the IOTA Foundation during the IOTA Token Cryptocurrency launch).

Now, I look:
-activity on bitcointalk by team
-activity on bitcointalk by community
-Bounty campagin: too many bounty hunters= dump wuickly. You could see this on their telegram with dumb questions by bounty hunters
-whitepaper + repartitions for the tokens

You don't need any friends for any promising ICO, it's just that most of the ICO manager or the team are taken control by their greediness and doesn't want to continue what they have started. That's why it is good to look for a reputable team that has worked before and has already a project that is being done and it is less risky compared to a new group of team who is more riskier sometimes.

Is going through white paper that easy ? White paper is such a long document . We have to participate so many bounties at same time for social media , telegram etc . So is is a very good way and time efficient way ? Because for a naive user ,  going trough white paper will also not help to recognize the project as a scam or a genuine project . we just have to discuss it with the old players to authenticate the project .

It is very hard to avoid all ICO scams and frauds, because there are always people and projects that look very legit, but in the end they are just running away with your money. You should do a lot of research about the people behind the project before you invest into ICOs.

To avoid ICO scam, I chose an ICO that gets a good rating on some ICO Rating Portal like icobench, icotracker, tokenmarket etc. Also, see from partnership and media publication.
It's just my opinion. CMIIW

Your startegy is something that is basic.

I look at listing on ICODROPS, also videos of team AMA or conferences. Video review by Ian Balina or OHM or TGO also helps. Roadmap and WP are mostly word jargon, so no use wasting time there...

I have no strategy because it is not important what kind of strategy you have for ICOs that are actually not investment, believe me you just support '''foundations'' financially, that is not investment.

Scammers very often hide their faces. They also forge photographs, white paper, white paper. They provide false data on the collection of funds on the presale (it is usually indicated that the project has already gained an impressive amount). Their site is usually made very simply, they do not go to direct contact (again, to save incognito), etc. There are a lot of information about this in the forum.

you can not understand it by reading whitepaper easily. the best way is to check the team and advisors. if they are known people and has a strong background and experience you can trust in project, if there is noone known it may possibly be a scam.

In my opinion that should be the minimum necessary to invest in an ico, but most people do not even bother to do that much which is one of the reasons of why we see so many people getting scammed all the time in the forum, people only care about getting profits and in their search for profits they ignore all the warning sings that a coin is not what it looks like.

Nowadays, you cannot just rely on the contents of the whitepaper anymore. Even documents can be falsify now. Also, you'll need a lot of time to analyse an ICO's whitepaper and even that has no assurance of it being legitimate. Just like what the others have mentioned, I tend to look at the team members behind the project, if their expertise and fields are accurate to what their project is and they have already established a good name or has previous projects that have taken part of, then they are legit. In case they are all newbs and just had their first project, look at the advisers and research about their credibility and previous works, too. Sometimes, expert investors just follow their gut feeling, but I highly don't recommend this as most of this investors had already had years of playing in the investment world and had gain enough experience to trust their own intuitions.

I also do strategies mentioned by others to make sure an ICO is not a scam/fraud but data gathered from researching is not enough for me to decide if an ICO is scam or not. Often times, I observe telegram group and how team does their public relations, and after observing for a while, I use my gut feeling to decide if an ICO is scam or not, or if I will invest onto it or move on.

sometimes ico scam is the same as ico that is not a scam, until now i have not been able to distinguish it, start from white paper team or se detail detailing in white paper. we need friends to exchange thoughts, we here have bounty hunter grub and this is where we often exchange thoughts and exchange links bounty.

I check the website if there is something wrong with their ongoing ICO as well and sometimes if the amount is too good to be true then there is a hige possibilitybit is a scam.

To choose a potential ICO, avoid participating in the fraudulent ICO project, you should see who is managing the ICO project manager, if the manager is known as amazix, yahoo, deadley, cheus, hotachy then the  ICO project is very potential, the risk rate is very low. Also be sure to track the tokens sold over time on ICO, to see if the ICO project can reach a soft cap or hard cap.

 I go beyond whitepaper and check their ICO ratings that if it has verify the team members. A verified team member are unlikely to scam or run away. Apart from there, If I check the community management, if there is a consistent updates on team work.

Based on what is posted on this thread so far. I would give marks to following ( 1 is minimum and 10 is maximum)

yes I also do that, look in detail white papers, team members and road maps. but here I also usually do predictions about community feedback about the project because it will largely determine the future of the project.

Scammers are such that they plan and try to think ahead of everyone and so it is very difficult to identify a scam ICO. In one way or the other, we may a day fall victim to such people but we can protect ourselves with vigilance and a thorough research into the project focusing more on the team members

Honestly, it is really difficult to distinguish whether an ICO is a scam or not. Even if you check the white paper, or even check the team's profile, some ICOs make excuses to avoid delivering their project after gathering funds.

my strategy is to verify the truth about their team, advisors, and project partners

team: usually, the scammers do not want to show their true identity, I'll check about team information such as Linkedin, twitter, and so on
and and check about their seriousness in promoting the project, usually serious teams will participate in public events such as Blockchain conferences
advisors: verify their claims about project advisors, eg the project claims that their project advisor is John McAfee then I will ask the truth about it on John McAfee's official twitter
partners: verify their claims about project partners, for example, the project claims that they have partnered with Bancor, so I will verify it by asking the truth to Bancor through official contact

I really trust the Amazix team, they have a large investor community. they are very professional in managing an ICO.
why not try it and prove it.

no app or any feature can predict the existence of true ico or scam we have to do all in private and must be careful in determining a project ,, i do according to what you have done before

i think there is . I heard a website lately that list all legit ico's , they also list the bad ones or that may potential to become a scam ( you may try to google it because i forgot the name of that site ). Even here on the forum i do also see a thread that filters out the good and the bad ico's .  but despite all of these methods or suggestions , i guess it is still much better if we can do a short research about their info before we decided to continue so that we can be sure that we are chosing the right one.

I've never been caught by ICO scammers. When I evaluate ICO, I try to invest only in those where a strong well-known team, a good product and there are reviews of analysts on the project!

Me too :)  very much trusted  group. And their team are  very  approachable. I'm also suggesting Amazix bounties  to everyone  and Join them. You may visit  their website  for more info about their bounties here https://bounties.biz/  and also join them on   their telegram channel https://t.me/amazix_bounties. I also  check  websites  for  me  as  one way  to determine  if the bounty is scam  and also  double  check  white  paper and  their  team  one of the  factor  upon checking  bounties.

It is not easy to define if that ICO is scam or not because we can believe that they are promising ICO's due to their platform and how they promote it to the community of crypto world.

At first I don't think check WP is really work cause it's not too difficult to create a perfect WP, they just need to copy WP from another project then fix it a little bit or they can pay money for everyone to write a good WP for them. Beside about checking dev team member, I also think it's not a good way to find out scam ICO project cause they can fill everyone in their dev team as they want :). Do you know every single person in this cryptocurrency world? I don't think so :)).

First of all i m trying to check all about team if they are legit etc. Then i m trying find out about community who participate .

Differentiating between real and fake ico has turned so difficult nowadays. Professional whitepaper writers nowadays write top class WP for very cheap so it is difficult to predict from WP that project is legit or not. Also faking team is too easy. So my suggestion is to go after projects which have already completed ICO and in development stage. Such coins are still low priced and have huge potential of rising.
Remme is one such project which after a successful ICO is now in-development stage and easily recognizable as legit ICO. There are infinite profit opportunity wiith Remme in future and worth investing.

A lot of ICOs are becoming scam after they collected raised money and make a strategy to exit, like making an excuse that they been hacked or error with their system.

Better to avoid this scams and invest your hard earned money on trading.

1.   Watch out the team working behind the ICO properly. You should careful read about the qualification, expertise, skills and experience of the team members.
2.   Don’t get along with the high goals. The unrealistic gals are mainly scams.
3.   What is the project? The idea behind the project should be new and interesting.
4.   Whitepaper should carry all the information about the project. If important details are missing, it could be a scam.

You can use resources like Verified ICOs and picolo research to gauge whether an ICO is legit or a scam.

avoiding scam ico is very difficult.. even the team have faces on their website but we don't know if they are the real ones.

In the past, I have often observed reports of the number of tokens sold at each stage with the roadmap and whitepaper to assess whether the ICO project has the potential. But since I know the amazix team, I always choose their ICO campaigns because most of them are not the scam and have great potential.

The cryptocurrency market is having too many ICO projects formed so the quality of these projects is very low. If you want to invest in ICO in this period you need to spend a lot of time to study good projects so invest. You can consult from experienced investors to choose a good project.

Its hard but we must avoid it so we can save our money from those scammers. You must make your own standards on investing in ICO's and must be done properly. It's better to put some time reading the details of every ICO than to scammed, we all want to lose our money for nothing.

Are you really sure that ICO rated website like ICO bench, ICO rating, etc are giving us real rating?
I have been joined many ICO and bounty and most of them have a Great rating (almost perfect) but when the project run they start to act strangely and yeah ... it goes scam and sometimes not reached their softcap because of bad product and marketing they give.

Avoiding the deceptive ico is sometimes a bit difficult because we must be able to check every part there. team and also company. usually we can read reviews from a site to find out ico is good or not

So there is a risk associated with every ICO and we have to take that risk in order to book our profit.

You also need to see their activity on github and on every blockchain event. If the developer much appear in blockchain event it is small chance to become scam but still there is chance the project could fail. Every ico have a big risk because cryptocurrencies is still on beta. Whitepapper also can be made to make us sure to invest. Dont be fooled by whitepapper.

more or less almost the same as that. first I see for the tokensale, usually I avoid for ICO with a lot of bonus but by giving certain purchase terms. In fact I had read that Vitalik does not recommend to follow ICO like that. Second there are team members. Their identity must be valid, whether they are experienced in crypto, and most importantly whether the photo and identity are valid. Roadmap and the rest depends on the type of project

Knowing who are the team members can be the best way to know if the ICO is a fraud and if they are composed of scammers.
From the very start, knowing if there's a scammer part of the team that project will be heading to the pitfall.

Very sorry there are new rules related to bounty, they will not accept any more articles and social media campaigns.
this is bad news for bounty hunter.

There are many ways to detect an ICO fraud, we can analyze their website and the community they are operating, a potential ICO they allocate and present their site fully information and logic. Not as cluttered as poor quality phishing scams.

Actually ico investment is still very profitable. I once bought a token ico with a good project and a cheap price and when it was launched and the coin was listed in exchange the price was several times higher than when you buy while still ico. you just need to be careful in choosing the right ICO. there are many tips to avoid buying scam ICO like looking at roadmap, team formation, etc. you can search and read it

i think right now it's just one in a hundreds ico that scam. the real problem is if the token sale going well and the exchanges price

I also use the same strategy that you do but in addition, I also ask for experts' advice when it comes to projects. I consider my self as a new member of this cryptocurrency community and I still have a lot to learn. There are also communities in Telegram which will help you to judge whether a project is a scam or not. And some people are doing some ICO review that is available in YouTube.

Actually it is too hard to identify that the project is a scam or fraud, however you can do your own research for example checking the team behind that project whether they are real or not, check their social media, LinkedIn account etc. The next step is to analyze the project, is the project will be successful? you can check their whitepaper, asking the community, reading some ratings on the website etc.

I always use a more selective strategy, including a strategy that looks more detailed and clearer to the ico. can now be decided if before choosing ico must believe if the concept, team and all have a high success rate. so I think this can be used as one way to avoid scam ico and fraud.

Well that is the only way to determine if they are scam or not read their white paper and road map,
Then search their team member and their team advisory ,
But even if we do that there are times that we could still be scammed because they could use a fake identity .

Absolutely agree mate, local community helps  a lot of choosing a promising ICO as what we already practice we formed a small cell a group of friends helping each other giving input about the crypto world.

While good managers try to make a research about the project because they do not want to taint their own reputations at the same time it is a mistake to rely only on them in order to tell if there is something wrong with a project, do your own research even to those projects that have good managers that way you will avoid most scams, I know it is time consuming but if you care about your time and money you will do it.

You should try to look at EVN. It was a very hyped ICO. If a project promise you great profits, there is a chance that it becomes a scam.
You can't really know when a project is going to transform into a scam. Who would have think that it was going to become a scam?
But human greed is the worst thing.

Yes, my friend what you say we can not distinguish ourselves which ico is a fraud and which is genuine because the scam project already has a mature strategy also to be able to trick someone so they are sure of the project besides that we also really need once the local community may be in the presence of local communities we can exchange opinions and conclude which ico is scam and which ico is potentially ..

Honestly, the scam ICO is one of the biggest issue which is widespread in the field of cryptocurrency, and  regrettably, many are easily fooled because they are very greedy, that's why the scammers  earn a lot of money and they do not even lose a large proportion of money when making the website, whitepaper .. of the scam ICO.

Furthermore, you can know if the ICO is scam or not, when you have a good knowledge in that field, and if you are professional, you can read the Whitepaper and search for the technical information which helps you to find out the truth of the ICO.
Be careful, I advise every beginner (especially who  know the basics) to stay away from investment in ICO, because there is a great possibility that they will lose a big amount of their money. And trust me, knowledge can help you a lot in order to take a shortcut way to the success.

This is sound advice, newbies are not ready to invest in something as risky as icos, the profits we can get are incredible and sometimes it may seem unreal but at the same time very few people take the time to think about what that means and where that money comes from, if you earn a huge amount of money it means that someone somewhere lost money, so most of those that invest in icos need to lose money.

When you wish to be away from ico scams, try to understand as much possible the project team and the way they take forward to the people. There are ico's that doesn't have any Ann thread, but they do direct messages to the public to invest into their ico. Those were traps where newbies easily gets caught. It's our responsibility to stay away from those kind of ico's.

Nobody is immune from fraud and hackers in this technology. There is no regulation and this is used. Usually you need to analyze more than the road map and the soft cover of the project and the number of participants and the team. But again this does not give a full guarantee that you will not be deceived.

it is very hard to identify the ICO is a scam. Nobody knows if its safe or not, Reviewing the whole content of a whitepaper is not a guarantee to ensure an ICO is legal. Maybe we can check by searching there rates or even the team member before we engage an ICO.

Yes, investing in an ICO with a team will make us more successful and bring us to early success. If we are alone we can hardly detect a fraudulent ICO. Take advantage of all the potential for a perfect ICO project.

Reading white paper is really boring and is hard to do but this is a good thing to spot fraud. What i usually do is see and follow a team which i trust and see if the road map can seems to happen.

When you able to spot out the good or scam project means you do not need to look about the ICO projects. When you go to check the white paper you can find the 10 and more pages in the pdf file bro. All you need to check about the core team and development candidates.

Then check some of the team members LinkedIn profile which is given on announcement or in white paper. That will allow you to show the project legibility to the investors. If find newbie account there you can shift down to other projects.

I use same strategy when choosing an ico because the rate of fraud is too much and I also follow my intuition, check the developer and management team, I even check the previous works of the manager and their success story with icos. Some icos have very good whitepapers because they are well developed to attract investors but they later turn out to be scam. It is very necessary to be patient and do a deep research about a project before investing in it.

identifying an ICO scam is getting harder and harder. studying the Whitepaper is by far not enough. you should also consider going through the website, telegram, teammember, do some research on the teammembers.

And if you have any doubts simply dont invest. i just put money into ICO where i am 100% sure it is not a scam but you never know. sometimes even the best feeling can be proved wrong.

It's hard to avoid fraud ICO's and scams. But it's also easy to spot them. Some of the ways to avoid scams is to ensure that you follow the happenings in the community and see how they engage with them. Live AMA sessions are also very vital as you get to interact with the team and ask them direct questions. Don't ignore reviews about them as well

Avoiding the most obvious scams is very easy, since there are going to be many red flags that something is wrong and you can avoid them, the problem is that scammers are getting really smart and they are copying other projects so you may be scammed by a project that copied most of its details from a successful ico, so in paper the ico looked great but that was only because they stole the work of someone else.

Nowadays it is extremely difficult to predict such a thing. I also adopt the same posture as you, I check the WP, I check the whole team, and I also check how the community is reacting on the currency, but even with all this the chance to be a fraud and very big because even if the coin is launched it may still not reach its apex, either for lack of work or lack of ideas in its conception.

It's Important to make a research before we join a ICO investment so we can avoid the scammer or frauders. Like you said the researching their team, roadmap and white paper is the one important to know if it's a good and have potential project.

They are getting smarter as the time goes by because once methods being busted by scammers they would stup up and improved the way of scamming which as an investor it would already hard to find out which one is the legit and which one is the fake one. They are finding new ways which arent still known by most investors thats why scam ico do still exist nowadays and we should really cautious on investing. Always research and be observant on all sorts.

It is not to easy to avoid them if we are honest in here, most of the times we fall into those scams because we want to make as much money as possible, and that is it

yes you are right the team is a consideration in choosing the ICO, but sometimes it does not always run smoothly. CENTRA know how people sick because the coin

that's a good strategy, i almost the same checks, i use to avoid all the projects with strange ideas that have the blockchain inside them just for grab some money with the ico, then i avoid all the projects that promise incredible things like one million transactions for second. For the team analisys i suggest you to make an account on linkedin to check all their career and control if it's real

Scam is bad and all people want to avoid that scamp attemp in ico or other but its not that easy to make us stay away from fraud.
Easy to say but difficult to do. Scam can not be avoid just by checking the whitepaper since whitepaper and roadmap can be made so easily by expert to cover their scammy project.

I think menlo.one can help you with that. It's a platform that will serve as a review site for any upcoming ICO. The good thing about is that it can't be corrupted unlike the review sites we have right now where an ICO just pays a certain amount of money to get a +5 review.

The hardest part is that, even you read whitepaper and ANN thread, still, it can be a candidate for Altcoin scam. I guess for more that a thousand coins, ICO struggle to get on top and even it is still half way through finnish line, it stops their operation because of lack of investor.

I think proper research about the ICO project can save us from fraudulent ICO, no need to be greedy single -ve point means to get away from the ICO. Most important parts of research are project team and project product or service after the successful ICO.

ICOs are high risk:high reward investments because it can go either way which entirely depends on the developers' integrity; some of which have already proven to have none. It's a waste that new ICO investors just sit on the sidelines waiting for change while legitimate projects end up not getting the funds they deserve.

I'm anticipating a project called MenloOne that's soon to be an ICO markeplace, where its developers mentioned that it will help stop fraud with their unique, decentralized platform. There have been no other similar projects launched before and I'm hoping that this is the change some of us have been waiting for.

To avoid fraud and cheating in Crypto is the hardest thing, we must have in-depth knowledge, analytical knowledge, today the scammers are very sophisticated we are very easy to make mistakes.

Real genuine ICOs can be a needle in a haystack sometimes, all comes down to risk management and doing proper deep research.

A couple ICOs that are very worth looking into are Muirfield IP and Fr8 Network. Neither ICOs have launched yet but are set to be announced soon. Definitely keep an eye on these projects as they both have very real-world use cases and are utilizing blockchain heavily.

Fr8 Network deals with removing intermediaries in supply chains, bringing revenue back to distributors and carriers.

Muirfield IP is a private equity firm on the blockchain.

The current state of things is that bad that everyone losses except the scammers, investors looking to earn money and to support good projects lose their money without any compensation, the developers of real icos are unable to get the funds necessary to develop their projects, while in the other hand scammers get all the money and they are not punished by their actions.