Bitcoin Forum

ICO as we all know is an avenue for developers to request for funds in order to carry out their project or their plans. As much as we have seen lots of scams in this crypto business, many more are coming.
i think the latest means by which these fraudsters scam people of there money is by creating multiple projects and launching it separately. Example.  a project owner launch an ico project in January. the ico failed to reach soft cap, maybe raised a little amount of money. the owner declared a loss and shut down down the project, informing investors about the update and promise a refund.
there is every probability that 40% to 20% of investors has forgotten about this project and may not request for their cash back. simply because the tokens has been send to their wallet.( sh**t coins). they are plenty.
watch the next move: the owner launches a second project maybe late july or august changing all information and using the funds generated from the first project to facilitates the second project.
Guess what, if the ico turns out to be successful, we might move to the next stage(exchange launching, project development) but we all know the outcome of an inferior projects.

Or the same initial process may continue if project failed to reach soft cap, I.E shuting down, promise payback which they can't fulfill and come back again with an entire different story. 
so many ICO owners has tried this pattern many times stealing peoples and knowing fully well that they have nothing to offer.

we need serious help in this crypto community.

Yes, look like OP writing true. I was wondering same thing. I am not sure or had not seen how many ICO's has been returned fund if they were failed raise softcap. Most of them exit with fund and perhaps made new ICO's since they know all the process. Who know ? There is no any method to identify if they do not expose themselves. And I don't think someone will expose their failed history. I believe by this way a same team creating multiple ICO's but we can't identify them. I don't know why people's are trusting on ICO and investing there. I think ICO's time is over now. I am expecting something new and people's should not lose their fund.

Of course, this may well be. The same people can create several ICOs in a row or even at the same time, because there is no regulation in this type of activity. Despite the fact that the ICO projects are now barely surviving, I think that their time has hardly gone, since this is a very simple fundraising and distribution of new tokens. I still hope that in the near future we will see government regulation of ICO activities. That regulation can save us from fraud in these projects.

Well, they have all different characters but one thing in common.

They are all greedy. They can't get enough money. They want millions of dollars for just a web site or for an easy app.

Perfectly described. There is a project that am following that is doing something similar to this. They told the community that they raised 12.5 million usd for the first ICO which ended in Nov, last year which they never list up till now telling the community that the market is not ok for such. These crooks launched another ico in January with a project that looks like sub-project  of the first ICO and they are telling us now that they have raised softcap for it without any evidence to prove their claim

The ironic part is that they don't even have to do it by themselves as there are many ICO service providers that will do all the work from writing the white paper, creating a website, managing social media accounts... just name it, all that for few hundred dollars.

scams are everywhere even before the series of ICOs in 2017. the government was trying to resolve this issue through SEC but it seem like it will do more damage to us than seeing solutions because of the KYC. IEO is now introduced, though it may be good for investors we may not see transparency as well.

For me, investing money into ICO is a big waste of money. Today's ICOs are full of scams, so why invest my money in to scams? Over 98% of ICOs today are scam ICOs, so why invest your money anyway? Beware guy.

Still waiting for the launching of security token offering. Going by the rate of scam project on initial coin offering it has become very much alarming and could still coming continue because of the little or no restrictions to fraud projects

ICO is completely useless to me personally because most of them are just rubbish or scams where cunning people take advantage of situations like this where crypto is the hype where they enter to take advantage of all those who have invested, it is regrettable for the right ICO really good because it gets the negative effects of ICO that are useless, I hope the ICO cares more about being more stringent in registering new projects in anticipation of theft.

Your thought may be logical in the present situation. Even liar numbers about raised money are shown. I have been seeing that in most of the projects investors are almost not interested about anything. Everywhere bounty hunter. And who invested those millions?

Well, we have seen it severally by how well this projects start up nicely with properly cooked theories in form of white papers, once they have raised a reasonable amount of money from their ICOs, the story changes and often times leading to abandonment and disappearances on the part of the developers. This is one of the reasons why this industry has to be regulated to forestall most of these happenings.

I think the main issue is a way to know these project creators and all their correct infos without that there will be no way to know that Is probably better if ICOs are been regularized or some kind of other method to identify their identity effectively to avoid fraud

Anonymity and decentralization of the basic principles of a crypto community, but the ICO creators of which did not pass KYC are very suspicious, too much scams around ...

I think those in charge of ICOs websites and new should make sure before they put project up in their site their is high level of legitimacy first and that member pass KYC that ensure some level of comfort for investors

This case is not new, there are far more worst than your scenario, fraudster often launch multiple ICO at the same time with different stolen profile from linkedin, facebook, skype etc.  They even  build several fake profiles over time in preparation for their scam work.   What we need for ICO is a regulation from a government institution.  This way fraudster will have a hard time since every ICO needs  permit from a government institution.  With these, the team and project will be verified.

I tend to believe that 99% of ICOs were scam and most of them have no product to show. That's one of the reason people are hesitant to adapt cryptocurrency. There should be regulation on ICOs to stop these scammers stealing people's money but i doubt that it can be implemented since it could defeat the purpose of crypto which is decentralized. I am excited with the launch of STO in the near future and hoping that this could end the illegal activities brought by ICO.

we cannot blame the team on every project, a professional team will register coins in big exchanges, so the price can be high, but if the team is selfish and only thinks about greed, the team will harm every investor, not only will it be a bad coin, but sometimes the service platform will also be bad, and harm everyone.

It is happening for sure. I realized it myself  when I was  on a mailing list of one  the projects. They stopped sending me, but after half a
year I was getting mails in the same style but from a different company. After digging a bit I realized that this is the same team,
but under different name and project. They were using the mailing list from their previous project.

This is happening for real. Most of the ICO owners are making promises to the investors and guaranteed them that the project will go successfully and their invested money will be doubled if that happens. And in reality, when the project wasn't being successfull, they are making so many excuses. I am so fed up with those kind of alibis. This is the time we have to make a move and shouldn't support this useless ICO projects.

It's only 1% of projects that failed to reach there softcap return funds back to investors, in my own view it's very rare, some projects are creates to be failed already but scanners will still gain profits from little funds and run away with it claiming that 'softcap' was never reached

I never taught of this ICO tricks from this perspective.. It sad but this acts has truly inhibited the growth of the crypto space.. Imagine if am a noob with plenty of friends to invite to the crypto community.. After getting scanmed like this I doubt I will ever preach or advocate cryptocurrencies..

I think for all these issues to be resolved completely there should be a licensing authority and each project that intends to raise funds should be registered and after full diligence should be given green signal or license to raise funds this process will completely resolve most of the scam issues surround the ico market.

Yes,,, I can concur with this view. I have seen so many projects created with the specific intention to scam others, but in a way that the marketing makes it look real. Look at EOS for example. Please tell me how was this not a scam,,, fake code,,, 365 days of ICO, and only to launch a product on Ethereum that nobody used? And then using the funds raised to pay people bug bounties? This was the latest example of a scam ICO with dubious founder, but people still bought it!

You are definitely saying the truth and I agree with you 100% on this, I think the solution to this everlasting problem is for us as a community come up with a board that will be in charge of carrying out KYC for ICO projects before they proceed with their project, on this forum, they will have to carry out a Webinar with so many users on the platform and tell them about the project, then also answer questions asked.

For ordering in the ICO, the need for regula tion is required, and this is contrary to the principles of decentralization, and it is precisely for this reason that the STO format appeared.

STO is completely contrary to the principles of decentralization. I generally think that this is just a name which does not cost anything serious

It's really weird, even people look so trust it. although the price has continued to decline in recent weeks, EOS volume is still quite large. As it is played very neatly. Indeed this is one of those scam projects that are not seen by many people.

LMAO! What you just described is the evolved racket by serial coin launchers/developers who launched dozens of Litecoin clones three years ago. It was kind of easier back then. Some get away by being an anonymous "genius" blockchain developer. Back then they dump premines and launches another network for next dump.

No ICO or IEO projects will get my money again, I have learnt my lessons, Almost all of them are scams, the level at which retail investors are being scammed not is huge, can you imagine these teams selling something for retail investors at 100X the VCs, so when their is almost not price they dumped their tokens that they don't make money. People need to wise up now

We just need to start avoiding them at all cost. The more we talk about them, the more we are promoting them (even when talking about their negative aspects). If you do really want to join an ICO, look for ICOs with very well known developers and team. Make sure you understand what the project is about. Evaluate it and see if it is actually feasible. Developers that hide their identification are likely the ones who will be scamming. So don't think about joining those ICOs.

I think the main issue is to be able to get the right information about the project team which will let one know about past records and capacity to work on the project. This will require deep research which will go beyond the information that the team gives about themselves which may not be wll true.

Yes you are right about such dubious character
And that’s why researching is emphasized almost every hour on the forum if not minutes

Most icos as such as scam icos and belittle can be done by investors

The truth is that everything that has a beginning has an end, and i am very sure that the end of fraudulent ICO's is very close at hand, especially with the introduction IEO which will be a very difficult part for projects like the ones you describe above.

Indeed so many ICO who scam people who invest i think this affect the price of most coins including bitcoin because this who got people funds, after sell them and make the price drop very low.

That's true we need help to stop what every projects doing like scamming and stealing every money of investor. I think they need to consider what people's welfare. People needs help from the higher like sec and so on.

Choosing ICO is actually not easy, but we must be careful. What we have to check for a new ICO is a real Team and has a real product. The team must have a very strong character and they must be solid in developing the ICO project.

That is a very popular scheme in many kinds of projects - investment ones especially.That works perfectly - that's why people are using it. So, the only way to stop this is to stop participating in such a shitty projects. This will barely happen, people are too greedy and dumb :)

The number one solution is that people need to do their own research before investing in such projects. Maybe request a Face to face Ask Me Anything and don't believe ratings from paid websites like ICO Bench and the others. Podcasts are good tools too. Since you can actually here the people's voice. Or maybe conferences as well.

I am agree, we should always believe on rating from website like ICO bench or others. ICOs should be good for start up to carry the project and make a good product but seem many scammers trying to disrupt ICOs and make investor fear investing in ICOs.
Its because many government still not regulating ICOs or crowdfunding and i think thats why regulation needed in this industry. Crypto growing more bigger and become billions dollar industry and i think its normal if government regulating cryptomarket

It's already developed in the name of IEO. IEO is ensuring security to the investors by launching raise funding campaign on their launchpad. However, this has positive and negative effect both. Many new exchange will pop up and start to raise fund which can be a good reason of scam project to be raised.

Now that ICO has been stained with very bad heartless people, I think the season we are now is the season of IEO, which is still more trustworthy, we all know the history of IEO, the genesis and what gave birth to it, we know the exchange that started it, who happen to be the most trusted of all exchanges.

I see no explanation for people being scammed again in IEO if they really go through the proper channel. If anyone still gets scammed in IEO too, then the blame now should be on the investors for not picking the right platform for investment. Any investors should strictly rely on IEO from the 10 top exchanges.

IEO is one of the solution but it's not a total solution. When tokensale being conducted and until it ended, the fund might be stored on the exchange but are you sure the fund is still there just after the tokensale ended? Project's team may be take the funds out and keep them under team's control. At this condition, it is possible for the team to do anything bad while the exchange can't ensure nothing.

We indeed need some help in this industry. Scammers and lairs are taking advantage of the decentralized and anonymity features of this industry in order to hoard other people's money and run with it leaving many dismayed investors both big and small with empty bags. What is surprising is that it is so easy to get away from the fraud? In fact, scammers are using fake names and information so that it can be difficult to track them once they are gone with the wind. I am suggesting that the industry come up with its vetting system...or akin to KYC requirements for project proponents or owners. Scams are damaging this industry in the bad way but I am seeing no concrete actions done yet.

I completely agree with what you said.  Since there are a lot of scammers in the cryptocurrency market, it is necessary to somehow fight this phenomenon.  Of course, each of us understands the importance of cryptocurrency and in particular blockchain for many spheres of human activity in the future, and it seems to me that we need to remove the negative, which today does not allow the cryptocurrency market to develop.

Nothing last forever ,there dubious ways will vanish into thing air soon as every crypto investors are getting wiser ,I as a person I don't dare invest in ICO projects any how without proper investigation

If you have previously done an ICO, one of the owners and previous ico failed on a bad note. Of course the future will certainly affect the ico project. Let alone that, a team that is less professional or experience will certainly influence investor confidence. So the ico team is actually very important for one of the beliefs.

The main thing is that large investors would not fall for money on trust in experts. After all, everyone can be an expert. Or do you think not to deceive them? It's hard to trust camuto to create your own unique list for review. And you can train by participating in the bounty.

Just read what happened to Minerone, the person behind Pranas was active till couple months ago where he was giving progress reports to investors that in the end proved to be all fake and the business never existed it was all stories and lies. Now the criminal investigation has started against the person and i hope he will be given strict punishment by the authorities for the frau, he has not only defamed himself, his city, his country but also the blockchain and crypto industry. Secondly i hope the authorities will refund the investors and mio token holders with whatever amount that will be recovered from pranas.
Last year there were loads of scams and i hope all the people behind these scams will be punished so crypto can move forward positively.