Yes, this is important and it needs to be said.

Lately, people are seeing KYC as a totally normal thing but don't realize that it is really dangerous and also in most cases, shouldn't even be required.

Because of this, I have mostly moved away from ICO investing since the vast majority of them require KYC nowadays.

Unless the company is in a jurisdiction that would specifically require it, KYC is totally uneccesary.
In fact, it is just a borrowed idea over from the banking sector.
There are very few countries with regulations that would require for something like having the IDs of people who contributed.

This shows that the vast majority of ICOs are too lazy to look into legal matters or compliance or have a terrible legal team.
How is it that I can just do simple quick research and get clarity on these issues and these companies don't have a clue?

Protect yourself, and don't give out your ID and personal information to strangers online.

Yes, you are right.
But I'm thinking btc's demise will happen later than sooner.

The entire crypto market is still very young and very much dependent on btc.
I see this continuing throughout this year.
We still have a lot of intitutional players that want to jump in this year and still, the only way to do it is through btc.
ETH is getting there, but still not nearly as accessible.

As the market matures, naturally btc will be replaced and become irrelevant tech.
After all, it is 8 years old.
Imagine still using a smartphone that is 8 years old, 8 years in tech years is like 50 years in real life.

Some really good points here.

I especially think that the quality of the community is starting to become much more important.
I have seen some great projects get ruined because of a greedy, impatient community.

Daostack is a great example.
The ICO was super successful with the public crowdsale selling out in a whopping 80 seconds!
From the beginning, they have made it clear that they will be focusing on development and not exchanges.
As a result it hit dexs and was stable for awhile and then crashed.

The community overwhelmingly blames the company with so many selling at a loss and encouraging others to do so.
They were all butthurt because they didn't get instant profits and are tarnishing the image of daostack.
Utter craziness.

I'll bump this thread, I like crowdholding.
Also, I'm going to be crowdholder of the month yeah?
I've been #1 for quite awhile now (I'm Randy Tice btw).

But anyways, I should probably put shameless self promotion aside...

For those interested in earning free crypto, crowdholding is a terrific place to do it.
It's incredibly easy to navigate and get started and tasks arrive quite frequently.

But, I would like to shill it even more as an investment.
Crowdholding is a major sleeping giant.
They have a working and growing platform, steady increase in clients and users, and a roadmap/development plan that has been consistently met (but to be fair, usually a little later than planned).

The potential of the crowdsourcing idea in crypto is huge.
There is already a large army of hungry bounty hunters and the ICO market is maturing and becoming more picky.
For startups, going straight to the crowd at very minimal cost is incredibly cost effective and beneficial.

On top of that, their token (YUP) is crazy cheap now.
Don't worry about the low volume (it isn't even listed on cmc yet).
The company is approaching this in incremental steps and growth will occur naturally.

I've done that before, I know how you feel.

What you need to do is start running some hardcore numbers.

Calculate the percentage gain you could have gotten by looking at it's short term high.

Look at the spread (the average over the days it is pumping).
Then come up with the number and amount of time that represents the optimal selling point.

Then, next time set your sell point for that number you came up with.

Also, take into consideration if the market is bearish or bullish.

If it is bullish, you can breathe easier because there should be enough volume to buy and sell some more to eventually get the amount you want.
In a bearish market, you should really stick to numbers and data.

Sorry, but your post honestly makes cybermiles look worse.

Where are your links so people can research more?
Where is the data that proves your claims?

Also using general terms like "Cybermiles is smarter than eth" means literally nothing and makes you sound stupid.

So, if you are ready to compare the differences based off of researchable facts and data, than people will take you seriously.

There is one more thing I would like to mention.
For every complaint people have about eth, there is real life development in place to address these issues.
Considering Vitalik and how huge eth is, there is no reason to think that eth will not make their development goals.

On top of that, eth has the one thing these wannabes don't have: brand name recognition and market liquidability.

Here are some more signs I can add (warning sign 11 - 15 if you will lol):

#11 - There is no technical footprint.  For example, there is nothing on github (or only smart contract info), public access to mvp or beta, backtesting results etc.

#12 - Their social media is highly regulated.  This means that they delete posts, ban members, etc. instead of addressing concerns or questions raised by the community.

#13 - They do not do any networking.  A legitimate startup should be putting a high emphasis on market legitimacy by attending crypto conferences, creating networking communities, and forming partnerships.

#14 - There is no open line of communication with devs.  A serious start up will have ways for the public to talk to and interact with devs as a means of creating trust amongst investors.

#15 - They are entering an already flooded market.  For example, the smart contract platform market is absolutely flooded now with big players (eth, neo, ada, eos) and literally hundreds of up and coming ones (neblio, polymath, etc).  Exchanges are also a flooded market as well as gaming.

When you really think about it, are icos even really that worth it?
I would say 90% of them drop below ico price immediately after being released or about a month afterwards.

Thanks for the detailed write up.
I actually learned a lot.

I really am looking forward to the market growing up and stop pumping money into terrible coins like Verge.
It is one of the biggest signs that investors are greedy, uneducated, and impulsive.

I have enjoyed some crazy 1000% gains through risky trading, and it has been great.
But I would honestly rather have longer term, sustainable profits rather than a quick buck.

My guess is that not much will be learned from verge.
Going forward, this year will most likely still be volatile with opportunists pumping shitcoins like verge.

So my plan is to gradually move most of my value to long term stable companies that will be around a long time.

This is crazy.

I was so close to investing in Titanium, it was one of the ICOs I was considering.
I didn't end up investing any because I decided to start only investing in ICOs with a project.
Really dodged a bullet here.

The craziest thing about all of this, is I remember reaching out to the CEO and he personally took the time to answer my questions.
My impression was that he was really personable and convincing.

I guess that's why he was able to scam so many people.

Now, with the SEC starting to target a lot of ICOs, I'm starting to reevaluate how I invest and am thinking of staying away from ICOs all together.
Especially, as the market is maturing, established companies will start outlasted the short term gains of flipping an ICO.

So whatever happened to the COTM?

I think that there have only been two featured so far?
Any kind of publicity or community building is great for Crowdholding.

I really like the platform and use it regularly.
I'm starting to wonder if my YUPs are worth anything though.

For those who don't know about it, the platform is a great place to earn free crypto.
It's much more rewarding than just doing bounty programs, and you get to know some really good startups.

The more people join in, the more hype it gets, then we all benefit.
Spread the word, become a user, let's make it work.

Check it out:

www.crowdholding.com

LOL!

Isn't it hypocritcal that he writes an article about how there are so many assholes who try to defame him and here he is defaming others?
It's true that the fault you find in others is usually what you yourself have.

As far as the asshole question, it is mostly people who are "experts" who really aren't experts at all.
There isn't really any way to verify someones blockchain credentials since crypto is really new, and the demand is so big that ICOs will quickly hire untalented hacks.

It really shows in ICOS.
You don't really realize just how bad some companies are until you come accross a legitimate, professional, smoothly run company.
The differences are like night and day.

If you yourself want to avoid scams and assholes, than just have higher standards for what you expect from a startup ICO.
Demand professionalism and if they can't do it than walk away.

It's interesting to see posts from last year.
Since last november both eth and ltc has gone through huge ups and downs.

Now, almost halfway through 2018, it is starting to become obvious that "normal" coins won't be able to compete long term with platform tokens.
Although you can argue that LTC is better than BTC, you can also argue that coins that are only p2p are nothing compared to smart contract platforms or infrastructures where entire ecosystems can be built on its blockchain.

So revisiting the eth vs ltc for long term, I would say eth.
Also, start to shift you questions to compare similar tokens.
For example, eth vs. neo.

Of course, you can and should always hedge and distribute your portfolio.
So keeping both is great, but I would gradually migrate it towards eth.

I think you need be more realistic.
From your post, I think you are expecting some kind of wonderful gains in 2 months?
The market is low, so if you buy now, you will get a lot of money later?

One of the basic fundamentals of investing is: one of the biggest influences of success is how much money you put in at what time.
So if you put in at the right time, but don't put in a lot, then you can't expect huge gains.
If you put in a lot, but at the wrong time, then that doesn't work either.

Unfortunately, $300 isn't going to give you that much.
Even if you get 10x returns on a coin in 2 months (which isn't as common as you would think), that would only give you $3000 dollars.
Yes, it is wonderful to turn 300 into 3000 dollars, but if you are thinking millionaire and lambos, you are very far from it.

Instead, look in to ways on building a strong portfolio and increasing your assets, and then go for big moves.

I would say no.
Unfortunately, there are parts of blockchain tech that will empower those much more in undeveloped countries.

Currently, since it is mostly unregulated, it is a free for all market.
What we are starting to see more and more, is a vast amount of whales starting to dominate certain coins and having the power to manipulate the market.
They can have power over those who don't and use the market for their own ends.

IT is actually similar to the real world market.
In order to make money, you have to have money.

However, I don't see things as being totally hopeless.
There are many ways that blockchain tech can empower those impoverished.

Through airdrops and bounty programs, those who don't have that much financial means can get a heads up in crypto and through skill, knowledge, and luck can trade their way up to owning a very valuable portfolio.

Crowdholding is a co-creation platform that allows you to give feedback to icos and startups in exchange for crypto.
You earn YUPs (crowdholdings token) and also some of the coins of the company you gave feedback to.

Tasks are simple, an ICO will typically introduce their concept and ask what you think about it and what challenges they face.
You leave your comments, people vote for quality feedback, and you earn crypto!
The company is rather new, and they are steadily reaching the goals on their roadmap.
Currently, they just enabled withdrawal of YUPs from your account to your wallet and will implement withdrawal of all coins/tokens you earn in the next upcoming weeks.

There are some unique benefits to crowdholding:

It is much more rewarding than a typical bounty program (mindless twitter/facebook/telegram posts gets old really fast).

You get to know ICOs very well and find out really quickly which ones are legitimate and which ones are not (I've invested in some after interacting with them).

It isn't overcrowded! Since it's new, there are only a couple thousand registered users with only a couple hundred active users.  Very little competition at the moment to earn crypto.

They just started a telegram airdrop campaign to pick up their user base.

Check it out:

www.crowdholding.com

Lol, such a dramatic post.  But I actually know how you feel and what you are saying.
The last couple months has been pretty hard to stay positive.

But, honestly, the market has been showing sign of breaking through for the past month.
Many were expecting Consensus 2018 to kick it off, and that didn't happen.
But overall, the price of BTC has been relatively stable.
Certain coins showed spikes in value.
And general sentiment is starting to change.

There is no way that the market is done.
Once the conditions are right, and the market goes into a bull run, you will see 15k to 20k prices for BTC again.
Alts will gain again and people will be happy, trust me.

Well, why not?

Blockchain technology is open source, the whole basis of it is that anyone can jump in and use it.

So they want to make their own coin?
Sure! It's not like it's hurting anybody.
And if you think that more coins equals less money in the market than you need to study up on market economics.

The way I see it, more participation in the actual tech the better.
Since crypto is still in it's infancy, any kind of development (even if it goes nowhere) pushes things further and faster.
Eventually, when the market matures, there will be only a handful of core businesses that will dominate the market.
The only way these happen is because there is competition and failed companies.

And besides, some of the coins are actually kind of funny, like Jesus Coin.

Exchanges are notoriously insecure and a bad place to keep your coins.

Of course, if you do day trading than you will have to leave them there, but I would never leave more than what you are using to make your trades.

The reason why exchanges are insecure is because you don't have control over your private key.
Essentially, you are "borrowing" the exchanges wallet and using it, however ultimate control over it is not in your hands.
So if anything happens, than you are at the mercy of the exchange.

And a LOT can happen.
Someone can get your login details through phishing or spyware, dns attacks, or a bot with a trojan hidden in it.
The list goes on and on.

Now, remember, that unless you use a hardware or a paper wallet, your coins aren't any safer than leaving them on an exchange so make sure you secure them properly.

Verge is a shining example of all that is wrong in our crypto currency market.

First, the devs around it have shown more incompetence than competence.
When last hack occured, rather than fixing their code they decided to hardfork because, "Hey! That's what ethereum did!"
Now, the exact SAME type of hack occured because they didn't fix anything.
It's like a person who suffers from mental disorders trying to fix their problems by moving to a different city.
Different city, YAY! But all you did was bring your mental disorders into a new environment.

Second, the rise of VERGE is SO EMBARASSINGly cringeworthy.
It was flat, dead, for many years actually.
Then McAfee tweets about it and it shoots straight to the moon.
Despite there being so many superior privacy coins, despite the many problems with it, it has still managed to stay in the top 50 since then.
This shows that speculative "investors" don't think twice before pumping money into something that is worthless.
It's absolutely crazy.

Tether was messed up from the beginning.

Basically, it is the USD tokenized, of course it would be considered a security.
The company from its inception to fundraising to now  have blatantly disregarded any types of regulations or existing laws.
It will end badly for them.

For investors, I feel sorry for anyone that believed in it.
Actually, I don't.
The red flags were so obvious that if you didn't see them, then you are not a proper investor at all and if you did, but ignored them, then it's your fault.

Remebmer about three months ago when the circulating supply of tether jumped up by hundreds of millions?
Wow!
Making money out of thin air!
No way I'm going to believe that those coins were equally backed by usd reserves.

Now, we have to wonder how it's crash will affect the overall market.