Every day I see a lot of threads being posted here with a lot of similar questions regarding ICOs and the Ethereum platform. There are a lot of discussions about:
"What will be the next big ICO?",
"Why should I invest in an ICO?",
"Are you going to invest in the XXXX ICO?",
"Are ICOs scams?" and so on. What I see going on in those threads is that a lot of people enter them to promote their own projects (or to promote a project for exchange of bounties). Also, I see a lot of people that, for some reason, seem to hate the Ethereum platform, some that call it a scam, and some that call every ICO a scam.
These recurring subjects have led me to think about starting this discussion to point a few things that in my opinion should be taken into consideration. Of course, a lot of people won't read my entire message and will just answer "ICOs = scam" or "Ethereum = scam". But, if anyone wants to join this discussion, I think it would
be helpful to people that are new to cryptocurrencies and are entering this world thinking they will become rich quickly with no efforts and no need to research and study a lot.
1. My first advice for everyone in this forum is to
do your own research. Before investing in digital assets
thinking that they represent a shortcut or magical recipe to become rich, please try to minimally understand the technology behind the cryptocurrencies and why they have been increasing in value since their introduction through Bitcoin in 2009. Try to understand the potential behind the blockchain technology and to read the most you can before investing in a coin or project.
2. There is Bitcoin, which is the first, the biggest, the most well established and most proven decentralized digital currency. The thing is I don't need to dislike or disbelieve Bitcoin in order to support other platforms, such as Ethereum. There are a lot of promising projects going on, and in a lot of cases they are not competing against each other.
3. From
Ethereum.org:
"Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference". Smart contracts recorded in an immutable blockchain have the potential to decentralize any kind of product or service exchange, eliminating trusted third parties such as Uber, Airbnb, banks, insurance companies, and so on.
4. The
ICO (initial coin offering) model of fundraising introduced
a democratic way for small investors all over the world to contribute to projects they believe in and get something in return, usually tokens or coins that have functions in the project product.
Before believing when you read something like
"Ethereum is a pre-mined scam" or
"the only use cases for Ethereum are scammy ICOs", you should question yourself about: how come so many people could have been deceived like this (if this were the case)? How come Ethereum has more than 20 billion invested in? The
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is the world's
largest blockchain open-source initiative with members including Mastercard and Toyota.
So, what is going on? Why there are so many scams? How can so many teams that have no intention of actually building something useful be raising thousands or millions of dollars?
There is a lot of interesting things going on in the cryptocurrencies world. The project I follow the most closely is Ethereum and I believe there are a lot of promising features coming in the near future, with the use of state channels (Raiden Network), the adoption of proof-of-stake, the Metropolis release, the Plasma framework whitepaper released, and so on. I also try to study and to follow the updates on some other platforms. I have interest in knowing more about DAG-based technologies, such as IOTA and Byteball, and other blockchain applications platforms, such as Lisk, and there is a lot to study and learn. And a lot of promising projects are being built on top of the Ethereum network, and a lot of them are using ICOs to fund themselves.
The big problem is that, along with the promising and disruptive initiatives and blockchain applications, a lot of scammers and opportunists appear.
So, my advice is: the best way to avoid mistakes, bad decisions and scams is to know what is behind the coin or project you are thinking about investing in. Don't believe everything you read, especially when it involves high profits promises and stuff that are too good to be true. And, also very important, don't invest money you can't afford to lose, as this market is still on its beginning and high price fluctuations are very common.
But how to know what is behind the ICO? Whom to ask, where to read about particular one?
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