Having done some research of my own, here are my conclusions in a nutshell;

On the one hand I think this is a very viable project; its' scale is huge, the team is professional, and as global warming continues to increase the urgency amongst the international community to implement more and more regulation regarding this matter increases also. So the CC/Carbon offset market definitely has a lot of potential and this project constitutes a large part of the voluntary market.  The high level of professionalism of this project in general should weed out the worries concerning the negative aspects of the voluntary CC trading/carbon offset market. Also the fact that this project uses NEM means that this project has a huge advantage vis-a-vis other projects in the voluntary market since it assures to a large extent its legimitacy since all transactions and doings are written in the blockchain. This also should take away at least some worries concerning the negative aspects of the voluntary CC trading market.

On the other hand, Ecobit operates on the voluntary CC trading market, which is small in comparison to the compulsory market. I believe the entire market in 2014 was worth about 275 million Ecobit would have to get recognition from an organisation like Gold Standard in order to succesfully be able to compete on this market, which I think shouldn't be too hard considering the scale, quality and UN REDD+ endorsement of this project. Still then according to Ecobit their annual revenue they get is like 5-15 M USD a year, not bad, but not huge either. Still I am not sure how this is calculated. On their website they claim 800 M ton of Carbon over 30 years and according to reports the forecast price for carbon is about 15 to 50 USD in the near future, which would put the potential revenue way above 5 to 15M USD a year, but perhaps those forecasts involve the regulated markets. It's too vague for me to really comprehend, and I feel like this is the main issue with this ICO. It's vague on multiple levels. Like they already assured a deal for the next 30 years with Carbon offset/CC trading, however then why is this still listed on the ICO roadmap as though it requires 5k bitcoins to yet be implemented? It's vague because there is no central CEO, a public figure if you will, who explains all and can bear responsibility. It's also vague because the value of the project already is capped at almost 300 Million USD, with 8888888888 tokens of 3k satoshi, which I believe is a huge mistake. In its current format the ICO to me looks like this; an easy way to gain as much extra profits from this CC trading/offset deal as possible which imo is very sad because the business model involving Ecobits DOES have a lot of potential. Due to the professionalism and the scale of the project, the potential to create a billion dollar eco-tourism industry, the ecobits high-tech monetary system etc. it would be a very attractive investment imo if the team decided to keep 15-20 percent as premine and let the market decide the price with the ICO. If that were the case, personally I'd consider everything up till 30M ICO a very good opportunity to make gains in the future. This project demands trust that it's worthy of an almost 300 M USD market cap based on a deal in a relative small market, a good plan with a good team, but that's not in accordance with crypto dynamics. First you prove you are worthy of a higher market cap by delivering, consolidating fundamentals etc. before you rise in rank, that's the game and how it should be. The term "organic growth" should give an extra dimension to this project in order for me to be considered an attractive investment.

So in short; if team decides to provide the necessary clearity regarding the points just mentioned adjusts their ICO business model and let the free markets do their thing I think it's a good investment. In its current format it comes across as too vague and greed imo. There seems to be a trade-off between short term short-sighted greed and long term good standing reputation and realising potential in the long run. I am afraid in its current format the price would drop a lot once the tokens hit the free markets, thereby it will be hard to regain trust, if at all.

This is just my personal opinion, everybody should do his/her own research ofcourse.  

Well at least he keeps us up to date with interviews and stuff, he doesn't run away, I feel like we should give him some time, only time will tell  

So before ICO started Sasha told me that Waves tokens would have a central role in the platform, he repeated this in several interviews. Is this still the case?

That being said, I think Waves will have a nice future for those with patience, but ofcourse in this game there are no guarantees... so I wouldn't risk money you can't afford to lose. 

Syscoin has great devs with a great product, but it's like there is an invisible wall between crypto world and mainstream world, it requires extraordinary measures in order to take down that wall. How is Syscoin team planning to do that?

Following this project with great interest... 

  I think you mean the other way around lol. Well maybe I am wrong, I don't know, as an investor I don't like to rely on blind faith, it could be that Factom devs are doing great things behind the scenes, that partnerships will pay off and that market cap will explode. But time will tell who is right and who is wrong. Will be fun to evaluate next year to find out who has the "told you so".  

On a sidenote, Factom already has partnerships (not sure?) and it's being used already, so hence I can understand why people think it's still a good investment, might even explode in market cap at some point in time. Hence I am still hodling.

NEM working ninja style!  

not sure whether that's a yes or a no 

Is Iconomi like DAO 2.0? 

Great news for long-term investors;

http://blog.nem.io/df-starts-crosschain/

Seems like in the future Mijin and NEM can operate on each others' chains, imagine just some of the Mijin companies using Xem as a currency on the NEM platform then you start to realise just some of the potential of NEM. 

Well, last year there were several news articles mentioning authorities (EU for example) trying to find ways to make crypto currency transactions transparent as to make sure it can be integrated in the current financial regulatory system, with Monero this would be impossible, then on top of it it gets used on the dark markets, it's not hard to imagine that eventually this project might get into trouble. On the other hand ofcourse there are huge potential gains to be made, so yeah high risk, and also high reward, like a lot of projects in crypto.

I wonder how long authorities will tolerate this. Good luck to you all though 

This is unworthy of one of the biggest crowdfunding projects in history. The "crowd" in "crowdfunding" is getting totally ignored, without BCT there wouldn't have been such a huge ICO, so to close this thread would be an utter shame. It's not right to deal with criticism Soviet style, I understand the team needs a longer runway and a lot of traders here don't have patience and want to see quick gains etc. etc. but those are part of the game as well. BCT is the place to be! This platform is wonderful and should not be ignored by any serious project. just my two xemmies 

I have only been in the game for a year and a half 

I think both are good investments, just stay away from any Bob coins unless you like to gamble  

I don't take anything you say seriously, you are reverse psychology, troll and scam all blended into one 

buy and hodl is the new pump and dump 

I am sure it will rise a lot still, the question is how much? Stratis offers businesses a great platform but ultimately whether Stratis will become a multi billion dollar project or not depends on the extent till which companies are willing to use it, there is a lot of competition out there.

as soon as Stratis announces business deals I am sure FOMO will kick in 

I know right? still valued like a shitcoin