[Medium]

When it comes to working with various ICOs, I often face the issues of traffic and targeting. Some teams exclude the US, some are Asia-oriented, the others place a stake at Europe.
Where do most ICOs get traffic? From cooperation with media sources specialized in cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Those can be globally divided into two categories: news resources and ICO listings.
We tried to analyze a traffic from most popular resources and find how it influences the investments in ICOs.

You can find more statistics in my article on Medium or Steemit.

I have two questions to the community:
1. Where do you usually look for new ICOs except bitcointalk?
2. Where did you find the ICO in which you have invested?

[The first P2P Binary Options Platform powered by smart contracts.]

The first P2P Binary Options Platform powered by smart contracts.

The ICO has raised $4,360,000.

*** This thread was posted in behalf of the Betex team, please address them regarding the project ***

About Betex

Powered by Ethereum smart contracts, Betex brings indisputable transparency, fair conduct, and audible results to the binary options trading.
With Betex, traders will be placing bets against each other and never against platform providers or any other intermediaries. Built with Blockchain technology, unlike traditional platforms, Betex will provide access to real-time data, thereby, ensuring absolute transparency of its system. So there is no doubt that all users are treated equally and fairly.

Users will be forming one large common pool of liquidity for each underlying asset in order to maximize users' gain. The platform's commission will be 5% only, the liquidity will be derived from a common pool of brokers, and brokers themselves will integrate into the platform via the white label mechanism. This is the only platform, where as much as 95% of funds are distributed among traders who make correct assumptions. 2.5% (half of the platform's commission 5%) of the total platform turnover will be distributed among the holders of BETEX tokens, accordingly to the number of tokens they own.

Links

WEBSITE | WHITEPAPER | MVP | MEDIUM | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | TELEGRAM CHAT | YOUTUBE | BOUNTY CAMPAIGN

Token Pre-Sale

BETEX token sale is carried out in two preliminary stages and one main stage.

During the preliminary rounds of BETEX tokens sale, the tokens will not be transferred to the buyers.
According to the SAFT agreement, the tokens will be transferred to the contributors later, after they are generated and registered.

BETEX Token Pre-Sale Round 1 — Over, $1 million raised!

• Dates: 04.12.2017 – 20.12.17
• Price: 1 BETEX = $2.00
• Min purchase amount: 15,000 BETEX
• Accepted currencies: ETH, BTC

BETEX Token Pre-Sale Round 2 — Hurry up, almost over!

• Dates: 10.01.18 – 18.02.18
• Price: 1 BETEX = $2.50
• Min purchase amount: 5,000 BETEX
• Accepted currencies: ETH, BTC

The pre-sale of the BETEX tokens will take place under the SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) agreement.

BETEX Token Sale

BETEX token sale started on March 1, 2018 and will last until April, 15th or 3,000,000 BETEX is sold out.
Token price will be $3. Hard cap is $9,000,000.
All participants will go through KYC, minimal buy is 0.5 ETH.

The token will be registered with SEC after ICO ends, after which the trading and immediate payouts will start.

MVP

We built two versions of the platform to provide you with a better understanding of the concept behind a common pool of liquidity and to demonstrate how it actually works.

Each trading interval consists of two sub- intervals: during the first one, traders bet on the growth or lowering of the rate (5m), and after the second one (25m), the platform determines the winners and distributes the bets of the losers between them.

BETEX.IO | GOBET.IO

Betex Features

Benefits

Investors:
2.5% commission from overall platform turnover is being distributed among Betex token holders Possible Betex token growth in value.
 
Traders:

• Betting;
• Hedging risks from trading operations;
• Referral program.

Brokers:
2% commission from broker’s turnover.

Website: https://betexlab.com/
White paper: https://betexlab.com/betex-wp.pdf

I'm very glad to see that CoinDesk has launched its CoinDesk Deals, which is a webstore with tech-related offers and deals.
The only thing that bugs me is the fact that the prices are stated in USD. Why not BTC?
I even think it's funny somehow.

http://www.coindesk.com/russia-lowers-proposed-penalties-bitcoin-activities/

I'm really wondering what they are up to this time.

Russia's been known for banning stuff and penalising people for a range of activities..
Now they are lowering the penalties for promoting BTC and conducting activities using BTC.

So my question is, what all this could mean? Can it be that Russia is taking slow steps to acknowledging bitcoin? This could be related to their overall economic situation, from what I've seen in comments elsewhere. Otherwise, I don't see a point of making the legislative changes.

Anyone has any thoughts on this?

CEX.IO are making a lot of announcements recently, looks like more still to come, worth a read.

http://bitcoinist.net/qa-with-cex-ios-jeffrey-smith/

"We are constantly working hard to improve CEX.IO services. We are now in the process of adding the most demanded trading pairs on the exchange, making our website even more user-friendly, and expanding mining options on GHash.IO by adding new coins etc.

We are also trying to speak out more and listen to our users in order to track what is currently happening in the cryptocurrency industry. We are looking into participating in the upcoming Bitcoin conferences and discussions and cooperating with other leading Bitcoin services and platforms. Our hope is to drive broader adoption of cryptocurrencies and launch educational projects. We are open for dialogue and joint projects.

Apart from that, we are partnering a very cool project, called VBBB.com, which is a crypto-exchange white label platform that allows anyone to open up their own exchange. CEX.IO provides shared order book and mining contracts to exchanges, which use VBBB software."

Can there ever be too many??

http://blog.cex.io/too-many-alt-coins/

We all know Bitcoin is by far and away the largest crypto-currency out there. With a $6.3B market Cap it dwarfs all the others, Litecoin comes in a distant 2nd with $305M. But did you know there are now way in excess of 250 alt coins available and that number is growing every day?
You can look at this 2 ways; either it is fantastic innovation as more and more players look to add to the crypto coin industry. There are coins for example dedicated to musicians or to charitable endeavors or specific Countries. Or, to view it the other way, too many alt coins with no real differentiation or strategy just add to the confusion and suspicion the wider community has about our industry.

So, who are the real innovators? Lets take a look at a few of examples:

Ripple: https://ripple.com/currency/

Ripple is differentiating itself by positioning as a highly secure and cost free way of transacting currency over the internet with very high speed. The maths based protocol used is called the RIPPLE Transaction Protocol (RTXP). To quote Ripple themselves ‘its the next stage in the evolution of the internet’

Cleanwatercoin: http://www.cleanwatercoin.org

The first ever crypto currency designed and developed to be a non profit organization, with the aim of delivering the gift of clean water to those who don’t have it

Darkcoin: http://www.darkcoin.io/

Darkcoin differentiate by focusing on the anonymity of their transactions which are pooled together in the blockchain making them anonymous from the wallet.

Litecoin: https://litecoin.org/

Litecoins main differentiation was that the hashing algorithm was not SHA256 like Bitcoin but scrypt and the aim was to offer faster transaction times. Another outcome of scrypt was that mining did not need ASICS and could remain more accessible to the everyday user. Many observers now liken Bitcoin and Litecoin to Gold and Silver, both have value and demand, but ultimately Gold will always remain more valued.

What about some of the smaller coins that perhaps will never gain wide acceptance?

Potcoin: http://potcoin.info

Well the name says it all, dedicated to helping the transacting of Marijuana.

Catcoin: http://www.catcoins.org

Again the name gives it away really, if you like cats you’ll love Catcoin I guess. Its actually a scrypt copy of Bitcoin.

Flappycoin: http://flappycoin.biz

A scrypt coin based on Litecoin dedicated to the Flappy birds game.

We say bring it on, the more development and innovation that occurs the better. The market as always will determine who the winners and losers are. In fact there is absolutely nothing stopping you developing your own alt coin and releasing it to the world.

A list of crypto-currencies and their relative market sizes can be seen seen here http://coinmarketcap.com