Interesting to see that ICO listing sites are increasingly required. I mostly agree with you, however, lots of those listing sites are of low quality and remind me of rubbish link directories that were popular in the early days of SEO. Need to separate the good from the bad. Sponsored ICO listings aren't always a red flag, but they should definitely be trusted less than manually vetted ones.

Yes, that. I have monitored ICOs that chose to bypass Bitcoin talk and then didn't do that well — may not have been the only reason, but one of the glaring ones for sure.
Engaging with potential investors directly is vital, and the forum is one of the best places to do that, if not the best.

If it goes, something else will take its place, guaranteed.

You weren't the only one 

Так понятно, что большинство проектов вымрут, останутся только сильнейшие, у нас же сейчас стадия Дикого Запада.
Сейчас ICO-проекты валятся гораздо быстрее, чем любые другие стартапы: http://fortune.com/2018/02/25/cryptocurrency-ico-collapse/

Well dang, that could have fooled me... thanks for clearing that up.

Looks like you guys didn't hit the soft cap. So what now? Refunds?

Huh. I've been monitoring the sale, and publicly they say there are no bonuses or discounts available at all. That's curious. Was it a recent conversation, AdrienBe?

It's the official, from what I can tell. They didn't invest much time or effort into engaging with the community on Bitcointalk, so probably saw no point in linking to the ANN thread.

Действительно не очень понятно, что они таким образом будут охранять. По-моему, пиарятся на хайпе криптовалют - любой чих о биткоине сейчас гарантирует попадание на первую страницу Google News. Я нахожусь в Канаде и о таком банке даже не знаю... уже лучше распечатать свои ключи и хранить под матрасом 

Ссылка на банк, если кому интересно: http://www.versabank.com/about/overview/

People begging for merits are just asking for not being given any. It's very tempting to throw in a request for merits after you've taken the time to write a good quality, helpful post, but man — don't invoke the power of reverse psychology here. Even if you are hoping for merits deep inside (most here probably do, it's human nature to want a reward), keep it to yourself. Just leave your post as is and let it speak for itself.

Of course, I agree with you that it would be so much better for the community if scammers were banished. As for the stigma, yes and no — the whole point of ads is to reach new people who may not know a lot about crypto, and it is on the ICO team to make sure they come across as professional and trustworthy as possible. Which, I admit, is difficult right now.

I just wanted to address the misconception about bans on organic posts, so that people aren't afraid to engage in discussions, all bounties and marketing aside.

Just wanted to address one thing:


Facebook banned advertising for ICOs, token sales, and anything relating to cryptocurrency, bitcoin and altcoin alike. Advertising includes paid campaigns and sponsored posts, including text-only, images, video etc. Nowhere in the press release does it say that organic (free) posts are affected. If you post, share or comment on crypto-related topics without trying to promote your post or launch an ad campaign on the Facebook ad network, you should be fine unless you are spamming.

Some people on the forum reported their posts being removed. This is most likely due to their posts being reported by other users, not deleted automatically by the system because of the recent ad ban. These are two different things.

Writing high-quality posts on Facebook and sharing updates from an ICO Facebook page still works. (For now!)

Some of Facebook's ad policies are bullshit. Gambling is A-okay, vaping is not (one of my clients tried advertising their store, that went well... that's to say, it went nowhere). There are also ridiculous requirements about having very little overlaid text on images and videos used in ads. Companies whose logo is also their name have been screwed from the start.

Regarding Twitter, yes, so far it seems to be more lenient. Maintaining a presence there is very advisable. One word of caution though: in my opinion, Twitter can become a huge echo chamber depending on how you build your network; you end up preaching to the choir when it comes to cryptocurrency projects, so it can be hard to expand your audience and reach people outside of it when promoting an ICO.

I have to admit, I didn't see this one coming. There is a quick buck to be made from this hot, hot, hot ICO market. Has Facebook suddenly developed a consciousness? Bummer for those legit token sales trying to reach a wider audience though. Facebook clearly has no desire to vet ads at all — let the ban hammer fall on everyone regardless of intent.

If your ICO is affected, put the advertising dollars you would have spent on Facebook into alternative channels. Take solace in the fact that a lot of legitimate buyers have ad blockers on and wouldn't see your ad anyway. If Facebook and IG are important channels for you for whatever reason, incentivize your bounty hunters to make and share high-quality posts on Facebook organically — these aren't banned and shouldn't be.


Unfortunately, this move won't stop the post and comment spam. The ban is only for ads and sponsored posts: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/new-ads-policy-improving-integrity-and-security-of-financial-product-and-services-ads

I see a few advantages of announcing the new coin on the forum.

1 - FEEDBACK: Bitcointalk has a lot of users who will tear your idea apart if it's bad, provide suggestions and market validation for the idea if it's good, and ask a ton of questions regardless, which would benefit the upcoming project a ton — the ICO team will be able to see (and hopefully patch) holes in their plans if there are any. You might think you don't need others' opinions, but you do; external feedback with unbiased eyes is extremely helpful in any project so that you don't end up not seeing the forest for the trees.

2 - ACCOUNTABILITY: Announcing on the forum will keep the ICO team accountable, as the ANN post essentially provides a direct way for users to not only comment on the project and hopefully get involved as token buyers eventually, but also to hold the team accountable if they end up being scammy, shady or evasive in any way. Even if it's just to warn other users to stay away from a particular ICO, that's still huge. Now, that might not sound attractive to an ICO manager, but if their project is legit, what do they have to be afraid of? Announcing on Bitcointalk is a great way to build trust with users because the forum is a respected source of information on anything crypto-related.

3 - MARKETING: As a poster above said, Bitcointalk is THE forum, and your project will get a lot of eyeballs on it even before it gets buried with all the other ANN posts. If the ICO manager monitors the topic and answers all questions from users, the topic will stay alive, drawing more people's attention, more interest and sell more people on the idea. Free marketing! All of this, of course, assuming that the ICO is any good.

Last but not least,

4 - BOUNTY: If the ICO is planning a bounty campaign, I can't think of a better place to recruit participants of any forum rank and level, no matter what type of campaign you want to run. Again, due to the sheer number of people who visit the forum regularly.

With regards to bounty campaigns, the advantages come from exposure: you essentially recruit a free army of users willing to amplify the message about your project in hopes of receiving a reward later. It's like getting a loan on your marketing. The danger is spamming and low-quality posting though, which in my eyes is a pretty big disadvantage.

Вот он, этот проект: https://www.providence.casino/tokensale
Распродажу токенов обещают, но не называют даты. Кап -  114,000 эфиров. Недурно звучит, надо почитать документацию.

YIKES! So easy to lure people in... Telegram is so huge and popular that they see dollar signs (or should I say BTC signs?) and get totally blinded.

Yup, agreed, I think the panic about the forum's imminent death is premature. I'm even kinda happy I wasn't a more senior rank about to level up... that would suck big time.

With regards to spam, I hope it will help curtail it, BUT someone else brought up a valid point that newbies might start spamming even more in hopes of getting merit at least for something. We'll see.

Hoping for some adjustments though. The system is a bit complicated.

You use it with Telegram. If you don't have it yet, install the app, open the bot link with it and click start. Then it's just a matter of pressing one of the two buttons for BTC or ETH that appear below the message entry field. If the buttons don't appear below (on my desktop app it's sometimes the case) then just type whatever gibberish into the field and you should see the buttons again.

Very nifty! Added to my Telegram! Thanks OP, did you make the bot? I would give merit if I had any to give 

If that's real they might not even do a bounty — they will raise whatever they decide to raise within minutes, no mere mortals posting about them on Twitter required
Everyone would want in. Hell, I would want in even though I don't meddle with ICOs (yet)!

That said... it's still just a rumour. Durov hasn't confirmed anything.