How to spot an ICO SCAM

[clickerz]

I agree with the most of the ansers here. Also take note and monitor the ANN thread of the said coins. Also, background check the devs,his previous projects and people behind the project.Also check the roadmap. There many factors to be considered.

[JeffBrad12]

I agree with the most of the ansers here. Also take note and monitor the ANN thread of the said coins. Also, background check the devs,his previous projects and people behind the project.Also check the roadmap. There many factors to be considered.

It was decreasing the chance of succeeded scam ico. But I must have believed if that's also not sufficient in my mind.
They can pay someone or group for making a drama.
When just put some word in his position, it may deceive the community.
This the central point of me.

[robelneo]

These are all good pointers and newbies in the world of crypto currency investing should take note of all this,
transparency really play a huge part of investing in this Ico,am surprise that many still falls for a newbie starting an ICO.

[cryptogeek101]

This discussion is an eye opener for investors who are looking for safe investments platforms to invest their hard earned bitcoin. I hate scammers,so I want them exposed. Thanks for a great work

[Immakillya]

Judging which is a scam ICO is not that difficult. You can determine whether the ICO is a scam with these simple ways. Check their roadmap. Some scam ICO don't have any roadmap to present and that's suspicious. Some scammers use some pictures which is not them. They are just steal a picture just to present to us. It's better if you check their profile or better if you search them on google. Sometimes, they don't use escrows. Escrow is a must when creating an ICO.

[djgtr]

This discussion is an eye opener for investors who are looking for safe investments platforms to invest their hard earned bitcoin. I hate scammers,so I want them exposed. Thanks for a great work

Yes I also wanted to expose those scam ICO and to tell you exactly how to spot them, you must see to it that there is an escrow with the project. With that certain information for reality check for the ICO, we can determine that they are not scamming people. Although it's not that easy to determine those wrong doers, well it's our obligation to know and to research the background and history of the project you are getting involved with. Scammers were really annoying and they don't deserve to be successful of their negative plans to gather victims on their ghost projects.

[juicejoyce]

Hi guys, I want to share with you my simple methodology (beta) of spotting ICO scams.

The methodology

There are criteria with various risk points. Summarize all the points of the criteria that the ICO meets to get total score. Total score represents a risk grade on which you can lean to take a risk or not.

Scam points and criteria:
1 point: minor suspicions (for each)
3 points: anon devs; no code snippets, videos, or beta; rushing
5 points: unrealistic goals; fuzzy whitepaper; self-mod topic
10 points: bought account; no escrow

Risk and total score:
low (0-5)
medium (6-10)
high (11-15)
very high (16-20)
extremely high (21 and more)

Example

Let's imagine there's an ongoing ICO of Supercoinxxx in which you want to invest some money.

The topic is self-mod (5 points) with devs that have unrealistic goals (5 points) like creating a decentralized stock market in 2-3 month and a fuzzy whitepaper (5 points) with no technical details. Also you found two minor suspicions (2 points) based on your experience. Which gives 17 points in total. Based on that score you conclude that risk is very high and skipping this ICO.


Updated: added "no escrow" criteria.

That's really useful for me when dealing with an ICO. I think no escrow, too much tokens held by the founders and less discussion on this forum are enough for me as a reference not to give a shot to this ICO.

[Tap Project]

As many have said, there have been many ICO's that launch with anon devs and with multi sig instead of escrow... but i get where you are trying to go though

[Warkop]

Hi guys, I want to share with you my simple methodology (beta) of spotting ICO scams.

The methodology

There are criteria with various risk points. Summarize all the points of the criteria that the ICO meets to get total score. Total score represents a risk grade on which you can lean to take a risk or not.

Scam points and criteria:
1 point: minor suspicions (for each)
3 points: anon devs; no code snippets, videos, or beta; rushing
5 points: unrealistic goals; fuzzy whitepaper; self-mod topic
10 points: bought account; no escrow

Risk and total score:
low (0-5)
medium (6-10)
high (11-15)
very high (16-20)
extremely high (21 and more)

Example

Let's imagine there's an ongoing ICO of Supercoinxxx in which you want to invest some money.

The topic is self-mod (5 points) with devs that have unrealistic goals (5 points) like creating a decentralized stock market in 2-3 month and a fuzzy whitepaper (5 points) with no technical details. Also you found two minor suspicions (2 points) based on your experience. Which gives 17 points in total. Based on that score you conclude that risk is very high and skipping this ICO.


Updated: added "no escrow" criteria.

That's really useful for me when dealing with an ICO. I think no escrow, too much tokens held by the founders and less discussion on this forum are enough for me as a reference not to give a shot to this ICO.

Maybe your opinion is very reasonable, from here if you want to see the ICO project is a fraud, because from here it seems that he does not use escrow and manager if there is an ICO project like this that I think you already know so you do not have to participate in it. To invest in this ICO because it is clear, that this is a fraud.

[X68N]

Can someone please tell me what does ICO mean when written out?

I=?
C=?
O=?

i googled hard but foun only crap(islamic caliphate) and "ICO scam" but no explainations

thx in advance.

[silvermetal]

Can someone please tell me what does ICO mean when written out?

I=?
C=?
O=?

i googled hard but foun only crap(islamic caliphate) and "ICO scam" but no explainations

thx in advance.

Initial Coin Offering

Why do people buy a coin during Ico? Why not wait until it is listed at a decent exchange?

[gomei]

Great discussion! As for me, escrow and much discussion on this forum are basic principles to be a good ICO project. Even I can't buy the tokens duiring ICO for some reason, I will buy some coins when they are on exchange platform.

[vlom]

Great discussion! As for me, escrow and much discussion on this forum are basic principles to be a good ICO project. Even I can't buy the tokens duiring ICO for some reason, I will buy some coins when they are on exchange platform.

an escrow it not the only thing. there have to be milestones to be reached before the escrow releases some of the funds to the devs.

[X68N]

Can someone please tell me what does ICO mean when written out?

I=?
C=?
O=?

i googled hard but foun only crap(islamic caliphate) and "ICO scam" but no explainations

thx in advance.

Initial Coin Offering

Why do people buy a coin during Ico? Why not wait until it is listed at a decent exchange?

Thank you. They buy because often in the first hour there is a spike in price which some people bet on, in other cases its not a spike but permanent high Price. Its speculation with a grain of Lottofeeling .

[stomachgrowls]

I agree with the most of the ansers here. Also take note and monitor the ANN thread of the said coins. Also, background check the devs,his previous projects and people behind the project.Also check the roadmap. There many factors to be considered.

It was decreasing the chance of succeeded scam ico. But I must have believed if that's also not sufficient in my mind.
They can pay someone or group for making a drama.
When just put some word in his position, it may deceive the community.
This the central point of me.

This is possible because its easy to create a drama as long you do have the funds to sustain it and make it more believable on the community and with those innocent eyes would really got decieved and tend to jump up without more investigation or research on a certain ico. Ann threads arent an assurance that particular ico would be succesful and seeing on the past you can see they do have really convincing words/anns/papers/roadmaps but still end up on scam.

[adhitthana]

it is simple don't be greedy and stop investing in ICO because they are all scams. and the fact that one or two of them goes higher than it is supposed to go and makes you profit doesn't make that one or two coins not-scam but it was a lucky break.

 I know Stratis was such a scam. If you put $1000 in it ended up being worth $1,000,000 recently. Such a scam. 

[adhitthana]

Can someone please tell me what does ICO mean when written out?

I=?
C=?
O=?

i googled hard but foun only crap(islamic caliphate) and "ICO scam" but no explainations

thx in advance.

It's like an IPO.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/ipo.asp

[clearclear]

Thank you very much for writing down that idea ! It seems interesting - although for me a big question still persists - as in how important is communicating the identity of a team in such a project? The pure nature in crypto is the same and it is yet to decide how much trust we can/should put in individual human beings in such a trustless environment.

[bitex.in]

ICO is very simelar to IPO in stock market , there many fraud companies come with IPO same things running here in ICO too, this post is very useful for spotting ICO scam 

[rkp13]

There are several issues with this way of assessing an ICO.

Firstly, the idea of 'self-mod topic' scoring on your list 5 points doesn't make any sense. As you are all aware, this forum is full of idiots, trolls and otherwise people with nothing sensible to say just clogging up the threads looking to increase their post count. So, some level of editorial control should not be a measure of anything. You should rather look at the nature of the posts getting deleted. If the mod deletes proper questions and critical posts that have some substance then you might draw your own conclusions. If the posts being deleted are just mindless drivel, then all the better for the thread.

Have a look at the GitHub and the code and see if it's just a basic clone or something a bit more planned and thought out.

Also, there are clear issues with posting your true identity online. It could be for tax reasons and for privacy so this is not a measure of an dodgy ICO. Do you research in what is being offered, it makes no difference if the dev is called Yolobeast of John Smith.

Success of any blockchain projects (Or any other) mainly depends on Team (Developer & User Community) behind it rather than technology it self. The risk is very high if you can't verify Identity and credibility of the core team behind it.