How to combat the surge in scam ICOs

[cryptodevil]

There are an absurd number of ICOs being launched through this forum these days, far more than we can keep up with and expose. I don't see it getting any better all the while the scammers have a platform such as this, which allows them to use hacked accounts and bot-posting to set up multiple ICO threads for free.

Somebody came up with an excellent idea on the matter:

If I were Theymos, I would charge 1 BTC to post an ICO. Then I would use some of it to vet the principles. Farm out the leg work to reputable people on here to dig into it.

While it will not 100% eliminate the problem I bet it would reduce it by 95%.

A chance for all to make a bit of BTC and make for a safer investment climate.

Thoughts?

Personally I think simply introducing a fee to start an ICO thread would result in an immediate drop in the numbers we're currently seeing. If you've got a legit operation you sure as hell can afford a bitcoin or two in order to collect millions in ICO funding.

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[DaMut]

totally agree with that,
it's an excellent idea for me,it will prevent those shit ICOs without proper project and preparation to come up.
mods can not deleting the thread because it will affect this community and they might be attacking the mods which is will make this community to suffer and this the other solution to prevent those shitty project to come up.
while this community get a benefit from their existence.

[boxabl]

It's a good idea, and reducing scams is obviously a good thing, I'm just not sure how well it would work in practice. The admins would have to have the infrastructure set up to offer specific vetting services that would have to be the same for all projects in the interest of fairness. And what happens when a legitimate project falls through the cracks and is somehow labelled a scam when it's not? Or, even worse, a scam project is vetted as legit by the admins and people end up losing their funds?

I just don't think the admins here would be willing to take on that kind of risk/hassle.

[BitHodler]

Charging a fee would definitely reduce the sheer number of garbage ICO's, but this doesn't solve the problem at all.

This forum is a Bitcoin forum, and from there I believe it will really help improve the overall quality, and extremely reduce (or even completely wipe off) the amount of scam ICO's by getting rid of the altcoin section entirely.

I know the altcoin section generates a whole lot of traffic, and ad slot revenue, but things have gotten extremely worse in the last years, and that's mainly altcoin related ~ certain problems require extreme measures.

[BenOnceAgain]

Thoughts?

Personally I think simply introducing a fee to start an ICO thread would result in an immediate drop in the numbers we're currently seeing. If you've got a legit operation you sure as hell can afford a bitcoin or two in order to collect millions in ICO funding.

I think a reasonable fee is potentially a good idea but if the fee were too significant that could stifle promising concepts from reaching the investment community.  Or, alternatively, it could cause ICOs to shift their announcements elsewhere.

One thing that I think is sorely needed among these ICOs is a standardized list of terms.  Some of the ICO whitepapers I've read have such horrible presentation and lack of concrete information that I can't imagine anyone investing anything in them, regardless of the potential of the concept.  As someone coming from an environment where I have reviewed many (far too many) IPOs, the quality bar of ICOs needs to be raised.

[HeroC]

I think that even with good intentions, there will always be someone complaining about a decision that forum administration makes. Right now we don't ban scammers for fear of an incorrect judgement, why change the way threads work? Plus 1BTC is still a *lot* of money, and I doubt they want more complaining about how 'the forum is rich make it more better' or 'halp badbear stole my btc and i have no ico thread'. It will just make people more upset in the end, it is up to the end user to judge if an ICO is a scam or not.

[JaredStein]

You really can't. See, it is impossible to know if any ICO is a pump and dump or actually real. You just need to trust in the developers and hope it turns out OK.

[wizzard0]

One thing that I think is sorely needed among these ICOs is a standardized list of terms.  Some of the ICO whitepapers I've read have such horrible presentation and lack of concrete information that I can't imagine anyone investing anything in them, regardless of the potential of the concept.  As someone coming from an environment where I have reviewed many (far too many) IPOs, the quality bar of ICOs needs to be raised.

I agree. A template term sheet with typical properties would both simplify comparison by participants and act as a quick sanity check for moderators too.

Works great on a torrent boards where a lot of similar releases get posted and otherwise need to be carefully sorted like "is this a reencode? what is the quality? what are the languages/subtitles etc?"

[coleman268]

I think even with a fee there'd still be a lot of scam ICOs if someone is interested in scamming people for hundreds of thousands of dollars a one time fee isn't going to stop them from doing it. I think the best way is to do it is to make the ICOs have to be verified by the admins or something proving that the dev team are reputable and can actually do what they promise.

[Lionidas]

Agreed to as well!

Bitcoin exchanges charge atleast 3Btc to have their alt coin listed to some of these exchanges so why not here to have them shown to the bitcointalk community.

Call it a royalty so to improve the quality of the site.

But really to keep the bad seeds out of trying to scam the membership here.

[ChromaticStar]

It's like it was a few years ago with all the shitcoins that were created. Most of them were clones and just died. Some of them are still around and can be traded on Nova, Yobit and stuff. Unless the ICO is something truly innovative or is finding a new way to tap a successful existing market, just stay away.

[reginalkri]

I don't think there's much one can do. It is what it is.

I was watching a Crypto conference and they said that something like 200 ICOs are launched every month. Or some insane number. And that right there it the problem, people trying to make money by attaching a coin to any little idea, and that leads to campaigns.

It is what it is, people are desperate, and so there's not much one can do.

It's like being annoyed that you see beggars begging for money when you go outside? What can the begger do? Completely give up and rot in a corner?

Edit: Did you just change your avatar OP? I could of sworn that it was a gif of a guy right before I click reply.

[cryptodevil]

It's like being annoyed that you see beggars begging for money when you go outside? What can the begger do? Completely give up and rot in a corner?

False equivalence. Beggars are not pretending to be innovative entrepreneurs seeking millions of dollars in investment funding.

Edit: Did you just change your avatar OP? I could of sworn that it was a gif of a guy right before I click reply.

No, my avatar has remained the same for a number of years and, btw, it's "could have", not "could of".

[Hackabu]

While being new to this community: agreed. The amount of scammy or just super unprofessional ICO's is astounding.

The idea of charging 1 BTC per ICO thread is interesting, but has some flaws too: first of all, how to administer it? Either, there would have to be manual approval (which might take a long time, if a lot of requests come in), or a complete payment gateway would have to be set up (which I find hard to believe, considering the simplicity of the forum software).
Then there is the question of how would the newly-financed task force operate? Would it be pre-approval, or removal of scammy ICO's after the post has been made? And who would be the judge on borderline cases?

But in general, yes, I believe the current Altcoin forum is almost anarchy, and something should be done to rein in the scammers and spammers. I like the idea of fixing some rules on terminology and minimum standards. I also have another idea: how about banning completely new acounts (such as my own, actually  ) from posting in that subforum? So that, for example, only accounts with 100 activity or more post there?
This might root out some of the throwaway spam accounts that are created purely for spamming up one ICO and dissapear afterwards.

[Aventhe]

While being new to this community: agreed. The amount of scammy or just super unprofessional ICO's is astounding.

The idea of charging 1 BTC per ICO thread is interesting, but has some flaws too: first of all, how to administer it? Either, there would have to be manual approval (which might take a long time, if a lot of requests come in), or a complete payment gateway would have to be set up (which I find hard to believe, considering the simplicity of the forum software).
Then there is the question of how would the newly-financed task force operate? Would it be pre-approval, or removal of scammy ICO's after the post has been made? And who would be the judge on borderline cases?

But in general, yes, I believe the current Altcoin forum is almost anarchy, and something should be done to rein in the scammers and spammers. I like the idea of fixing some rules on terminology and minimum standards. I also have another idea: how about banning completely new acounts (such as my own, actually  ) from posting in that subforum? So that, for example, only accounts with 100 activity or more post there?
This might root out some of the throwaway spam accounts that are created purely for spamming up one ICO and dissapear afterwards.

I too would have to agree with this. There are a massive amount of scam ICOs today, (while being new to the community, I have read through most of cryptodevil's recent threads and I have to say it is very interesting).

However, a problem I can see with this is that if people are setting up a scam ICO, they are most likely going to devote to it as it is certainly a lot of work to make it seem legitimate. Therefore, I am sure that they are willing to pay even a 1 BTC fee with hopes to raise more.

Look at LustICO for example, they have already raised more than 1 BTC and have also been labelled as scammers. Even if they had paid a fee, they would still have surely gone a head with their operation. In the end, I think it is a great idea, but I do can't really see the 95% reduction being a reality, however I may be wrong.

[cryptodevil]

Look at LustICO for example, they have already raised more than 1 BTC and have also been labelled as scammers. Even if they had paid a fee, they would still have surely gone a head with their operation.

The idea would be that 95% of the ICO scams currently being started would be blocked as many of them are literally thrown together for a couple of hundred bucks of expenses at most and wouldn't have the means to raise several thousand to pay a posting fee for an announcement thread. Stopping the plethora of cheap-ass scammers would at least lessen the number to a more manageable degree and allow time to investigate the more devious and determined fraudulent ICOs.

It isn't to say that anybody who paid the fee would be considered legit, no, it is simply to throttle the flood of ICO threads sufficiently that we can at least have a fighting chance of exposing the criminals and the con-artists.

[minthit]

I am new to cryptocurrency. I'm curious that if bitcointalk charge 1BTC for posting an ICO, does it mean that bitcointalk regulates the crypto world?

[cryptodevil]

I am new to cryptocurrency. I'm curious that if bitcointalk charge 1BTC for posting an ICO, does it mean that bitcointalk regulates the crypto world?

No, it would be about Bitcointalk regulating the abuse of this forum by scammers, that's all.

[Aventhe]

Look at LustICO for example, they have already raised more than 1 BTC and have also been labelled as scammers. Even if they had paid a fee, they would still have surely gone a head with their operation.

The idea would be that 95% of the ICO scams currently being started would be blocked as many of them are literally thrown together for a couple of hundred bucks of expenses at most and wouldn't have the means to raise several thousand to pay a posting fee for an announcement thread. Stopping the plethora of cheap-ass scammers would at least lessen the number to a more manageable degree and allow time to investigate the more devious and determined fraudulent ICOs.

It isn't to say that anybody who paid the fee would be considered legit, no, it is simply to throttle the flood of ICO threads sufficiently that we can at least have a fighting chance of exposing the criminals and the con-artists.

Now that you put it that way- true, it would greatly help the reduction of cheap ICO scams. Still, maybe not 95%, but it would certainly help clear out more time to focus on harder, more dedicated scammers. In terms of value and funds saved through this introduction, I can see the 95 come to play.

Also, if an ICO is clear scam and they have run off with a large sum of money, how often is legal action taken? As the scammer/ scammers may be overseas and that can complicate the problem even more.

[audaciousbeing]

Huge warning with red and bold text is better idea than ask 1BTC for every ICO thread since scammer could earn more than 1BTC in scam ICO. Ban all ICO thread might works just like when altcoin giveaway is banned from this forum.

This is equally my concern because we have seen several amount of dollars dedicated to such and even hire campaign participants to even be paid more than the average payment by others. Yes it will reduce the amount of people involved in ICOs as it will discourage people who dont have the capital wherewithal to make things happen but at the same time give room for big scammers. Another way to look into it as my suggestions is that if possible before an ICO open, a period of 2 weeks should be allowed for anyone to vet the activities even before launching.