How to detect a scam ICO?

[jack1111]

Scam ICO give a lot of promises about the value of their coin. The whitpaper can be an indicator for technical people, but unfortunately, people do not read whitepapers.

[bathrobehero]

You should always look up all of the members on the team and see if they really exist and have the experience they claim they have.  I always avoid ICO's with an anonymous team since it's just too risky even though it's not necessarily means it's a scam. 

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Sometimes you'll see names with linkedin profiles, just check how long the linkedin profiles are active, how many connections that person has and cross checking with google helps a lot

That's a half decent approach but don't forget that all kinds of accounts get hacked or sold so you're trusting a lot.

[ninjabiz]

They have fake team members like declouds scam, only invest in trusted projects.

[scry]

There are some fantastic indicators that have been covered already, if I could add some more:

• Evidence of a prototype / market usage (e.g.: Github code review or news articles indicating an industry partnership)
• Listings on big exchanges / news of future listings
• Good, consistent communication by the team (mailing lists, Slack channels, Telegram...)
• (Purely speculative) low market cap relative to the total cryptocurrency market.

Generally this takes a lot of research (in no particular order):

• News sites
• Forums, social media
• Github
• Official blog / mailing list / Slack / Telegram etc.
• Analysis by sources you trust (could be bloggers, journalists, Youtube channels...)
• Market research (coinmarketcap, technical analysis if you're so inclined, etc.)
• Reading the whitepaper

If you (mods!) don't mind a shameless plug I'm developing a service to make this easier for us all, you can read more about it on my blog: http://blog.scry.pw

[Agozyen]

How to detect a scam ICO?

You can get a good idea at what a scam ICO looks like by heading over to oxfina.com.  They disappeared after the tokens were created.  Check out their twitter, facebook and ANN thread here on bitcointalk. 

[gustavroy]

Most of the people say that;the most important fact is the team qhich create the company.Also i always looking for good advisors.Also whitepaper layout and subject of the project are important for ICO's succeed

[gidaahmad]

Oh this is something hard guys. Determining ICO scam is hard because they "scammer" is a clever person. But there is one way is to look at smart contracts.

[Pearls Before Swine]

There are a lot of nuances in this case. But the most important thing is to check the project team

And watch out that the 'team' is real and not faked.

One thing you have to watch out for is ICOs self moderating their threads, and look closely at the ones
who stifle criticism.  Cryptodevil caught the Enjin team doing this, although they turned out to be legit
as far as I know.  Cryptodevil is a damn fine ICO scam buster, and he probably should make up a list of
projects he deems legitimate.  I suspect the vast majority are not.  If you can verify that the dev team
consists of real people, that's a very good start.  If they pay their campaigners, that's also a good sign,
but not anything conclusive.  QTUM paid everyone and they ended up being pretty much a scam.  They
censored my posts even though I wasn't being critical of them.  You have to watch that sort of thing too.

[XbladeX]

How to detect a scam ICO?

there are full skams that will never deliver even tokens/coins those are really easy to sport.
no escrow fake link id. (try call to someone )
no experience...
but good ICO can fail to problems on the way that they have  to solve but it won't be able from multiple reasons.

[wayaneka]

The most important thing to analyzing ICO by knowing  detail the profile of its founder team, and the 2nd is to understand aim and what problem will be solved of the project. To understand it we can read in their whitepaper. And also look for other reviews on other forums,news site and youtube channel, like github, cointelegraph etc.

[wolfracer]

How to detect a scam ICO?

I recommend the following;
1) Verify the authenticity of the social profiles of the members of the ICO team (linkedIn)
2) Check out the project progress published (GitHub)
3) Avoid businesses that work with referrals.
4) Avoiding unrealistic promises (profits with exorbitant figures)

[bongiu]

Basically not being lazy and reading about the project and the team, in the end, it's you who decide to spend your money or not on an ICO. The job of the ICO managers is to convince you to buy their token

[clickerz]

There are some fantastic indicators that have been covered already, if I could add some more:

• Evidence of a prototype / market usage (e.g.: Github code review or news articles indicating an industry partnership)
• Listings on big exchanges / news of future listings
• Good, consistent communication by the team (mailing lists, Slack channels, Telegram...)
• (Purely speculative) low market cap relative to the total cryptocurrency market.

Generally this takes a lot of research (in no particular order):

• News sites
• Forums, social media
• Github
• Official blog / mailing list / Slack / Telegram etc.
• Analysis by sources you trust (could be bloggers, journalists, Youtube channels...)
• Market research (coinmarketcap, technical analysis if you're so inclined, etc.)
• Reading the whitepaper

If you (mods!) don't mind a shameless plug I'm developing a service to make this easier for us all, you can read more about it on my blog: http://blog.scry.pw

Thanks for the tip.  It should be transparent with what they are doing and can be raech in any means of communication. People behind should be known in the industry and not with the fly by the night   groups or company. Its better if they are doing business already .

[thanhnc46947]

First of all read the project white paper, this is very important you should know what is product of the project? Why this project need the blockchain?
Second: Make a research regarding who is on the team (CEO, CTO, blockchain developers, advisors etc.).
Last i think you should research this project have Compromised Escrow. ICOs will usually have an escrow to hold user’s funds during the ICO and after

[ferrari2fast]

Before you invest, check out their whitepaper and what are their visionaries. Check out the team, on LinkedIn or google search them.

[Bes19]

You can do your own research like if the team is legit coz some are just anonymous which is very suspicious. You can also read some topics on forum and see if that ICO has a negative feedback and ofcourse you can search and analyze it by observing on Market.

[Morphling]

some ico are obviously scam like the team members are fake, whitepaper lacks of logic, give too many promise and so on, but there are some scam projects seems to be good, only time will tell

[marados]

Before I’m investing in something I first check if it is fully transparent, and that people that are involved in project and their past (usually LinkedIn account) is shown. Second thing to check is if the project you are investing in already has a working program, which shows they already put a large effort in it and that it shouldn’t be a scam.

[herurist]

How to detect a scam ICO?

No one can give you the right answer, only experience will give you the right answer. Most people will check from concept, team and also price. But some people will always try to making connection with team to know how good they handle customers problem. We only can predict, just prepare the worst. Have a nice day.

[mroth7684]

I'm too lazy to check an ICO scam or not. sometime just wait people do it for you. and we invest later