3 kinds of ICOs — Protect yourself

[NeoTech42]

I won't invest in any ICO without a prototype. The risk of being scammed is well too high. How many ICO's don't even have a MVP ? More or less 90% ?

With a prototype, we can expect the team to manage and fully develop the product described in the whitepaper.

Before ICO's, every startup that encountered the success would have developed a high quality product. The product was tested by the public and now ? 

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[kkofor]

Thank you for taking time to compile this. I have to say, I do agree with you 100%. With all the scamming going around unchecked, one can't be too careful. I think its interesting that you mention that people need to look out for icos in certain countries. Personally if the ICO is based in Eastern Europe and India, my antenna are raised. If the whole team is from any of those countries, I bounce :-/

Hahaha, I never join or invest to an ICO. I also always doubt with ICO. All I know, all forms of investment that is on the internet is just a lie. Whatever it is, I guess it's just another form of HYIP and I do not like it. The only legit and sure investment is Bitcoin. We just buy the currency and wait until the price goes up, as easy and simple as that. But wait, do not get me wrong first.

I'm not saying that all the ICO's are fake. I've even got the news that there are people who can profit 10-fold from ICO in no time. That's a good thing because to be able to profit 10-fold, we have to wait a long time if we invest in Bitcoin.

Anyway, ICO is also the best way for small investors can get big profit. As you know, Bitcoin price is too high now. How can a small investor get x5, x10 profit from Bitcoin with $100 or $1000 budget? They have to choose ICOs.

[chrismartin]

Thankyou for this very important information you have been given, atleast i know what kind of ico i will choose if my rank will be moving up. I read it from the start to finish.  Lets up this information.

[darkr]

Wow. The author of the post has shared cool information with us. And here are the signs of an ICO-scammer:

- Lack of detailed information about the company's business;
- The company reports events that have not yet happened or are difficult to verify;
- The company's shares start growing rapidly at the same time with PR-activity;
- The company often changes its name, management or field of activity.

[steveouttrim]

Scams would be happening on the Internet with or without ICOs

In some ways investing in ICOs are like gambling. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

You might lose all your money in a scam ICO. But you might lose all your money in a completely legitimate ICO too, with a blue chip team and a fancy white paper.

Better to think of ICOs as gambling than to put your life savings in it. People can be smart about gambling, eg counting cards at Blackjack, studying form guides for horse racing, cheating at poker or rigging boxing matches...

There are many ICOs that might get classed as "scam" by the criteria in this thread, just because they are from new teams with a radical vision. I can guarantee that at least some of these will turn out to be hugely successful ICOs. Facebook was once a bunch of college dropouts smoking b*ngs...

[leyton11]

Thank you for taking time to compile this. I have to say, I do agree with you 100%. With all the scamming going around unchecked, one can't be too careful. I think its interesting that you mention that people need to look out for icos in certain countries. Personally if the ICO is based in Eastern Europe and India, my antenna are raised. If the whole team is from any of those countries, I bounce :-/

Hahaha, I never join or invest to an ICO. I also always doubt with ICO. All I know, all forms of investment that is on the internet is just a lie. Whatever it is, I guess it's just another form of HYIP and I do not like it. The only legit and sure investment is Bitcoin. We just buy the currency and wait until the price goes up, as easy and simple as that. But wait, do not get me wrong first.

I'm not saying that all the ICO's are fake. I've even got the news that there are people who can profit 10-fold from ICO in no time. That's a good thing because to be able to profit 10-fold, we have to wait a long time if we invest in Bitcoin.

Anyway, ICO is also the best way for small investors can get big profit. As you know, Bitcoin price is too high now. How can a small investor get x5, x10 profit from Bitcoin with $100 or $1000 budget? They have to choose ICOs.

No, they can choose make money and use that amount to buy Bitcoin. ICO is risky, this way not useful for newbie while they don't have enough knowledge and experience to take loss and avoid the scam project. There are many scam projects always want to rob money of newbie, why do they need to get more risk?

[Andre#]

I won't invest in any ICO without a prototype. The risk of being scammed is well too high. How many ICO's don't even have a MVP ? More or less 90% ?

With a prototype, we can expect the team to manage and fully develop the product described in the whitepaper.

Before ICO's, every startup that encountered the success would have developed a high quality product. The product was tested by the public and now ? 

Even project has beta product like KICKICO, AirToken, the price of token from these projects are also dump to below the ICO price until today.
Therefore, so difficult to know the potential and the power of the community in the ICO projects.
As long as the whale want to dump the price of ICO token, they can control and dump the price anyway.

[ichanjay]

I definitely still believe in ICOs. I guess you can say a fair amount don't succeed but you can't compare all cryptocurrencies against each other. Many cryptocurrencies serve a different purpose making accurate comparisons near impossible. You have to look over the ICOs business plan and their goal and if they already have a useful output and not just mere ideas. Often doing your research on any given ICO will give you a better idea of what you are getting into.

[bribed]

Thanks for this wonderful guidelines. Everyone should get the opportunity to read this before putting his money in anything crypto related. This just makes sense from all angles. Again, thank you so much for sharing this with the community.

[ZaynDale]

Nice thread, and I've been listing this kinds of ICO also on my other research. But these ICOs that's going to listen their community until time that nobody cares and they're gonna abandoning it like just nothing happened.
They're showing their core team that nothing to do with their project.
SO, better make a good research about the ICOs that you're going to invest because not all of them they'll give you good fortune.

[TiffanyLien23]

Nice thread.. This help me a lot to aware scam ICO.

[NPG331525]

ICO101 for a dummy newbie, like me 

Can't exactly tell, what's right, or what's a crap.

[DAVETUN]

Investing into ICO require hardwork from the investor,this days where we have lots of ICO coming up daily,detailed research is require and an understanding about what they have to offer in the real world

[ruskytailz02]

90% of ICOs are scams

I will not accept these ahahahhaha because some ICO only search for fund raising for example and ..
ICO was getting their image broke because of those managers or one people who are a piece of shit that wants all the money of he/she wants
MANAGERS and people behind are those scumbag scammers hahahah and not ICO it is like politics politicians are the corrupt not the politics

[SkustaClee]

I know that this post will help many person who wants to invest their money to the ICO. We should be aware to what ICO we will investing for us to know whether it is scam or not. Knowledge is very important when we are investing our money in different ICO.

[NeoTech42]

When you invest in ICO, search yourself all information about the team, the project.

The idea has to be realistic and applicable in the real world. There must be a MVP/prototype to see the comitment of the team because it is too easy to just make a website and write a whitepaper with just promises. Also a team with software engineers background is far better than a team composed mostly of advisors or managers...

[taeewo]

Its good to invest on any projects that have team pics display...

[Croin]

Thank you for taking time to compile this. I have to say, I do agree with you 100%. With all the scamming going around unchecked, one can't be too careful. I think its interesting that you mention that people need to look out for icos in certain countries. Personally if the ICO is based in Eastern Europe and India, my antenna are raised. If the whole team is from any of those countries, I bounce :-/

YES - Very important aspect for ICO is the country they are from. The whole "eastern europe" ICO's are most of the time scam (Nowadays!).
On the other hand the best ICO so far are from Russia ETH, WAVES ...

[kseniya.pride]

Crowdholding claims that they have a working beta, which is good news. However, I can’t find it on their website. Have you used it? Have lots of people used it to help guide a startup to success?

Their white paper says that the problem is that too many startups fail due to lack of market need. Their solution is that funders (YUPIE token holders) will be able to tell the startups how to find market needs.

This is ridiculous. If this is the case, then companies would be asking their shareholders on what the market needs. Google, Apple, Facebook and the hundreds of thousands of companies should be asking their shareholders about market needs. They don’t. Why not? Because the shareholders do not know. The only people who will know are the end-users and customers. That’s why companies spend billions on market research, focus groups, free samples, surveys, product trials, etc., etc. The only people who know and will tell the truth are those who have to part with their money and will get enough value in return to justify it. Anyone who has studied Marketing knows this.

Let’s say that there is a startup that wants to sell Japanese seaweed snacks. How much are you willing to pay for the snacks? What would you recommend to the startup? Even if you wouldn’t eat this, how would you know others won’t? You may never have tasted it before, so you will have no idea. The only way the startup will know if these snacks will sell is if they do market research, in the right target markets, with product trials, etc.

Even if Crowdholding's idea has merit, how do you, as a YUPIE token holder, know for sure that startup companies will reward you after they succeed? The tokens are not legal contracts. You cannot get a judge to force the company to pay.

Startups take many years before they are financially successful. Most companies are still losing money when they go IPO on the stock market. Amazon is barely making any profits. Twitter is still losing money. Facebook took way longer than most companies to IPO and they barely showed a profit. Technology and growing companies rarely pay dividends. How long will you wait before Crowdholding’s startups start rewarding you?

I do not think Crowdholding is trying to scam anyone. They likely think that they have a good idea, but do not see the flaws. Most ICO buyers do not see these flaws because they haven’t spent enough time in the business world and are impressed by lots of jargon and big teams with fancy titles.

The only people who know and will tell the truth are those who have to part with their money and will get enough value in return to justify it. Anyone who has studied Marketing knows this.

Probably you are confused in the concept of the project or didn't understand it correctly. That's it to such people are invited to participate in the co-creation, development, promotion of projects that they like, consumers of which they can also become. And for this people will receive tokens of these projects. Everything is very good. Someone invests money, someone invests time and ability. And someone and money and time and ability

Its a great platform for entrepreneurs to validate their business ideas and for supporters to earn some crypto!

Crowdholding is up and running, check it out, if you don't believe us: https://www.crowdholding.com !

[chip1994]

Thank you for taking time to compile this. I have to say, I do agree with you 100%. With all the scamming going around unchecked, one can't be too careful. I think its interesting that you mention that people need to look out for icos in certain countries. Personally if the ICO is based in Eastern Europe and India, my antenna are raised. If the whole team is from any of those countries, I bounce :-/

YES - Very important aspect for ICO is the country they are from. The whole "eastern europe" ICO's are most of the time scam (Nowadays!).
On the other hand the best ICO so far are from Russia ETH, WAVES ...

Really? I saw too many ICOs hyped from Russia without any good result after crowdsale. Example KICKICO, this's one of project from Russia, but look at the price of ICO token now. What is the reason make this token drop a lot of value like that? Below the ICO price and there's no large exchange accept it while it has raised more than 80.000 ETH from crowdsale. Bad project!