3 kinds of ICOs — Protect yourself

[Orsenise]

another addition:

Make sure to always check the social media of the websites, especially chat applications! Most of the projects have Telegram/Slack groups and you can easily make contact with the founders on these platforms, and ask any question that comes to your head. Chances of getting scammed after asking the right questions and pushing for specific info are greatly reduced that way

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[OriginalBankster]

Kyber brags that one of its benefits is that it doesn’t hold the users’ tokens. Therefore, the tokens won’t get hacked or stolen. They are implying that if they hold tokens, the tokens can get hacked or stolen.

Then they say that they guarantee high liquidity by “holding reserves of all tokens in the network” that users may want. They would need to hold TONS of tokens to guarantee high liquidity. By holding tokens, these tokens can get hacked or stolen, according to Kyber.

Their business model is completely flawed.

In regards to CombiCoin, their pitch is that you reduce risk by diversifying. However, they increase risk for you because they have your money and you have to believe that it’s backed by other coins. Tether is doing this already, except they back up Tether with USD.  There is already talk that Tether is not backing up their coin with sufficient USD. You’ll never know for sure that CombiCoin’s TRIA is backed up by sufficient coins. Instead, if you went out and bought the other coins on your own, you’ll never need to believe anyone’s claims.

Agreed on Swarm and Combicoin.
But, with Kyber it is a different story. As far as i understood, they don't hold tokens. They have reserve managers (anyone with specified credentials can be one) and Reserve Contributors (could be you or me). The reserve contributors hold the tokens and supply the Reserve Managers. These Reserve Managers trade on the Kyber Network Platform and are paying a fee in KNC to Kyber, which will get burned.
So, if my understanding is right, Kyber told the truth. They don't hold the tokens and they can provide the liquidity.

[jlp]

CarTaxi got a 2.9 out of 10 rating:  https://hacked.com/ico-analysis-cartaxi/  ...which I agree with. I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out why a blockchain is needed to tow cars.

How often do you need to tow your car? Every day? Or, once every 10 years? Are you going to go through the hassle of downloading the CARTAXI app/wallet and buying CARTAXI coins just in case you need a tow in 10 years?

If you do not, and when the time comes that you are standing at the side of the highway beside your stalled car or flat tire, are you going to spend the extra 20-60 minutes to figure out how to download the CARTAXI app/wallet and buy CARTAXI coins, while you are running late to your appointment and freezing in winter or sweltering in summer because your car engine is not running?

One Bitcointalk user claimed that CARTAXI wants to be the Uber of car towing and the problem with Uber is that they don’t print receipts when paying with cash and that paying with crypto will solve this problem.

Whether the driver or Uber issues an receipt has nothing to do with the method of payment. Just because the method of payment is cash instead of a crypto, it doesn't mean that Uber cannot issue a receipt, eventually if not now.

The reason Uber drivers do not print receipts when they receive cash is because they do not want to declare that income, to avoid taxes. Tow truck drivers probably do the same thing. Do you think Tow truck drivers will want to use CARTAXI so customers will force them to issue receipts, which will make the drivers pay more income tax?

CARTAXI has a very stupid business model.

[vlad06]

There are 3 kinds of ICOs:

1)  SCAMS

There have always been a lot of scammers, hackers and thieves in the crypto space since day one. Think of Mount Gox. According to Business Insider:

“…one out of every 16-17 Bitcoins belongs to someone who stole it”

If you don’t think that these thieves are trying to steal money through ICOs or from ICOs, you are kidding yourself. You just need to see the Bitcointalk forum dedicated to scams, or to participate in a Slack channel and you will see the never-ending phishing e-mails trying to lure you to their sites, in order to empty your wallet.

In addition to thieves and scammers, there are those who lie or exaggerate. Many users on Bitcointalk are pump and dumpers.

2)  CRAP

Everyone is desperate to host an ICO to make money. Therefore, they are throwing anything and everything onto the blockchain, including the kitchen sink. They may not be intentionally trying to scam, but they think that they have a good enough idea for an ICO. But these will fail because the blockchain will not solve anything for them. Examples include ICOs that want to put 3D data (which would equate to hundreds of Terabytes of data) or 153 exabytes of medical data on a blockchain. This shows that they are clueless about the blockchain and have never run Bitcoin’s full node. Bitcoin’s blockchain is 120 GB and Ethereum’s blockhain is 200 GB and they are both having scaling problems.

They are also throwing any kind of business problem that they can make up, into the ICO. If they cannot make up the business problem, they will exaggerate about it. They will fail because the business problem doesn’t really exist, isn’t significant enough, cannot be solved by a blockchain or they do not really have the solution, though they try to make it sound like they do with lots of technical jargon.

One project cites this business problem:

“You need large amounts of money to buy real estate and your money is tied down for an indefinite amount of time.”

This is a lie and not a business problem. You can buy one share of a REIT, and there are thousands of REITs to choose from, and you can sell it one minute later. If they start off their pitch with a lie, what else are they lying about?

Another project cites this business problem:

“A small number of large energy companies supply millions of customers who are price takers.”

Therefore, the solution is to create more energy suppliers, especially nuclear power plants, which is the cheapest source of electricity. But the project does not propose this. They propose to enable consumers to sell their solar self-generated electricity directly to other consumers.

To do this, consumers should have BOTH solar panels and batteries. This is a TINY market. Though solar panels are growing, it is still a tiny percent of the market and solar generated electricity is still much more expensive than nuclear generated.

Consumers with solar panels do not have that much surplus electricity to sell anyways. They use most of what they generate. Tesla and Enphase hyped up their batteries for solar panel owners to store their surplus electricity. These batteries are NOT selling. Enphase spent over $100 million to develop their battery and partly because of the lack of battery sales, their stock has plummeted approximately 85%.

Of course, the project’s pitch looks impressive at first glance.

3)  LEGITIMATE

There are only a few applications that make a lot of sense for the blockchain: transfer of value (currency), store of value, remittances (disrupt Western Union and bank wire transfers), smart contracts, gaming and gambling. These applications will disrupt their respective industries, because the blockchain will provide a lot of cost-savings or time-savings to the users. There might be other applications that make sense that I missed, but applications proposed by many ICOs do not make sense. Jesus Coin is an extreme example, but there are applications that fall across the spectrum from Jesus Coin to Bitcoin.


YOU CAN REDUCE THE RISK BY USING 3 FILTERS

1)  The project’s idea should make sense, but do not base your investment decision purely on the idea. Watch:

“Ideas are like assholes - everyone has one, no one cares”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhJgrEackis

Entrepreneurs typically try to hide their ideas because they think they are the only ones that came up with the ideas. Venture Capitalists tell them to scream their ideas to the public and they’ll see that nobody will steal them. Ideas are a dime a dozen. There are probably 10 other people with the same idea that you have or that the ICO has. The most important factor to success is the ability to execute. This is why Venture Capitalists refuse to sign non-disclosure agreements and rarely invest in startups which haven’t built a prototype or product.

HAS THE ICO TEAM BUILT ANYTHING THAT WE CAN USE TODAY?

If not, take a pass. This is the best evidence that the team can execute. It takes way more skill, time, work and money to build an app than to create a one-page website and video. It shows:

• The team has proven that they can develop.
• It is less likely that the team will invest so much and not follow through.

Everything else is useless. Don’t be fooled by big teams, fancy pretentious titles, references, roadmap, video, fancy animations, escrow, blogs, Slack, Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and white paper.

One project stacked their team with a dozen people and then lied about them. One member had the title of “Blockchain Expert”, but he worked in Inside Sales until 1.5 months prior. One member had the title “Blockchain Developer”, but he never developed a blockchain before.

Here is an example of a project team using fake photos and fake names: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1949528.msg19485217#msg19485217

Don't rely on Github unless you can verify that they didn't copy the code from someone else and you can run it.

Several high profile projects raised millions of dollars and still have not produced an app. This number will grow and become more evident in the coming years.

Gnosis raised $12.5 million and their website says:

“The Hunch Game is nearly ready and can be launched in the first half of 2017 as an example Gnosis app.”

No app yet.

Qtum raised $15.6 million. I don't see anything produced on Qtum's website.

After raising $50 million, Cosmos's website is still pitching its white paper. Come on. What have they produced with that $50 million?

Augur had Vitalik Buterin on their team. After Satoshi Nakamoto, Vitalik is the most desirable person in the universe to have on an ICO team. After raising multiple millions and after two and a half years, all they’ve released is a simple beta that is barely usable.

Don’t be suckered by animations and videos. Satoshi didn’t have any of this and his coin was the most successful. Besides, the animations aren’t that impressive anymore, as I’m beginning to see the same animation on multiple websites. Some of these teams must be using the same graphic designer.

2)  IS THE TEAM FROM A CORRUPT COUNTRY?

Check Transparency International's ranking.

If so, take a pass.

The number of ICOs from corrupt countries, especially those that were famous for sending out phishing scams for years, have exploded.

Yes, there are scams from countries that are not corrupt and successful projects from corrupt countries. What is important is the probability and if you are willing to take the extra risk.

3)  “NEVER INVEST IN A BUSINESS THAT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND”

This is a quote from Warren Buffett. It is very applicable because many ICO teams try to impress the audience with technical jargon. Many investors are not tech savvy and are baffled or confused, but they invest because they think that the project team must have come up with a technological break-through.

Last word:

You need to be able to verify that the business problem exists, that the market size is truly as big as the ICO claims and that the solution is possible. Quite often, they exaggerate on most of these. You need to verify that a blockchain or a cryptocurrency actually is needed for the solution. Quite often, they’re not.

Do not rely solely on ICO listing or rating sites. They likely do not know about all of the ICOs. Not all ICOs are willing to pay to be listed. They have methodologies that you may not agree with. Some claim to be experts, but you are likely more of an expert in your own field, whether that is medical, law, engineering or finance, than they are. They will likely have biases, especially for ICOs originating from their country or region. Putin wants to increase the crypto industry in Russia. Is this why there has been an explosion of ICOs from Russia? Even Putin’s Advisor ran an ICO. If Russia took out Facebook ads to disrupt U.S. and European politics, who is to say that they will not pay off ICO listing and ratings sites to favor Russian ICOs?

A fucking fantastic thread. I have bookmarked it.

Thanks a lot man!

[zlo_prase]

excellent guide and must-read for all new investors (including myself). many thanks, jlp!

[jlp]

DomRaider has a fancy commercial running everywhere. It even played ahead of a Youtube video that I wanted to watch.

DomRaider is all marketing and no meat. They are probably liars as well. Their industry, dropcatching, is tiny. If it was as big as DomRaider makes it seem, then Godaddy would be making billions from it. But none of Godaddy’s revenue is attributed to dropcatching on their Income Statement. Godaddy never even mentions dropcatching anywhere in their annual filing to the SEC. Read it:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1609711/000160971117000042/gddy-12312016x10k.htm

Read this guy's blog on why he is giving up on domain drop catching. He gives multiple reasons, such as "getting more competitive", "opportunity cost is not just financial", "each successive drop catch makes less incremental improvement to our overall portfolio", "there may be better things to do with the money":

http://www.webmastering.co.uk/domain-names/why-im-giving-up-on-domain-drop-catching/

After reading the first sentence in Earth Token’s announcement, I stopped. “environmentally sustainability software”??? Is this another example of somebody trying to put the kitchen sink onto the blockchain?

[Love me tender]

That's so nice, thanks for a good advice!

[pitiflin]

To sum things up in short:
1. Either icos will act as if they are very sincere and honest and scam you and run away with your money.
2. Icos won't scam you they will promise you stuff that they will never do about their products and just list their coin in some exchange.
3. They will keep their word and continue even after they get listed on an exchange.

[jlp]

TokenStars has no explanation of why the current currency (EUR, GBP, etc.) needs to be replaced by a token. Their site says "you support a promising 14-16 year old player [athlete] - player spends money".  This means the player will sell the token to get EUR to pay for rent and food. What good is the token? Also, who is to say that the player or anyone else will honor any agreement to repay the supporters 2-6 years later? If you're a token holder, are you going to wait that long, only to hope that the player repay token holders?

PeerGuess is one of those ICOs using the same star constellation animation that I've seen on other sites. Are they using the same graphic designer, or is PeerGuess another ICO put out by the same group of scammers? Even if PeerGuess is not a scam, it is TOO LATE and TOO LITTLE.

TOO LATE: Gnosis, Augur and Stox already had ICOs to get into prediction markets, though Gnosis and Stox still haven't built anything yet and Augur built a beta that is barely usable. This shows that execution is much harder than anything they've done before, including an ICO.

TOO LATE and TOO LITTLE: Stockbet already has built software that lets people bet on crypto currencies (and stocks). PeerGuess has a sales pitch.

This shows that ICOs with large teams mean nothing. With 12 members, PeerGuess should have been able to build something. Startups at Y Combinator consists of 2 founders each and they're building prototypes and products. Since PeerGuess hasn't built anything, it probably means that most members add little to no value (assuming that they are real people), but they included them to make you think that they add value.

[FutureC0in]

I have 2 ICOs that potentially a scam
- Face coin : no more update after ICO finished but website and Twitter account still alive.
- Tracor network : 1 day after ICO date finished the website and twitter account also deleted.... phew in fact this is the worst ICO that I joined.
Lesson learned.... please do your own assessment, there are many people in the forum promoting the ICO for their own benefit.

I bookmarked this page so that I can reminded all the time of these factors to note to assess ICO.
Thanks you so much the the OP.

[xenolith]

Thank you for writing this, this is amazing information for newbies into the crypto game, and perhaps even veterans. I'm going to refer this thread to people whenever they make bold claims about crypto!

[nymphelav]

Very good points that everyone who wants to invest in Cryptocurrency or ICOs should know. Everyday, the market is flooded with new people hearing about the new digital money and want to jump on the train, but it's not that simple. Always invest only what you can afford to lose!

[hua_hui]

There are 3 kinds of ICOs:

1)  SCAMS

There have always been a lot of scammers, hackers and thieves in the crypto space since day one. Think of Mount Gox. According to Business Insider:

“…one out of every 16-17 Bitcoins belongs to someone who stole it”

If you don’t think that these thieves are trying to steal money through ICOs or from ICOs, you are kidding yourself. You just need to see the Bitcointalk forum dedicated to scams, or to participate in a Slack channel and you will see the never-ending phishing e-mails trying to lure you to their sites, in order to empty your wallet.

In addition to thieves and scammers, there are those who lie or exaggerate. Many users on Bitcointalk are pump and dumpers.

2)  CRAP

Everyone is desperate to host an ICO to make money. Therefore, they are throwing anything and everything onto the blockchain, including the kitchen sink. They may not be intentionally trying to scam, but they think that they have a good enough idea for an ICO. But these will fail because the blockchain will not solve anything for them. Examples include ICOs that want to put 3D data (which would equate to hundreds of Terabytes of data) or 153 exabytes of medical data on a blockchain. This shows that they are clueless about the blockchain and have never run Bitcoin’s full node. Bitcoin’s blockchain is 120 GB and Ethereum’s blockhain is 200 GB and they are both having scaling problems.

They are also throwing any kind of business problem that they can make up, into the ICO. If they cannot make up the business problem, they will exaggerate about it. They will fail because the business problem doesn’t really exist, isn’t significant enough, cannot be solved by a blockchain or they do not really have the solution, though they try to make it sound like they do with lots of technical jargon.

One project cites this business problem:

“You need large amounts of money to buy real estate and your money is tied down for an indefinite amount of time.”

This is a lie and not a business problem. You can buy one share of a REIT, and there are thousands of REITs to choose from, and you can sell it one minute later. If they start off their pitch with a lie, what else are they lying about?

Another project cites this business problem:

“A small number of large energy companies supply millions of customers who are price takers.”

Therefore, the solution is to create more energy suppliers, especially nuclear power plants, which is the cheapest source of electricity. But the project does not propose this. They propose to enable consumers to sell their solar self-generated electricity directly to other consumers.

To do this, consumers should have BOTH solar panels and batteries. This is a TINY market. Though solar panels are growing, it is still a tiny percent of the market and solar generated electricity is still much more expensive than nuclear generated.

Consumers with solar panels do not have that much surplus electricity to sell anyways. They use most of what they generate. Tesla and Enphase hyped up their batteries for solar panel owners to store their surplus electricity. These batteries are NOT selling. Enphase spent over $100 million to develop their battery and partly because of the lack of battery sales, their stock has plummeted approximately 85%.

Of course, the project’s pitch looks impressive at first glance.

3)  LEGITIMATE

There are only a few applications that make a lot of sense for the blockchain: transfer of value (currency), store of value, remittances (disrupt Western Union and bank wire transfers), smart contracts, gaming and gambling. These applications will disrupt their respective industries, because the blockchain will provide a lot of cost-savings or time-savings to the users. There might be other applications that make sense that I missed, but applications proposed by many ICOs do not make sense. Jesus Coin is an extreme example, but there are applications that fall across the spectrum from Jesus Coin to Bitcoin.


YOU CAN REDUCE THE RISK BY USING 3 FILTERS

1)  The project’s idea should make sense, but do not base your investment decision purely on the idea. Watch:

“Ideas are like assholes - everyone has one, no one cares”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhJgrEackis

Entrepreneurs typically try to hide their ideas because they think they are the only ones that came up with the ideas. Venture Capitalists tell them to scream their ideas to the public and they’ll see that nobody will steal them. Ideas are a dime a dozen. There are probably 10 other people with the same idea that you have or that the ICO has. The most important factor to success is the ability to execute. This is why Venture Capitalists refuse to sign non-disclosure agreements and rarely invest in startups which haven’t built a prototype or product.

HAS THE ICO TEAM BUILT ANYTHING THAT WE CAN USE TODAY?

If not, take a pass. This is the best evidence that the team can execute. It takes way more skill, time, work and money to build an app than to create a one-page website and video. It shows:

• The team has proven that they can develop.
• It is less likely that the team will invest so much and not follow through.

Everything else is useless. Don’t be fooled by big teams, fancy pretentious titles, references, roadmap, video, fancy animations, escrow, blogs, Slack, Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and white paper.

One project stacked their team with a dozen people and then lied about them. One member had the title of “Blockchain Expert”, but he worked in Inside Sales until 1.5 months prior. One member had the title “Blockchain Developer”, but he never developed a blockchain before.

Here is an example of a project team using fake photos and fake names: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1949528.msg19485217#msg19485217

Don't rely on Github unless you can verify that they didn't copy the code from someone else and you can run it.

Several high profile projects raised millions of dollars and still have not produced an app. This number will grow and become more evident in the coming years.

Gnosis raised $12.5 million and their website says:

“The Hunch Game is nearly ready and can be launched in the first half of 2017 as an example Gnosis app.”

No app yet.

Qtum raised $15.6 million. I don't see anything produced on Qtum's website.

After raising $50 million, Cosmos's website is still pitching its white paper. Come on. What have they produced with that $50 million?

Augur had Vitalik Buterin on their team. After Satoshi Nakamoto, Vitalik is the most desirable person in the universe to have on an ICO team. After raising multiple millions and after two and a half years, all they’ve released is a simple beta that is barely usable.

Don’t be suckered by animations and videos. Satoshi didn’t have any of this and his coin was the most successful. Besides, the animations aren’t that impressive anymore, as I’m beginning to see the same animation on multiple websites. Some of these teams must be using the same graphic designer.

2)  IS THE TEAM FROM A CORRUPT COUNTRY?

Check Transparency International's ranking.

If so, take a pass.

The number of ICOs from corrupt countries, especially those that were famous for sending out phishing scams for years, have exploded.

Yes, there are scams from countries that are not corrupt and successful projects from corrupt countries. What is important is the probability and if you are willing to take the extra risk.

3)  “NEVER INVEST IN A BUSINESS THAT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND”

This is a quote from Warren Buffett. It is very applicable because many ICO teams try to impress the audience with technical jargon. Many investors are not tech savvy and are baffled or confused, but they invest because they think that the project team must have come up with a technological break-through.

Last word:

You need to be able to verify that the business problem exists, that the market size is truly as big as the ICO claims and that the solution is possible. Quite often, they exaggerate on most of these. You need to verify that a blockchain or a cryptocurrency actually is needed for the solution. Quite often, they’re not.

Do not rely solely on ICO listing or rating sites. They likely do not know about all of the ICOs. Not all ICOs are willing to pay to be listed. They have methodologies that you may not agree with. Some claim to be experts, but you are likely more of an expert in your own field, whether that is medical, law, engineering or finance, than they are. They will likely have biases, especially for ICOs originating from their country or region. Putin wants to increase the crypto industry in Russia. Is this why there has been an explosion of ICOs from Russia? Even Putin’s Advisor ran an ICO. If Russia took out Facebook ads to disrupt U.S. and European politics, who is to say that they will not pay off ICO listing and ratings sites to favor Russian ICOs?

I agree with a lot of stuffs but i am personally not comfortable with a lot of your stands too. A lot of the good icos have no working products and can grow very huge while on the other hand a lot of the icos have working products but fail terribly. One of the best case is that ethereum. It begins as an idea when it started and it takes years and years to iron the product out, even till now it is still in the upgrade phrase. On the other hand, some icos already have products but after the fund rising, products did not get adopted or there were unforeseen problems keep appearing and the team is not able to solve. So to me, what is more important is the dev team.

[R.Hasan]

Thumbs up for you!

One of the best things I've ever read about ICOs. Thanks for the very informative thread.

[R.Hasan]

Folks, www.balanc3.net a new accounting platform prove value with new accounting Tech, claims this would be good for investors. Would that work?

[jlp]

I agree with a lot of stuffs but i am personally not comfortable with a lot of your stands too. A lot of the good icos have no working products and can grow very huge while on the other hand a lot of the icos have working products but fail terribly. One of the best case is that ethereum. It begins as an idea when it started and it takes years and years to iron the product out, even till now it is still in the upgrade phrase. On the other hand, some icos already have products but after the fund rising, products did not get adopted or there were unforeseen problems keep appearing and the team is not able to solve. So to me, what is more important is the dev team.

You are correct that some ICOs with prototypes/products will fail and some ICOs without prototypes/products will succeed. What you have to assess for yourself is the probability. Venture Capitalists have decades of experience and they rarely invest in startups without a prototype/product. They are trying to reduce their risk.

There are a few differences between when Ethereum had its ICO and today:

• There are far more ICOs today than back then, so you can be much choosier
• Vitalik Buterin was co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine in 2011. This means that he was already a leader in the field, when he started Ethereum in 2014. Most of the ICOs today are not started by leaders in this field. Some of them have only been exposed to cryptocurrencies for a few months. Change Bank's "Blockchain Expert" worked in Inside Sales until 1.5 months prior.
• Vitalik grew up in Canada and Ethereum started in Switzerland. Today, you have many ICOs coming from corrupt countries around the world. In 2014, you didn't.

There is no guarantee that any business will not fail. But, when the ICO team has a prototype/product, they have proven that they can develop. That significantly reduces your risk. With many ICOs, you have no idea if they can. You cannot trust the information on the profile of many ICOs. Just because they can hire somebody to make a video, it does not mean they can write thousands of lines of complicated code. It's like you giving money to someone to fix your car, simply because he says he can fix cars but have never fixed one before.

Y Combinator is one of the biggest startup incubators in the world. They provide a small amount of funding (approx. $25k to 50k) to startups, which usually consists of 2 founders each. Then they build prototypes or products. Then the startups give pitches to angel investors or Venture Capitalists. If prototypes or products are unnecessary, then why do they waste so much time and money before pitching to angels and VCs?

Almost all incubators have startups that consist of usually only 2 founders, that are building prototypes and products. ICOs are stacking their team with a dozen people and they still cannot build anything. With 12 people, they should've built 6 prototypes/products by now. This shows that they are simply stacking their teams with useless people, in order to impress you or sucker you in.

[jlp]

Electroneum is dishonest. Their website states:

“Cryptocurrencies are so hard to come by! The barriers to entry for most people are too large. Complex software, GPU Mining rigs, sending personal identification to strange websites.”

That’s not true. Those things are not needed with PoS and PoI blockchains.

Their website states:

“Electroneum makes it easy to access and use a super secure cryptocurrency that has all of the benefits of Bitcoin and more. Transactions in Electroneum happen faster and are more anonymous. Did you know that anyone with your public Bitcoin wallet address can see how many bitcoin you have, and your entire transaction history? Electroneum protects your transaction history and wallet contents from prying eyes, whilst leaving publicly accessible transaction hashes available for the technically discerning to authenticate transactions.”

Is the Electroneum team living in 2009 or 2017? Or, are they trying to scam newbies into thinking that Bitcoin is the only crypto currency that exists? There are many crypto currencies already that provide privacy, such as Monero, PIVX and Zcash.

Mobile? Lots of altcoins can be on the phone. Offline wallet? This is when Electroneum is deliberately misleading or lying. They state:

““Googling” for Bitcoin Hack or Ethereum Hack will find you dozens of stories of stolen cryptocurrencies. We’ve developed an OFFLINE wallet that is 100% secure. You can create as many offline wallets as you like (free) and transfer the bulk of your Electroneum to those wallets.”

Are they trying to make you think that there are no offline wallets for Bitcoin and Ethereum? There are LOTS of them.

On this interview with the CEO, he talks about how 200 million mobile phone users will be able play online gambling sites if they had crypto currencies on their phones:

https://youtu.be/qq24jCuHi7k

So, what’s so special about Electroneum? You already have a multitude of crypto currencies on your phones today.


Spectivvr.com’s white paper has only one problem that they are trying to solve. Their write up of the problem is less than one page and is one of the weakest and most nebulous problems I’ve ever read. I have no idea why a new crypto is needed.

If Spectivvr.com is trying to put virtual reality onto the blockchain, then it shows that they are clueless about the blockchain and that they have never run Bitcoin’s full node. ARToken wants to put 3D data onto a blockchain. This implies hundreds of Terabytes of data. Bitcoin’s blockchain is 120 GB and Ethereum’s blockhain is 200 GB and they are both having scaling problems.

Their business model is given in one sentence:

“Specs are a virtual reality token supporting internal platform functions like tipping, premium content purchases, and ad rewards.”

How are they going to compete against Youtube, which already provides 4k videos? What’s to stop Youtube from providing virtual reality videos? How many viewers are going to go through the hassle of buying Spec tokens just to tip video producers, when they don’t have to do that now on Youtube?

[edir_ruvall]

To be honest, I do not agree with everything. about the corrupt countries - this is not always a risk. I also noticed that a lot of ICO from Russia is now on the market, but the fact that they are from Russia does not make them risky at once. Therefore, it is better to look at the competencies and style of communication, rather than the country. And the advice "not to go where you do not understand anything" - but what about read, see, learn, ask, finally? The main thing is interest and desire to learn.

[jlp]

To be honest, I do not agree with everything. about the corrupt countries - this is not always a risk. I also noticed that a lot of ISO from Russia is now on the market, but the fact that they are from Russia does not make them risky at once.

As I wrote in the OP:

Yes, there are scams from countries that are not corrupt and successful projects from corrupt countries. What is important is the probability and if you are willing to take the extra risk.

In corrupt countries, ethics and honesty are more lax. Does this mean that the likelihood of exaggeration or dishonesty to be greater? If you do not think so, then go ahead and invest.

In non corrupt countries, people grow up with lots of regulations and enforcement. Though there are exceptions, the people feel that the way to get ahead is based largely on merit. In corrupt countries, there is less regulation, less enforcement and more people trying to find ways to get ahead by working around the system. In fact, they see that the most successful people in their country, usually in their government, are those who get ahead by lying, cheating or working around the system, instead of based on merit. If you do not think this is a risk, then go ahead and invest.

Just because the ICO’s coin is on an exchange, it does not mean that they will execute. On Coinmarketcap, Gnosis is ranked 52, Qtum is ranked 14 and Augur is ranked 28. Here is what I wrote about them in the OP:

Gnosis raised $12.5 million and their website says:

“The Hunch Game is nearly ready and can be launched in the first half of 2017 as an example Gnosis app.”

No app yet.

Qtum raised $15.6 million. I don't see anything produced on Qtum's website.

Augur had Vitalik Buterin on their team. After Satoshi Nakamoto, Vitalik is the most desirable person in the universe to have on an ICO team. After raising multiple millions and after two and a half years, all they’ve released is a simple beta that is barely usable.

In regards to Russia specifically, you should be aware of another risk. As I wrote in the OP:

Putin wants to increase the crypto industry in Russia. Is this why there has been an explosion of ICOs from Russia? Even Putin’s Advisor ran an ICO. If Russia took out Facebook ads to disrupt U.S. and European politics, who is to say that they will not pay off ICO listing and ratings sites to favor Russian ICOs?

Is the Russian government funding Russian ICOs to help them maximize the money that they raise? If so, you should be aware of this risk. Though there are exceptions, in the far majority of time, when a government tries to pick and choose companies, it’s not a good idea. The U.S. government forced taxpayers to give $535 million to Solyndra. It looked great at first and then it went bankrupt. Governments are not educated nor skilled to be Venture Capitalists, investors or stock pickers. Their money is often spent on policies to further their political or social goals.

In the extreme cases when the government tries to centrally manage the economy, they create socialism, or communism which is the extreme form of socialism. Every government that centrally manages their economy have always made their economies poorer in the long run. Think of Cuba, Venezuela, when Russia was communist, when China was communist, etc. The people who are best at picking which business will succeed or fail, are those in the free market.

Therefore, it is better to look at the competencies and style of communication, rather than the country. And the advice "not to go where you do not understand anything" - but what about read, see, learn, ask, finally? The main thing is interest and desire to learn.

Yes, the best evidence of their competency is if they have built a prototype or product.

If you read, see, learn and ask sufficiently, then you should understand the business, which means you will not be investing in a business that you do not understand.

[jlp]

Minerva gives tokens to platforms that accept Minerva’s OWL token. But they never explain where the money comes from? How will Minerva continue giving their token away forever? Business model makes no sense.

Blockv.io’s homepage says:

“These smart objects, called vAtoms (Virtual Atoms) combine code with multimedia elements and are dynamic, compelling digital goods that make a cryptocurrency come alive as an asset…”

This is similar to what ARToken and Datum want to do: put TONS of data onto the blockchain. This shows that they are clueless about the blockchain. At 120 GB, Bitcoin’s blockchain is already causing scaling problems.

Blockv.io’s token allocation shows that they are among the greediest teams around. Only 35% will be go to buyers. Developers and company will keep 65%. Unbelievable. Not only is this an extreme example of greed, there is no decentralization. Their team can overpower and control the blockchain whenever they want.