How to avoid ICO scam

[gilangIDR]

I thınk you can't avoid scam ICO's if it is in your faith because they can look legit and after six months past of their ico they can say we are done we can't deliver this product because of this because of that bla bla.. You can protect this situation with blockchain or nothing else. If you are not a risky person you need to go on with BTC LTC and Eth or really good proven altcoins.

Yes there is no sure way to ensure we get a successful ICO project. Because almost all ICOs will provide the best explanation they can. We can only read and speculate for good results. But there are important things that can be a reference, see who the people involved in the project. If these people are very reliable then do it because usually a dev who has a good reputation then he will use various ways to be able to produce a project that ended successfully.

[chainese]

Well i think if there is huge hype around the token/coin that they are promoting and if you make sure it is already listed/going to be listed at exchanges plus you get a good size bonus for buying it than you can't really go wrong. If there is demand for the token, regardless of whether the ICO is a good idea or not than the token/coin has value. That's the things i look for in them.

Okay mate will think about it, thanks

[chainese]

Well i think if there is huge hype around the token/coin that they are promoting and if you make sure it is already listed/going to be listed at exchanges plus you get a good size bonus for buying it than you can't really go wrong. If there is demand for the token, regardless of whether the ICO is a good idea or not than the token/coin has value. That's the things i look for in them.

I dont usually put my eyes on these coins specially for long term because most coins which are being hyped too much do end up good. Most of these coins do easily being dumped after being hyped up.I do rather choose up those coins which do really have a strong support either on both community and an active developer and the project with real world usage or being beneficial to people. Avoiding ICO scam is ones responsibility which we should really research up things.I cant pinpoint a list but im sure i has being mentioned a lot of time on how to avoid an ICO scam.

I tender to agree with Hamphser more, sounds more reasonable.

[chainese]

A publicly proven team must be. You cannot understand if a project is scam or not by looking the project or its website. The team always matters much.

I totally agree with you. So what exactly a team member should do publicly to approve she is participating?

[chainese]

Thank you, that's helpful.

Making sure they dont give you promises of profit (things like regal coin and bitconnect are good to flip but they aren't real businesses)

What is regal coin?

Companies with real sponsors of big companies that have done their due diligence

Good criteria.

Companies with a working product

Also good one. But there could be too late to participate in ICO when some genius product will be launched.

Companies with a good team / advisors

Agree. So you think I could trust any project with an advisor form TechCrunch (for example)? What responsibility is on advisors?

[chainese]

To me the first question to ask is can this team deliver on what they are promising. It they idea is more of abstract, it is better to keep your money in your pocket because they will burn all the money without delivering anything substantial to the market to see

Okay, let's try you criteria on the following examples. What do you think about:

• https://crypterium.io/ — contactless cryptopayments anywhere
• https://www.wacoin.io — WaBi is a digital token backed by safe products
• https://dether.io/ — Buy & sell ether nearby using cash. Spend it at physical stores

[Firered]

To me the first question to ask is can this team deliver on what they are promising. It they idea is more of abstract, it is better to keep your money in your pocket because they will burn all the money without delivering anything substantial to the market to see

Okay, let's try you criteria on the following examples. What do you think about:

• https://crypterium.io/ — contactless cryptopayments anywhere
• https://www.wacoin.io — WaBi is a digital token backed by safe products
• https://dether.io/ — Buy & sell ether nearby using cash. Spend it at physical stores

I like the idea of the first one, gotta chack it out more and i've read a lot about dether and, man, it sounds really bad -  just a "fancy" pokemon go\craigslist thing for ether

[chainese]

if you take care of these rules you'll decrease your chance to be cheated by those scam projects,
- team members, their project history
- advisors, their project history

and never ever give your private key, be far from whomever ask for it.

Okay thank you

[J. Cooper]

You will never be 100% sure if an ico is a scam or not. Of course there are indicators, some ico's are just so obvious that it's funny but others look extremely promising but then they suddenly fall of the grid. I don't really mess with ico's, I happily hold the majority of my assets in bitcoin.

I guess the best way to avoid ICO scam is not to invest in ICOs at all   That's the only way to be sure. And it is not really as bad as it sounds. One may still explore the ICOs which seem interesting and invest in them when the coins are released. I think that mostly the prices don't differ much from what they used to be during ico when the coins start to appear on exchanges, whereas the safety obviously grows a lot since you can be sure you'll be able to sell the coins just as you were able to buy them.

And that's exactly what I am doing. I am yet to invest in one single ICO (and I probably never will), one time however I did come extremely close to investing a couple mBTC's into one but I ended up not to (I am very happy I didn't. This doesn't mean all ICO's are bad, not at all (the BQX ICO, for example, could've turned your 0.5 BTC into 10 BTC),but the majority of them are and that is a risk I am not willing to take.

[Jenna_G]

Don`t be angry on me. Who can explain to newbie what SCAM means?
I'm sure that there is a hero ready to explain to me

[Hannahanto]

If you read the white papers and know the team members details, you will have good idea if the ICO is a scam or not. The amount of investment the ICO announced, can even make you sure of it. Always, focus on the ICOs being in the current market for a long time with good reputation and growth if you want to invest in an ICO. You will be more confident in investing in an trusted ICO if you focus on.

[chainese]

Actually it's quite hard work to avoid scam ico. But if care some points like, proper white paper, strong team, believable concept, super active in social media then you can understand which one promising ico and which is not.

Could you please give an example of a proper WhitePaper?

[chainese]

If you read the white papers and know the team members details, you will have good idea if the ICO is a scam or not. The amount of investment the ICO announced, can even make you sure of it. Always, focus on the ICOs being in the current market for a long time with good reputation and growth if you want to invest in an ICO. You will be more confident in investing in an trusted ICO if you focus on.

Helpful advice to research previous ICOs, thank you

[cryptohorsee]

Just simply buy from ether delta to be 100% safe

[chainese]

Just simply buy from ether delta to be 100% safe

Thank you! There was no scam listed out there, right?

[kupuku]

I mean, is there an exact list of rules that could guarantee that someone who follows them will surely not become a victim of another ICO scam. Of course there are obvious rules like event participation, reputation of team members among ather prifessionals, approve by well-known advisors. But potential scammers also know all these criteria and know what to fake exactly.

Is there a 'blockchain way' to create an algorithm, scheme or set of conditions allowing to recognise and ban scammers? Not government laws way which also good for the market in my opinion.

Would be appreciate a link to an old thread, perhaps I just didn't find it.

There's no guarrantee but you can reduce the chances of being scammed. Such as investing in an ICO with a working prototype.
In my opinion I think its ridiculous when a team wants to launch an ICO and still has to complete working on a prototype.
Investing huge amounts into projects that haven't got anything to show for yet doesn't really incentivize them to work on it.

Difficult to argue MVP is a rare animal in the great forest of ICO. I would definitely put in on the PROs side if ICO had a prototype or MVP while the lack of MVP should be considered as a CON for an ICO that's for sure.

[Usui-Chan]

Some illegitimate ICO looks promising but you should do some research or dig into the ones that you think looks legitimate to you, but again it depends on you to risk it all.

[metropolia]

A publicly proven team must be. You cannot understand if a project is scam or not by looking the project or its website. The team always matters much.

Yeah, invest in the team which have venture capital invested, it means that the project is backed by investigation. So easy to invest in reliable projects.

[SergiuHD]

Usually if they have a nice website, a strong team of developers I invest. I know it's kinda risky the way I do it but I only invest small amounts of money in the ICOs.

[Brama Jasa]

I mean, is there an exact list of rules that could guarantee that someone who follows them will surely not become a victim of another ICO scam. Of course there are obvious rules like event participation, reputation of team members among ather prifessionals, approve by well-known advisors. But potential scammers also know all these criteria and know what to fake exactly.

Is there a 'blockchain way' to create an algorithm, scheme or set of conditions allowing to recognise and ban scammers? Not government laws way which also good for the market in my opinion.

Would be appreciate a link to an old thread, perhaps I just didn't find it.

UPD Best Advices:

• learn about previous ICO projects, select viable ones and participate similar ICOs

if I have experienced this problem so often, I have been careful to choose an ICO that is not scam, after almost 15 times following the scam ico I just know the characteristics of ICO scam .. you can see in their wallet address how many people who invest in the project. most ICOs fail not because of the scam because their sales targets are not achieved, to start ICO of course requires a lot of capital, I think this is not a problem of ICO scam, but the amount of investment participation will determine ICO real or scam .. my advice ,, follow an ICO after pre-sale after that we check the wallet address (how much token sales result)