How do noobs pick an ICO to invest and loose money?

[Sal Khoury]

With thousands of ICOs rolling around on hundreds of ICO listing websites how do you really make a decision to Invest in a token? that would atleast sustain if not have a substantial growth they promise. Some would say the team behind it and some would say the concept, some say the future it promises and some noobs would invest following a big marketing campaign around a fake ICO. So how do you know?

Well the answer is simple first and foremost you see the usability of it.

Noobs invest because some of these ICOs make large noise when it comes to marketing. An average ICO cost around $20000 to promote for about 15 days to make you feel that it’s an ICO that would make you a millionaire, but behind the scene it really could be just four friends putting $5000 each to take your hard earn money.

Out of thousands of ICOs in 2017 only few have their coins trading on reputable exchanges.

So how do you invest?:

#1. Read the white paper

Whitepapers are the concept and the whole business plan of an ICO, in other worlds is the heart and the soul of business. Some of them are purposely made so complicated that you fail to understand them and even read them. TIP: Try going for ICOs that are simple and easy to understand and effect your daily life NOT IN FUTURE but now.

#2. Understand the Concept

If you can understand the concept of the business easily then everyone else can too which means people will adapt it easily, and it will have mass appeal so try investing in simple ideas that could have impact and mass appeal.

#3. Beauty is in Simplicity

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to see the simplicity behind an idea. It is the simplest ideas that makes the most money and reaches audience in masses. Look for the simplicity in presentation and approach of an ICO if you do not understand it even after doing due research just don’t bother, IF IT’S TOO HARD FOR YOU TO BUY, THEN IT’S TOO HARD TO SELL TO MASSES.

#4. Bonus & Value

This is the simple one why shouldn’t you get the highest possible bonus to take a risk. Companies that are trying to keep bonuses low in the light of keeping the credibility are actually robbing you off from the potential growth in future. Invest in ICOs that are offering highest bonuses considering points above.

If you are able to investigate atleast three points out of four mentioned above about any ICO your money could be in good standing & safe future only “IF you study it properly”.

Finally my recommendation for few ICOs that could be great investments because of simplicity and mass appeal and are easy to adapt check them out:

BRISK PASS - Decentralizing Transportation

Brisk Pass is a GLOBAL transportation access pass with integrated cryptocurrency wallet called Brisk Wallet utilizing its own exclusive cryptocurrency called BriskCoin to pay for services and/or transfer funds.

ICO starts in November with first 5 days of 100% bonus

https://www.briskpass.com/

TBD.

Coinlancer - A blockchain platform for effective freelancing and secure peer-to-peer exchanges.

Coinlancer is a decentralised job market built on Ethereum platform, which empowers burgeoning freelancers and clients from across the globe. The traditional ways of freelancing don’t seem to work anymore. Same principles, unexplained account suspensions, unaddressed or prolonged disputes often leave you exhausted.

https://www.coinlancer.io

ICO Currently Online.

DMarket: a decentralized marketplace for turning every virtual item into a real commodity.

Game universes are not connected to each other in any way. There is no safe and easy way to trade between them. We are building DMarket - a global marketplace based on blockchain and smart contracts. It enables one-click sale, exchange or evaluation of every virtual item between all games on any platform. The blockchain will ensure 100% security and safety. Smart contracts are the bridge on blockchain to connect all game worlds and universes without any third party needed. They will log changes of ownership and automatically transfer payments. The DMarket Token is native to DMarket, it is the only currency used in the marketplace.

https://dmarket.io/

ICO Currently Online.

Worldcore - today and tomorrow

Worldcore was already known as a successful payment institution, when Ethereum was created. Since its launch, Worldcore has started offering wide range of payment products, won awards and opened its virtual doors to thousands of customers worldwide.
Worldcore is a regulated payment institution with an EU license granted by the National Bank of Czech Republic. The current annual transaction volume is expected to exceed EUR 100 million by the end of 2017.

https://worldcore.com/

ICO Currently Online.

[Nerman]

Well I know you are advertising the coin but what you have posted is actually true. Many people just want to be lucky thinking that they are investing on the next bitcoin. In their mind since the coin is really cheap it is worth the risk. I know that there are a lot of scams and sometimes they use ICO to do it. But some ICO just doesnt work. Some of them has the purest intention but not fail.

I will check your ICO list and see id there are worth investing.

Thanks.

[feelideb]

Nice write up man! You have justice to few precautions one should take before participating in ICO. One thing I will like to add is for investor to also look out for is working product or software. Something thats of value. Spectre.ai already have a working product and a mission to make transaction financial broker less. Everyone should check them out.

[Mpamaegbu]

OP, how you omitted "Team" which is the most important aspect of ICOs everyone pays attention to after the "White paper" raises a doubt. The project team members are necessary to peruse and googled to know what track records members have and achievements they had made in the past so as to relate it with the project at hand.

I really enjoy this post. Investing in ICOs is great and really only takes thorough research to find good ones.  Those who lose money don't spend enough time researching.

I like your list of ICOs as well. I may be biased but another ICO worth checking out is Protex. We are a project that is targeting the massive market of data privacy, security, and anonymity.  Our platform is fixing a worldwide issue so definitely worth checking out. Our pre-sale is live so don't miss a chance at the largest bonus.

Here is the website: Protex
And here is the [ANN]

Of course, this is a biased assessment since your promotion is about your company.

[Catmony]

Nice guide and I suggest you to have some different topic for this thread like how to choose good ICO. I haven't made any decision yet on the tokens you have suggested but your picks looks good and based on the fact.

Thank for this thread.

[nerverd99]

Btw nice thread , this maybe help me too.
I always analysis invest an ICO.
My analysis maybe same with you , but i see the road map too.
I will invest when i see the pre-sale event raised to soft/hard cap.
Then i know their will seriously handle their ICO.
But thanks for sharing , this a good tutorial "How to choose a good ICO for investment" maybe like that.

[disconnectme]

To be sincere the OP did a great job with the post trying to be creative promoting the three project, I indeed invested into Dmarket and still looking at worldcore. The space is so crowded now that you need to do a better research to be able to find real value for one's money

[Cubirez]

#4. Bonus & Value

This is the simple one why shouldn’t you get the highest possible bonus to take a risk. Companies that are trying to keep bonuses low in the light of keeping the credibility are actually robbing you off from the potential growth in future. Invest in ICOs that are offering highest bonuses considering points above.

This is the worst kind of advise you could give. High bonuses are generally used in ICO with relatively weak projetcts to get people on board as with big numbers, the investment looks appealing to people.

However in these ICO, an overwhelming majority of the investment comes at the very beginning when the bonuses are high. This happens almost all the time : these ICO get a nice start because of the high "bonus". However once the first bonus tier is gone, the funds simply stop incoming (who would invest with +50% "bonus" when other got in at 100% "bonus").
So in these cases you can't even call it a "bonus" : as everyone buys at high bonus level in fact, noone get any kind of "bonus" as you have to keep in mind that even though you get additionnal token, the ICO team doesn't get additionnal money out of it.
Exemples :
- If in an ICO, all the people invest at a 100% bonus : people get twice the "original" amount of tokens, but the ICO team raises the same amount of money than with 0 bonuses : you just have a dilution of x2 noone earned anything.

- If 80% of the people invest with 100% bonus, then 20% came late and invest with 50% bonus (lets assume noone was stupid enough to buy at 0%) 80%x2 + 20% x1.5 => total tokens created is 190% of what would be created with no bonus.
So the token "price" is in fact diluted by x1,9. Thus, the real added value by purchasing early for the 100% tier is (1+1)/1,9 = 1,052, that's an amazing 5,2% bonus.
Best to come is for people in the 50% tier : their bonus is  (1+0,5)/1,9 =  0,79, which translate into a -21% bonus. Great start for an investment.

While small bonuses could make sense for long lasting ico (reward the risk as OP says), high bonuses are just a dishonnest marketing way to manipulate people into investing in some projects.
Most of the serious projects will not go for stupidly high bonuses because they are attractive enough so they don't need that.
Recent exemples of succesfull ICOs: Cindicator (no bonus), Chainlink (20% in the first week), Wanchain (no bonus)

[Legendari]

I like your post. Thank you for the work done, after this post many beginners are going to approach the process of investing wisely.

[miyaka26]

This post has some good information about investing in ICO, reading and researching is the key to find and invest on a legit and good ICO, there are a lot of them trying to get your money by advertising the benefits of joining the ICO, there is a saying it is too good to be true, the team of the ICO is also an important one to consider and check if they are a legit one.