Why do most people invest in wrong ICOs to lose money ?

[giga_999]

What I saw since I am into the ICOs is that investors are not studying or researching the projects profoundly. For me in general most important is the concept of a project and what the project is backed with.
For example, Crowdholding is a project with a great concept of co-creation backed by the Fintech startups pledging the future revenue back to the crowdholding's ecosystem. which makes a project solid

[1714048243]

1714048243

[dx_twisted]

They do invest because they do believe in the project or became interested in it. Otherwise, they'll ignore it and move into an ICO that fits their interest. Others invest and hope one day that luck will be on their side to gain profit. I don't really see an ICO nowadays who has truly potential, unlike before where ICO's has really their own purpose. I was glad that I benefited from these kind of ICO's (won't name them) but I did really gained some profit in it. I do hope one day devs will change how the game was being played today and become more strict in choosing participants especially in airdrops where will it create such hype and be dead at the end.

[UAE Seasider]

Investing in ICO now is pretty high risk if you are hoping for a quick return, I haven't seen many ICO recently that you cannot purchase coins cheaper after it finished

[rpg]

Investing in ICO now is pretty high risk if you are hoping for a quick return, I haven't seen many ICO recently that you cannot purchase coins cheaper after it finished

You don't need many. We need only to choose 2-10 best ICOs each month, and if one of them will fly high it will be super, even if 9 will be a SCAM

[Snaic]

When choosing an ICO for investment, it is difficult to choose one that does not contain the possibility of fraud. Now the team can be professional enough, and technical documents are in order, and the idea of ​​the project is good, and in the end, all this can be fraud. Therefore, investors suffer. In order to minimize risks, there should still be government regulation of the ICO.

[imtav]

I think there's maybe a dozen ICOs within the year that will show promise.  Everyone and their grandmas are starting ICOs these days.  You don't buy every piece of crap sold on the shopping channel, so why do people do it with ICO?  A fool and their money are easily parted...

[honeyduckgoose]

The issue is the amount of ICO's that are popping up all over the place and diluting good projects.

Research is the key here. Just like any investment knowing the business, the industry and where they are going is vital. Here are a few things i look for in an ICO

- Strong team - Both in development team and also the CEO's / marketing (no point having a great team to create something, if nobody can advertsie it and push the startup in the right direction.
- Realistic vision - not aiming too high or if they do not reach their target everyone who invested will be disappointed
- Solid whitepaper - Well thought out, shows realistic goals, a strong good vision and a plan of action
- Strong social media presence - A social media that shows they are connected with everyone
- Good customer support - Shows they care, and they have invested time and money into making sure the average investor can ask questions
- Good website - A business who is willing to throw time and effort into a good website are less likely to be a scam
- finite supply - ICO's with no cap can be dangerous and can simply just damage their own coin by releasing more for more investment.
-Market they are getting involved with - Is this a new market? or a dying one? who controls the market?

Also here is an interesting article comparing ICO's with a working product vs a vision.

https://medium.com/@crowdholding/mvps-pocs-and-ideas-which-icos-should-i-better-invest-in-and-which-will-let-me-down-369bf1ffae2

Hope this helps and happy investing!

[MarioLuck990]

It is true! Most people buy whatever, I think they don't even study what are buying the most. I personally hold my money and invest only to very good projects and teams, I never lost money, I always have good returns.

[Zendalet]

I also start to wonder about whether some ICOs -- independent of their whitepapers, team and hype -- are addressing markets that will take many years for them to have an impact, vs other ICOs that have been careful to choose an area of technology/life where their impact can be more immediate.

In that regard, Filecoin strikes me as a good example, they almost immediately have a market, they have little direct competition. 

In reading through Prosume and thinking about their market, at least for an eventual launch in the US, it strikes me that they will run up against a very large number of entrenched interests.  The major power companies are not going to want to give up their market-share.  Consumers are 'educated' to believe that they have to stay with their name brand energy companies.  So, this might limit the initial market. It doesn't say anything about the longer term, but it does mean that anyone investing in an energy distribution company, at least within the US market, would most likely have to be viewing this as a very long term market play.  I do realize that the initial market is EU, and I admit to knowing less about energy distribution and the market forces for the EU system.  Also, noting a very nicely put together web-page, set of white-papers and a powerful team that has been assembled.

Please, don't take this as being negative about Prosume, or its prospects, only trying to help illustrate some of the thinking that I believe is obvious for evaluating an investment (short-term, long-term, difficulty of market, etc).  In that regard, I'm trying to hew to the original post on this thread and how ICOs should/could be evaluated.

Obviously just my opinion -- --

I agree with you about green energy projects. I get that the current hype is saving the world through blockchain based sustainable energy projects, but if you consider investing in such a project you should first ask yourself why the energy market is what it is the last couple of decades and how throwing a blockchain against that is supposed to solve one of mankind's most difficult problems.

[XbladeX]

People like to gamble 

Because all investments in kryptoland are big "?" and random gamble.
Many skams is pumped because their whales are pumping  giveing some news then DUMPING hard.
In ICO today is 50% chance tha tyou wil lose money best time in investing ICO is over now skams wont go x10 for whitepaper.

[Iamlegit4sure]

people lose money because it is impossible to predict the market. simple as that!

[Fancyax]

Before investing in ICOs you have to do your own search and analyses and fix the time you want to hold.
Unfortunately many ICOs represents good projects but cannot be related to blockchain.

[sirenmoon]

People are taking a risk. Most of the people are following the other people, reading wrong reviews and trusting to the promising plans of the devs. Some projects made highs promises and when ICO  came to an end people realized it was bad investing. Same is going now with plenty of ICOs around. People gamble with their money and are expecting easy money. Everyone wants the money without needing to work for it and they are seeing that money in ICOs in which half of them are the bad investment.

[Reez]

Most people think they are going to become rich because of the marketing campaigns these ICO coins run. They get all hyped up and then people just sell them shortly after they hit the market like a classic pump and dump scheme. The developers of these ICOs do this to make money and it's well known as it happens all the time and it's talked about all the time.

[dragons_are_secure]

one estimate, via CNBC is that only 8% of 26,000 blockchain projects are still active:

 https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/09/just-8-percent-of-open-source-blockchain-projects-are-still-active.html

[gorodi]

These people are in a great hurry. Probably their excitement plays a bad joke with them. You know that still many guys believe advertisement and buy the things that call later trash.

The same with ICO: use your head and spend time to investigate the ICO project, and no one will call you a loser.

[dragons_are_secure]

going back to the original lead on this thread, I find the Australian Government's investment in Energy blockchain to be interesting:
 
 https://www.coindesk.com/australian-government-grants-8-million-for-blockchain-energy-pilot/

any connections, that Bitcoin forum members know about, between this effort and other energy related ICOs that the OP had mentioned?

[Haunebu]

Investing in ICO now is pretty high risk if you are hoping for a quick return, I haven't seen many ICO recently that you cannot purchase coins cheaper after it finished

You don't need many. We need only to choose 2-10 best ICOs each month, and if one of them will fly high it will be super, even if 9 will be a SCAM

This actually makes sense, but is still a gamble at the end of the day. We are all playing with our own money which we could lose at any point of time since majority of the ICOs are scams. For example, look at Electroneum. I have invested a very small amount into this coin and had good expectations since they reached their hard cap in less than a month. Now, I am not expecting much since they did not fulfill their promises. I am patiently watching them and am neutral about this coin currently. This is the risk with ICOs these days, but even if one takes off as you said, it would all be worth it.

[PORN_coin]

now the Crypto currency is an incredible trend and much unfortunately on this wave having only the idea of enriching and doing nothing more fulfill their plans
while doing harm to the community and projects that want and can do incredibly positive things

[Probablylikely]

That is why we should always do our due diligence before investing in any ICO projects. 1st of all, choosing a strong project team to begin with will definitely lead you to a higher success rate.
Carefully examine the project. Read the information on the project's website, check out the team and the advisors, and read up on their ba :-*ckgrounds.
If there are outside investors involved, see who they are. A big VC fund might indicate a project with a higher chance of success.
Check out the project's social channels and blogs: Are they updated frequently? Are they run professionally?
Read the project's whitepaper; if it's too technical, find an expert's evaluation or ask one to evaluate it.
Does the team already have a working product? Perhaps in beta or alpha stage? If possible, try it out. A solid working product, or at least a proof of concept, might mean the team is serious and potentially already ahead of their competitors in the space.
Carefully examine the ICO terms and conditions: Has there been a large pre-sale discount? Is the total market cap and the amount of funds being collected realistic and reasonable? For example, a company making a decentralized calendar app probably does not mean half a billion dollars in funding.
What's the project roadmap like? Does it appear realistic, or is it just a wish list?
What's the team's plan for spending those ICO funds moving forward?
See what social channels are saying. Check Slack, Reddit, Telegram, and more, but be wary that there will be lots of unreasonable shilling for the project, as well as just plain clueless comments. Use common sense; if something feels off, stay away from it.
Never invest more than you're prepared to lose. And when investing in ICOs, understand that this is the riskiest possible type of investing.