What are your Red Flags?

[dale1075]

There are many threads that ask for advice to select good ICOs, but it is as important to discard the bad ones. For me the "red flags" that lead me to run away are teams that are not experienced, rates that are not adjusted to the price of ETH or BTC and undisclosed term for private sales.

What makes you red flag a project?

Disorganized information and missing project details on their website are usually a redflag for me. Especially if you don't see their whitepaper and roadmap and of course their legitimate development team. I sense they are hiding something if these are not disclosed.

[palle11]

It's hard to judge ICOs that appear to have a decent team behind them. You can't simply trust a listing of team members with "real" names because LinkedIn profiles are easy to create for fake people.

How do you decide for certain that a team is "good"?

You can actually know if a team is good if there track records are good measuring up with there experience. Meanwhile, sometimes though, a good team might still have some challenges which would the reputation of the team.

For instance, many ico sites do crash these days immediately after the closure of ice as a result of the rush in traffic to access or buy. Thus, this might not necessarily be the fault of the 'good teams'.

[annbagira]

Thank all people for yours answers! For example I find two new things here - I need put my attention on the escrow mechanism and about fake newbie accounts under ANNTHREAD! Thanks guys and girls for your help only keep each to other informed we can make good and safety community!

[yareklamator]

For me, the "red flag" when choosing ICO is
- an unknown team, strange people without confirmation in reality.
- long terms of sales, which increase in time, since not even a minimum is collected.
- a long waiting period (one year or more) of entering the market of the main product.

[shulc7]

There are many threads that ask for advice to select good ICOs, but it is as important to discard the bad ones. For me the "red flags" that lead me to run away are teams that are not experienced, rates that are not adjusted to the price of ETH or BTC and undisclosed term for private sales.

What makes you red flag a project?

I am trying to avoid any ICO at all. Only thing I do it is buying good reliable coins and selling it when the time is come. This is best most secure way to get money.

[markers]

I prefer avoiding ICOs with poor quality and absence of relevant experience team. This is the main red flag for me. In addition to that, the things that raise my sense of anxiety are low quality website (or even absence of it at all) and marketing materials.

[mr.bitcoin2k17]

The main red flag for me is no MVP - investing in someone's ideas/thoughts/dreams is way too risky...
And, actually, mistakes. If the team don't pay attention to such simple things, it makes them look unprofessional.

[mulukey]

For me, the "red flag" when choosing ICO is
- an unknown team, strange people without confirmation in reality.
- long terms of sales, which increase in time, since not even a minimum is collected.
- a long waiting period (one year or more) of entering the market of the main product.

Your outlook is very good and in my opinion. I think the red flag project is a project that can not participate in the long and medium term. It is difficult to accept such projects. Investing in it is too risky for you.

[Snorren]

My red flags
1. Pre-sale was in crypto long ago - Early investors will cash out day one- price drops
2. Project is about micro lending, charity or a new coin.
3. Project team is 90%+ Russian. I have nothing against Russians but I don't invest in it.
4. Team seems more interested in ICO than building the project, tries to get as much money as possible, emails all the time and try to hype.
5. Team will take significant amount of tokens to themselves.
6. The blockchain is not vital to the project idea. - Only vital to get ICO money.


Best time to buy into new tokens I believe are 3 weeks to 3 months after ICO ended.
1. Price stabilized.
2. Some results should be visible, company still talking about the ICO on their web start page months after -avoid.
3. 100x easier to make a valuation of how realistic the timelines were and if the team seems functioning.

You may not get 100000% gains this way but perhaps 10000% with much smaller risk.

[Corsa1r]

Dev acting too friendly and convincing people this is the next big thing. Thats unfortunately way too common

[coinman45]

For me I red flag a project, when they make impossible claims and promise. Or they give ideas which are too good to be true. Also if I sense is not being accepted by the community.

[hdclover]

1. High cap for a basic project.
2. Less communication from the team or its developers.
3. Paying for some people to endorse their ICO (For example: John McAfee's shills)
4. No experience in the field that they are working on.

[JoyofCrypto]

The biggest red flag for me is when there is no information about the development team working on the project. For example there was an ICO called 'wcx' that had an anonymous development team and that CO was the shadiest thing I have ever seen starting from the promotion and ending with the execution.

[bucksman5233]

For me I red flag a project, when they make impossible claims and promise. Or they give ideas which are too good to be true. Also if I sense is not being accepted by the community.

Yeah it's a big true fact.
I have seen some ICOs which promotes themselves as next Bitcoin or ethereum or better than these without any working product at all. Some even claims that their ICO investors will get promised returns which is actually a major red flag for me because nobody can predict the price of a coin in the future.

[JLCoin]

When the team is unknown, the whitepaper leaves out crucial information, or doesn't exist at all, and the major sites refuse to list them (I'm not talking about the super-expensive ones).

[shaun98]

Red flags include bad communication from the team, inability to answer questions about the whitepaper, team refuses to reveal details such as the background of the company, and there is no specific roadmap for the project, and nothing is said about distribution of funds. I would stay away from ICO's with such red flags.

[Marvell1]

As for me the project's team and the general idea are very important. If developers hide their real names and do not want to communicate with investors, then this project is most likely created only in order to take away the money of investors.

[paxmao]

It's hard to judge ICOs that appear to have a decent team behind them. You can't simply trust a listing of team members with "real" names because LinkedIn profiles are easy to create for fake people.

How do you decide for certain that a team is "good"?

Linkedin profiles are not that easy to create, you need to look at the number of contacts, that is not easy to fake. Also do a quick name search in google because experienced people will have news and info related to them that are difficult to position.

[paxmao]

1. High cap for a basic project.
2. Less communication from the team or its developers.
3. Paying for some people to endorse their ICO (For example: John McAfee's shills)
4. No experience in the field that they are working on.

I would say that also not having a clear cap or selling the tokens for whatever the market decides is an indication of a money grab scheme. Can even be legit in purpose, but the execution is already lacking.