Sharing My Criteria For Choosing Great ICO To Invest

[boonsterx]

I am been involved in ICO since last year June and made a few mistakes in investing in not so good ICOs as well as some successes in ICO.
After learning from my own experiences, I would like to share some ideas on how to pick ICOs that have good chances for doing well.

1) Good Business Case.
Many ICO do not have a firm business case to be on the blockchain. I think a blockchain business with a viable business case is important. The business must also organically create demand for their tokens. For example, Binance coin BNB incentives traders on Binance to hold it as it helps to reduce the commissions they have to pay, and at the same time BNB holders are rewarded with part of the exchange's profits. The company Binance also buys back their own coins and burn them. This is organic demand which does not rely on them even having holders of BNB, as Binance will buy back their own coin.. organic demand.

2) Small Hard Cap.
To date I have observed that ICO with less than $40mil in hard cap has a higher chance of success and get sold out faster. Selling out fast is an important indicator of future demand for the token and crypto exchanges also look at this before they list the coin. And with more crypto exchanges listing the coin, it will also mean a greater demand for the coin.

3) Team Members with Previous Success.
There are so many ICO nowadays that we are seeing new faces on ICO often. And many may not have the experience to run a proper ICO. Hence a ICO with experienced hands is important especially if some of the members were part of previous success.

4) Advisors with Pull Factor
While advisors should not be an important determinant of the ICO success, I have noticed that ICO with credible advisors tend to attract more investors as people recognises famous names. Vitalik does not endorses ICO as an advisors anymore but there are other founders who are participating as advisors. Their presence means something.

5) Marketing
Marketing is key. For ICO who have good marketing, you will see that they have a lot of members in their telegram channel. You will also see good participation in their chat and ANN thread. I would say at least 5000 members in their telegram group is a minimum for me to consider them as having good marketing.

With these 5 indicators passing muster, I will then download their whitepaper and do my due diligence. Recent good finds are Experty, ArcBlock and now MediChain. These 5 facts are my first cut before i read their whitepaper and ask my test questions for the CEO or admin on their telegram groups. If the CEO is never present and the admin cannot answer technical questions.. I will not participate in the ICO.

Hope these factors will be helpful to some of the members on bitcointalk.


BoonsterX

P.S. If anyone finds my inputs useful, pls do donate some merit  Thank you. Thank you.

[brianc1]

Yep I agree with all of what you've said, a couple of recent ICOs I went in on that passed this criteria are CarVertical, InsurePal and Vice (Not started yet). CarVertical initially looked like it may have a hard time hitting the soft cap never mind the hard cap but it sold out easily and looks to be making good ground now and held up not too bad in the recent crash. Wave 1 buyers are x3-4 ICO price still even after the crash.

[cryptomngr]

Good pointers,you should also check the founder's and developers background and their previous successful projects if there is any.Another thing to coinsider is the ICO's product/services that they have offered to the investors,doesnt the ICO has it?If none surely the project seems to be unworthy if you ask me because the most successful ICOs are being backuped by a good product/services.

[Gogochen]

It's true that what you say is important, but you ignore a very important factor: code.
No matter how great a white paper on an ICO project, we can see everything in the open source code.

[magle]

Honestly I don't think you can find anyone who would disagree with you on those points.

Except maybe your point about hardcap.

The projects that have raised a lot of capital, in the size of 100M+, most if not all of them are still under development, so there is a reason why they have not paid off yet.

Think filecoin etc.

If they actually get their projects completed they will most likely return huge gains to their investors. But those huge ICOs are never about just holding to exchange and then dump at 5x.

[boonsterx]

Yep I agree with all of what you've said, a couple of recent ICOs I went in on that passed this criteria are CarVertical, InsurePal and Vice (Not started yet). CarVertical initially looked like it may have a hard time hitting the soft cap never mind the hard cap but it sold out easily and looks to be making good ground now and held up not too bad in the recent crash. Wave 1 buyers are x3-4 ICO price still even after the crash.

yes CArVertical turn out to be a good ICO and making good ROI for early investors!

[boonsterx]

Good pointers,you should also check the founder's and developers background and their previous successful projects if there is any.Another thing to coinsider is the ICO's product/services that they have offered to the investors,doesnt the ICO has it?If none surely the project seems to be unworthy if you ask me because the most successful ICOs are being backuped by a good product/services.

yes. Having a MVP (minimum viable product) is also a good indicator that the project is credible. Better yet if the project already has a product that is demanded by their users.

[boonsterx]

Honestly I don't think you can find anyone who would disagree with you on those points.

Except maybe your point about hardcap.

The projects that have raised a lot of capital, in the size of 100M+, most if not all of them are still under development, so there is a reason why they have not paid off yet.

Think filecoin etc.

If they actually get their projects completed they will most likely return huge gains to their investors. But those huge ICOs are never about just holding to exchange and then dump at 5x.

There are always exception to the rule, but there are only a handful of projects that have actually achieved their 100m+ hardcap. Most do not hit their 100m+ hardcap and this makes their coin less valuable.

A smaller cap with good demand will usually see more buying activity when it gets listed and this raises the market cap of the coin much much more ...Case in point POWR

[MV7]

These are all definitely great ways of vetting an ICO. I'd like to add one thing to your list - a detailed roadmap.

Even if a coin has a lot of great aspects, it won't get much hype / hype will die down without major events pushing the project forward.

[fortunecrypto]

I gave you 2 points merit for this, all your post are true I consider the team behind any project and how they market their project a very important part, without this two important features that project will fail investors are wiser nowadays with to many Ico scam coming now.

[boonsterx]

These are all definitely great ways of vetting an ICO. I'd like to add one thing to your list - a detailed roadmap.

Even if a coin has a lot of great aspects, it won't get much hype / hype will die down without major events pushing the project forward.

yes agreed. A good roadmap is also important and just as important is the achievement of the milestones on the roadmap after the project has launched

[boonsterx]

I gave you 2 points merit for this, all your post are true I consider the team behind any project and how they market their project a very important part, without this two important features that project will fail investors are wiser nowadays with to many Ico scam coming now.

Thank you Thank you thank you! Trying to reach member status 

Totally agreed that there are just too many ICO scams going on nowadays. Some of the ICO are so obvious they are scam but I can still see investors contributing...

[Gorgeous011235]

Thank's for sharing this valuable tips...this is not an happy moment for ICOs in general..and we must be very picky when choosing the right project to invest in..i agree with you on every point...but i am afraid that the golden era of ICOs has come to the end 

[OrcaTech]

The first thing you need to pay attention to is the necessity and uniqueness of the idea. A project in which there is no "chip", a characteristic feature, "will not take off." A new development must necessarily be better than existing ones at least in something. For example, Ethereum is preferable to Bitcoin, because smart contracts are implemented in the Ethereum. And Dash and Monero win from the same Bitcoin due to complete anonymity of the participants.

[bosede1]

These is really an eye opener for those of us that are still battling with what and what ICO to choose, this is really helpful to us and to people like me, thanks.

[Sebas.tian]

I agree. Some new investor's common mistake is they don't check the ICO before they invest their money on it. They are investing without having any research about what's the real goal of the project. Your points is a good advice for those people who are still struggling with what ICO to choose. They may have high expectations in an ICO but won't be bothered if the ICO is a scam or not because they proved it on their own that they invested to an ICO that will meet their high expectations.

[boonsterx]

Thank's for sharing this valuable tips...this is not an happy moment for ICOs in general..and we must be very picky when choosing the right project to invest in..i agree with you on every point...but i am afraid that the golden era of ICOs has come to the end 

Dun give up. There are still some ICOs that are doing well recently. Experty and ArcBlock were 2 that i am vested in. Both sold out and hit their hardcap in record time. I am certain the token value will be significant when they get listed.

The other one i am looking at, using my criteria, is Medichain. It does not meet every criteria.. but they have established valuable partnerships with EHR and EMR (electronic health and medical records) companies that it gives them a strong edge over Medibloc (MED) which was a 10x ICO.

[Kolokoy]

Nice try of earning sMerit but sorry dude, I already hit my sMerits to my other accounts because it's totally unfair giving sMerit to anyone elase you don't know but you never get even one from them.

Anyway, this is a good guide for those who want to involve on ICOs and on how to spot a good one or the best one over than the others.
But most of the time people aren't looking for some facts because those are irrelevant in some cases, like Advisors, hell no! not all people knows who they are, right?
Most of the time scammers and fraudulent guys were in focus on the project because they know that many investors were considering that the project has greater impact on an ICO so they could still get money and then vanish like nothing had happened.
Well, for me, checking on their Telegram Community matters the most because Bots are too obvious.

[Fredomago]

Great guidelines especially to those who are really planning to be engaged with investing with certain ico's, better to have enough knowledge and do your own research, this selections of guidelines can be use in order to avoid mistake in placing your money into any project, if you have this tools and you use this to research information then you are good to go, chances of being scammed is lesser than those who doesn't have any idea but just place their investment because of the trend.

[captain8]

Small hardcap is good, also ICO's that hit not much higher than soft cap can provide huge returns too!