Why I am quitting ICO's

[Reatim]

I decided to quit ICO's. From December till now I invested about 5 eth into several ICO's. Invest what you can miss, this is what was able to miss.

Right now the first few of my ICO's have reached the exchanges. Most are under performing, but this is related to the overall dip (can be read everywhere). I understand, but ICO token economics have changed also.

• massive hardcaps
• most is sold in pre-sale to big investors, leaving scraps for crowdsale
• much attention to marketing, less to working product or realistic time lines
• immediately available on EtherDelta and IDEX, sure sign of little interest in token economics/future
• no lock on pre-sale tokens, whales take their x2, x3 or x-whatever as soon as possible (I would probably have done the same). Prices drop to below ICO price.
• too many ICO's without distinctive differences.
• too many ICO's in general
• too much tokens reserved for team/marketing
• many ICO's don't even have a crowdsale anymore (which perhaps is a good thing as the little investors are protected this way)
• ICO prizes are quite high. 1eth = 1000/4000 tokens is pretty common, but with a hc of 40 million, this will not easily go x10 or more.

I was 'unlucky' to miss out on a few ICO's besides the ones I was able to participate in. Afterwards I am glad, since I was able to pick most up at a fraction of the ICO price.

Important as ever: DYOR as not all ICO's have a genuine solution to a genuine problem. Some may seem like a fantastic solution, but often it is marketing combined with a strong team, and not so much a great working product.

And who am I? I am definitely a nobody , but still wanted to share my experiences and perhaps save people from thinking of getting on board of the next x100 ICO

p.s. when a Telegram has over 20k subscribers all screaming 'when lambo' with endless rows of animated gifs, you may also wonder if this is a serious block chain solution which will revolutionize 'x'

People should have read this thread since then specially those ICO investors that always been attracted with High profit promises but crying hard when they become a victim of scammers.
There are so many ICO and Victims all over the forum,but if they only realized this before then the losses maybe lessen and more had been saved.

Lucky for me that i only invested in ICO twice and both are profit brings me ,Though the first is Good income but the second is just a small bucks.

[NavI_027]

[snip]

Gone are the days that investing in icos are profitable and less scam. But now the situation is totally different, its rare to see a good project conducting an ico

Hmm but if we will base on the past history, ICOs will suppose to feel alive again when the next ATH comes since they can use btc's hype to increase their influence and gain many investors too. But honestly, I am a little bit doubtful regarding this because I do believe that most of us became smarter on spending our money. We already heard lots of stories about scams and failed projects and I think the lesson it brought us will be remembered even during the bullish days when everything seems perfect. .

its not a reliable way to gain with your invested money anymore.

Indeed, I also agree that those things are more productive than spending our time chasing for the "promising" alts .

[PavelMed]

I participated in one project three years ago. So when they went public, there was incredible growth, but I decided to wait, as they predicted a higher price. And now for the third year this is such a small amount ... less than I bought ...

[sunshinelegit]

Time of ICOs is passed. Now ETH or BTC can be invested in other ways. From trading and mining\staking to dapps and structured deposits

[Barnabe]

In my eyes, most ICOs were either scams or were promoting technology with no added value. To me, the best solution is to buy them at the start and sell the parts when the project gained traction and/or visibility.

[sempak]

In my eyes, most ICOs were either scams or were promoting technology with no added value. To me, the best solution is to buy them at the start and sell the parts when the project gained traction and/or visibility.

Indeed, without existing permits or control over all ico projects it would be very risky because it could be a fictitious project and we all know that now ico is no longer interested even people are reluctant to see good project reviews that still use the absence of the ico system transparency

[FrozenBit]

I participated in one project three years ago. So when they went public, there was incredible growth, but I decided to wait, as they predicted a higher price. And now for the third year this is such a small amount ... less than I bought ...

I also bought Merculet ICO, this project was very well promoted in 2018 and I participated in it. But until now, I don't see any news from them. The group seems to be dead and no one is active there, so never try to hold an ICO for a long time. Sell as soon as listed at the exchange or make a profit

[MudDev]

I agree, even a Premine is better than an ICO IMO, it's a slower bleed and allows for the community to exit and buy cheaper.

[coinfinger]

Promoting technology with no added value is the most important part of the ICO world that caused its demise. I mean sure you created a blockchain that was capable of something new, but did we really needed that new thing? I do not think so, I would rather use bitcoin blockchain which is about 10 years old with some improvements but fairly old compared to newer ones just because it is the backbone we needed and nothing silly was added on top of it.

There were just few coins that really had exceptional blockchain and they actually got a good amount of popularity and increased in price. Few cases there was scams and other stuff involving the coin which caused it to drop as well, but there is really nothing you can do about it. And there were straight out scammed by the ICO people but that is just life of crypto.

[Barnabe]

Promoting technology with no added value is the most important part of the ICO world that caused its demise. I mean sure you created a blockchain that was capable of something new, but did we really needed that new thing? I do not think so, I would rather use bitcoin blockchain which is about 10 years old with some improvements but fairly old compared to newer ones just because it is the backbone we needed and nothing silly was added on top of it.

There were just few coins that really had exceptional blockchain and they actually got a good amount of popularity and increased in price. Few cases there was scams and other stuff involving the coin which caused it to drop as well, but there is really nothing you can do about it. And there were straight out scammed by the ICO people but that is just life of crypto.

The biggest problem for me is that creating a newbcoin/block chain became too easy. Since no matter who could create a coin without any effort or investment the door was wide open for scammers and/or people only going in for the rapid gains. I mean, just go to linkedin and see the amount of people putting "block chain" in their title just to seem smarter/tech savvy...

[raidarksword]

I would say ICOs are the corrupt way of scamming investors wherein most of the type they turned out scam and running people's money. ICO's now lost its credibility towards investors due to large scam reports for past years now and that kind of collecting money became developers more greedy to money. Good thing now IEOs are now available for investors to regain trust on investing crypto and it gave a positive feedback towards it and the trust is back again for investors.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

Ico is good to invest in if you can actually make money if those projects will be listed in those big exchange and not on etherdelta and hitbtc were most thing that happened is dump and sell out of panic.
I don't think Ico itself is bad but what is bad is our attitude towards how this market work , no one want to invest in a project because he believes in the future of those project but just to sell for profits.

Some of ICOs good at the beginning but keeps losing its value later on when it is early listed on the exchange. Some are not looking on the product of the project to invest with, but with the price when they are going to gain profit which become immediate that cause a panic selling on the market and exceed the circulating value.

Many projects I have witnessed is that initially they have little value on the exchange but soon those values get dumped very quickly. Now that may be the case that those owners start selling their coin at the good rate and make money from it and other investors in such scenario suffers. Thus, few people also would have decided to quit the ICO.

Since most ICO projects have a lot of issues that ICO projects that they all turned out to be a scam and fraud, a lot of investors and bounty hunters have stopped participating because they have been afraid to get scammed. That is why most ICO projects have less value in the exchange, and sooner their value will dump so severely.

[abuya55]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I have the same opinion about ICOs. There are so many ICOs today, despite the fact that all initial offerings are high-risky investment tools, 90% of them are scams. So it's more likely that investing in ICOs is a way of loosing your funds. Just pure statistics.

[bitbunnny]

I think that more and more people abandon ICO investments. They are very risky, lot of scams and only few appear now and then that are worth attention but that is hard to recgonize.
After the ICOs boom that we had now we enter the time when ICOs will really having troubles to find new investors.  If you can't hope for decent profit but only for losses then it's better to stay out of it.

[Barnabe]

I think that more and more people abandon ICO investments. They are very risky, lot of scams and only few appear now and then that are worth attention but that is hard to recgonize.
After the ICOs boom that we had now we enter the time when ICOs will really having troubles to find new investors.  If you can't hope for decent profit but only for losses then it's better to stay out of it.

If people are overly suspicious of ICOs there might also be good opportunities for investments in real value creating solutions. But after an initial euforic phase in ICOs like we have seen the market will take a while to adapt and function correctly (meaning that only profitable solutions will survive and prosper in the long term)

[tvplus006]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I have the same opinion about ICOs. There are so many ICOs today, despite the fact that all initial offerings are high-risky investment tools, 90% of them are scams. So it's more likely that investing in ICOs is a way of loosing your funds. Just pure statistics.

Most of these fake ICO are held outside of this forum, because scammers know that their project will be carefully reviewed if they post their announcement on the forum. Therefore, it is very important to warn all bounty hunters and investors about such fraudulent ICO in a timely manner.

[monineklutak]

in 2018, ICO will be excellent, because the profit you can get from ICO can be 100% more,
but for now investors leave and choose IEO  

[josgandosbro]

in 2018, ICO will be excellent, because the profit you can get from ICO can be 100% more,
but for now investors leave and choose IEO  

In my opinion, 2018 is not all ICOs because that year, scammers have appeared so many, and indeed people now prefer IEO investments, but I observe that IEO is now almost the same as ICO, I mean here is the price, most of IEO is just throwing away after listing

[yhiaali3]

In fact I had bad experiences with ICO's, I bought many of it at a high price in the initial selling stage and when it was listed on the exchange after a long time it was low price and i lost a lot of money, in addition to that many of it is scam. They make big advertisements and most of the ICO's are false and I didn't make any profits from it and so I left it permanently long ago.

[thesmallgod]

I checked most of the reason you stated for stopping investing in ICO is still valid till date and things are getting even worse. Despite the fact that many ICO scam  was the reason why many investors were quitting investing into ICO, the advent of alternative which is the IEO has shown no improvement. Generally most projects find it difficult to even reach soft cap. If anyone Want to invest in any project now, I will advice to do so after the project token is listed and you see the seriousness in the development