What is the way to understand scam ICO?

[Vit83]

IMHO first of all team must be checked if these real persons or not. If they have social activity for a long time I don't think they will run with your money on islands;)

[YuginKadoya]

IMHO first of all team must be checked if these real persons or not. If they have social activity for a long time I don't think they will run with your money on islands;)

You can sure do a personal research on the people behind the ICO and do a background check on them is a good start in learning if the ICO is a scam of not, But I think the most important will be the hype of a certain services and products of that ICO if the ICO will be successful with there  pre-sale is really impossible to predict, Well I am saying this because if a certain ICO would not make a success they might tend to drop the project.

[KennyPowers]

What I'm about to say is pretty basic stuff, but it's always good to remind oneself about it.

The only information available to most of us about a project/company is the information that is on the internet. Based on the information that the team released in different forms (product documentation, team bio, interaction with the community through media, ...) you can draw some simple conclusions and distinguish the "complete trash ICOs" from "there might be something behind this".

Now the next step is to evaluate the quality of given information and to form some criteria which will help you decide if it's something "you want to bet on" or it's a pass

Quality of information and criteria examples:
Is the information about the team available and viable? Where is it available (there are some "industry standards", i.e. LinkedIn)? Does the team experience cover areas necessary for success?
Do I understand their whitepaper and are their goals clear? If not, can I find more valuable info about it? What are the obstacles, what are other people saying? And so on.

Sometimes you have to go through a lot of crap information, but with time and experience people learn to separate what's important and what's a distraction.

Making a plus minus list with your criteria (or google someone elses criteria) can be a simple and organized way to make a decision.
Hope I helped you a little.

[veliq]

Identify scammers very falsely! all projects are good! But you can read a white paper to understand the future prospects of this company

[redwhite037]

an ico scam. will be a non-product project. dev team is not clear. and roadmap and white paper copy. I think so

[EL-NIDO]

The most important thing before investing in ICO is to take time and study first the project. Reading, complete research and analysis is the work. Read the whitepaper carefully and search about the persons in the team.

[ccsang]

it's really difficult to know that bounty / ICO is scam or not , but you can always check their project development progress and pre-sale / token sale raised fund amount, check their team member and project whitepaper

[tdrinker]

IMHO first of all team must be checked if these real persons or not. If they have social activity for a long time I don't think they will run with your money on islands;)

It's a good thing to check and maybe reduces the risk but there are still many who have used their true identity and then run away with funds.

The thing is with ICOs is you're never going to know for certain if it's a scam or not so you just have to do all of your due dilligence and take everything under consideration. After that I like to assign my potential investments a 'risk' score which is a % chance that they're a scam. I then factor this in to any decision to invest or not.

Put simply if the risk score is 50% I won't invest unless I expect a minimum return of 2x etc etc

[kryptqnick]

We see many scam ICO bounties in the forum. But there is no way to understand what is Scam, which is not Scam. Is it possible to catch anything by following it? 

Here's a list of things I would suggest to do to decide whether ico is a scammy one:
- check out their website, make sure it looks fine and has at least a whitepaper and team members with some info about them
- google the project to see the rates and reviews people might've already given to it
- check the scam accusations on bitcointalk
- if the project ran any kinds of bounties or campaigns before, make sure that they payed the participants
Finally, if you want to participate in an airdrop or something like this: never give anyone your private keys, passwords or send any money in advance.
I think these tips are pretty much enough to save one from most of scammy projects.

[CaterpillarRave]

There are many ico going on today. Just you learn that you will know what ico will scam. ico scam is usually the ico no product.. roadmap, whitepaper

[adolf512]

At the moment, on the forum and on the Internet, you can find a lot of information about ICO projects that interest you. There are sites where statistics of successful ICOs are kept. The community is growing, and everyone shares their opinions and experiences, it's now easier to distinguish fraudsters from earlier.

[pawanjain]

To be honest, it is not that easy to identify whether a project/ICO is scam or not. It takes a good amount of time to research about a project. We have to find out what the project is aiming for, we have to know who its developers are and the team behind it and identify whether they are legit or not. Further more, the ICOs which claim to give guaranteed high returns are more or less the scam ones and we should never invest in such projects.

[sirenmoon]

We see many scam ICO bounties in the forum. But there is no way to understand what is Scam, which is not Scam. Is it possible to catch anything by following it?  

Most of the ICOs are revealed as a scam when they get to the middle phase of their project. When the developers suspect that they are revealed they pack their bags and run. You could do your own investigation about the certain ICO and try to distinguish if it is the valid or not. Most of the scam ICOs have a bad whitepaper, false advisors, and big market cap. Even then when you think that all is good you could end up with a loss no matter if you invested into the ICO or if you are advertising for them.

[manoj kumar k]

If the project team is hidden, then this already deserves a thorough ICO check before investing.  The poor quality of the site also leads to suspicion.

[xitijekiki]

Not easy to know the ico scam project. I think you should follow the road map of ico if the ico is not true with the road map can ico is scam.

[panapi3200]

We see many scam ICO bounties in the forum. But there is no way to understand what is Scam, which is not Scam. Is it possible to catch anything by following it? 

For me I would say that ICO bounties will sca m if they we asked them a question then they dont know how to explain a certain refere nce to answer our question.Then I shall do a research so that I will know how secure thei bounty ico implemented

[Jobbernowl]

Today it's really hard. Even if you google with "project-name scam" you may find too much marketing copywrites with such titles but you will find explaination inside why this project is cool and you need to invest in it Novaday scams hide more and more smart.

[PhucS]

This is necessary because of the scam project is getting more and more. First, I think we should check the team information and their roadmap. The transparency and credibility of the team members is essential. Keep track of the official theme of those projects in this forum, if there are more supporters and discussion then it would be better. Besides, some ICO review sites like trackico, icobench can also help you. This is just my advice, surely it can not help you avoid it all, it just helps you to understand some parts.

[MKH]

Check their website first. Because any good projects team will try their best to make the websit impressive. Try to collect information about this ico, if its look not comfortable for you avoid it. Also check their Roadmape and take a look on their salling progress.

[wasitas7]

Just check 2 things: team and product, if team is with russians you got extra chance for scam, and if there is no github with product then too.