10 Signs you are investing in a bad ICO

[larks500]

5 – No real need for the token: The whole ecosystem is built around the project’s token. If you can replace the token with Ethereum or Bitcoin and it still works, there is no real need for a token, hence no real need for an ICO.

The artificial need for a token in the project is a key sign that this token will not have a future. Even if the project is successful, investors will receive a token, which will not cost anything.

[nikay12]

It is great information for all of us and this could be helpful for us in choosing the right project so we have to be alert always.

[vhroen]

This information is really a big help to those people that have the plans to invest in crypto/ICO because a lot of ICO today are  scam and we don't want our investment to vanish just like that.

[dumplingsandsushi]

Some really good points here.

I especially think that the quality of the community is starting to become much more important.
I have seen some great projects get ruined because of a greedy, impatient community.

Daostack is a great example.
The ICO was super successful with the public crowdsale selling out in a whopping 80 seconds!
From the beginning, they have made it clear that they will be focusing on development and not exchanges.
As a result it hit dexs and was stable for awhile and then crashed.

The community overwhelmingly blames the company with so many selling at a loss and encouraging others to do so.
They were all butthurt because they didn't get instant profits and are tarnishing the image of daostack.
Utter craziness.

[metalglowd]

There are many ICOs. The phenomenon, that started three years ago, has become very accessible due to Ethereum based ERC-20 tokens. After you’ve learned how to identify a good ICO, in the following list you will find 10 red-lights for bad ICO investments.

4 – Hard cap is huge: other than a very few cases, an unlimited cap or a very-high cap means huge demand is needed to make up a secondary market (or exchanges). No one will be waiting to buy the tokens on the exchanges.

For me personally, i think the hardcap was depends on the profile of the token itself, the distribution, tokensale price, and the benefits or goal of the ICO itself.
sometimes there's an ICO which is that have a good partnership and the need of the token was real. so its still normal if the hardcap was huge, but as long as the Pre-ICO sale could sold so fast, i think its still on green-light of good ICO

[pageraji]

good points statement, i learn something in almost 10 point,, if we want to invest with a lot of money we should analize and try to find suspicion of all points..but now so many expert give point in ICO listing that made some ICO looks good or it just advertisement strategy?

[blu.storm]

is an excellent list of signals that must be watched before one invest his money, have to do some research on who are the members of the team, if they have experience and i also take a look at the vote on ranking sites

[BITSPANISH]

Thank you for sharing . But I don't think it'll work all the time. For example there are so many ICO projects don't have these signals but it's still a bad ICO project to invest and we only know it's a bad project when its token listed on exchange with very low price or it'll never being listed on exchange ). For now, it's hard to distinguish between legit and scam, good and bad cause scammers nowaday are much more professional

[Betwrong]

I agree with what is said in the list, especially with the parts about researching on the developers team and the community.

But I disagree with this part:

4 – Hard cap is huge: other than a very few cases, an unlimited cap or a very-high cap means huge demand is needed to make up a secondary market (or exchanges). No one will be waiting to buy the tokens on the exchanges.

Huge hard cap is not a red flag by itself. On the contrary, it could be a good sign if there's a good team of developers behind the project and when a big amount was raised already OR when you can see from exploring the community that it will be raised most likely.

Also, I slightly disagree with #9. I think it's possible to make a good profit with a token even if it wasn't listed on a major exchange at all. And also we cannot rule out the possibility of token being listed on a major exchange in the future when we make our research in early stages.

Every opinion is absolutely accepted. The post is to learn and I think i’m Still adding tknknowlege through every replies here. Thanks Boss

I'm not a boss, but you are welcome. ) I'm still learning too and I think you've opened a useful thread from where many of us can get some knowledge.

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#14 - There is no open line of communication with devs.  A serious start up will have ways for the public to talk to and interact with devs as a means of creating trust amongst investors.
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This is a great addition to the OP. Indeed the dev team should be open and as transparent as possible. If they are hiding from public or trying to bypass serious questions during AMAs on reddit or wherever, it is very likely that they represent a bad ICO.

[silverleafy]

I see newbie with 10 merits  .
He received 10 merits before he reached at least junior member rank! Great work man!