ICO ANALYSIS - DETAILED GUIDE TO INITIAL COIN OFFERING

[TokensMarketplace]

ICO ANALYSIS
Detailed guide to Initial Coin Offering

1. What is an ICO?

An initial coin offering (ICO) is a means of crowdfunding, through the release of a new cryptocurrency or token to fund project development.

In an ICO, a project creates a certain amount of digital tokens and sell them to the public, usually in exchange for other cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or ether.

Main reasons why public might be interested in a new token are these:
1) The token has an inherent benefit — it grants the holder access to a service, a say in an outcome or a share in the project’s earnings.
2) The benefit will be in increasing demand, which will push up the market price of the token.

An ICO is somewhat similar to an initial public offering in that it allows investors to purchase a “share” (or token) in a new idea or project. They often take place over 30 days and are the primary source of funding for some cryptocurrency startups. Unlike an IPO most ICOs are unregulated and there are few or no protections for investors.

Main problems of ICOs:
  

• Absence of Regulatory Oversight: Regulations are good because they protect people/investors/YOU. It is recommended to have due diligence before investing.
    
• No Track Record: The majority of ICOs don’t even have a working product, just a conceptual white paper that outlines how the coin will work. Not only that, ICOs have been asking for an incredibly large amount of funding.
  

However, It can be said that ICOs are a good thing for the following reasons:

  

• Democratization: Allow projects to circumvent the traditional method of asking Banks/Venture Capitalists that may take a lot of time and resources. Anyone can invest and can earn the possibly huge returns just like how the big boys are accustomed to. Of course, investing in ICO’s is a high-risk venture.
    
• Immense Profit Potential: Many in the space want to invest in the “next Bitcoin”, potentially riding the wave of buying coins at pennies on the dollar and selling them later at an astronomical valuation. Most ICOs have only a conceptual white paper with little to no proof of concept, thereby validating a high payoff potential due to the extremely high-risk investors are taking.
  

2. Origin of ICOs

The first sale of so-called tokens was carried out by Mastercoin in July 2013. Even though not that popular at the time this was a historical moment. The second event that sparked the ICO gold rush was Ethereum in 2014. Seven projects raised a total of 30 million dollars that year, and Ethereum alone raised over 18 million dollars.

2015 was a quieter year: Activity started to pick up in 2016, when 43 sales — including Waves, Iconomi, Golem and Lisk — raised $256 million. Included in that total is the infamous sale of tokens in The DAO, an autonomous investment fund that aimed to encourage ethereum ecosystem development by allowing investors to vote on which projects to fund. Not long after the sale raised over $150 million, a hacker stole approximately $60 million worth of ether, leading to the project’s collapse.

2017 saw an explosion of activity — 342 token issuances raised almost $5.4 billion — and thrust the concept to the forefront of blockchain innovation. Sales selling out in increasingly shorter periods of time fuelled the frenzy, and in the haste to get “in on the action,” project fundamentals became less important to would-be investors.

By the middle of the year, ICOs had overtaken venture capital as the main source of funds for blockchain startups as they flocked to what appeared to be an easier and faster way to raise a huge amount of money without sacrificing equity in the company.

As the ICO frenzy built up steam regulators around the world began to raise increasingly urgent alarms. No country was more concerned than China. In order to protect Chinese investors, the authorities announced that ICOs were a fraudulent way to make money.
This ban was followed by sharp warnings from a number of other regulators, including the European Central Bank and the IMF. Russia has also taken steps to more heavily regulate the cryptocurrency market and a number of large financial institutions have voiced concerns about the state of the market.

Despite the risks associated with them, ICOs are an important fundraising tool. They have allowed more people than ever to invest in new and revolutionary ideas.

3. Types of ICOs

In the ICO sphere, there are typically four types of ICO projects:

   1. Organic — These are the “original” ICOs — new projects that wouldn’t have been possible without their use of blockchain and crypto technology. The easiest way to identify this type of ICO is to ask, “is this project completely impossible using a traditional web tech stack?”
   2. Artificial — A crypto project’s “Artificial” ICO is often a traditional equity round in disguise, with a white paper in place of a financing deck. It’s only natural for companies — particularly those struggling to find capital through established channels — to seek novel ways to finance their businesses. But these are weeds growing in the crypto garden, and they will eventually be eliminated from the market as buyers become more professionalized and savvier.
   3. Synthetic — A “Synthetic” ICO is when an established, traditionally funded company that has built a sizeable audience plans to make the leap to the crypto economy. In the “CPG-ization” of the web, an ICO can be a way to escape the shadows of Amazon and Facebook. For companies that are #2 or #3 (or #10) in a space, shaking up the category can be a smart strategy.
   4. Scams — How to identify scammy ICOs? Read their whitepaper. How do you feel after reading it? Do you feel the FOMO (fear of missing out)? Scam ICOs play very strongly on that concept. If you feel consumed by fear after reading the white paper, it is very likely that you have been emotionally manipulated by the wording and structure of the paper. Most likely, the team who wrote the white paper would have been capitalizing on your greed to push you to make the purchase. Legit ICOs tend not to focus on this fear, but on the core unique selling point of technology, solutions, and problems that they are solving.

4. Types of ICO auctions

An initial coin offering (ICO) is a means of crowdfunding, through the release of a new cryptocurrency or token to fund project development. Just how the ICO intends to collect its funds also contributes to its attractiveness.

There are three main types of auction methods that ICOs employ to raise capital:

    1. CAPPED SALES — In this case, ICOs sell a fixed number of coins at a predetermined fixed price. The ICO team sets a maximum amount of tokens available and cuts off token sales once a particular amount have been sold and the desired market cap has been reached. The advantage of this is that it gives a fixed valuation for your network which makes the process very transparent for investors. If investors believe your network is worth more than the valuation implied by the token price, they can feel confident in purchasing your coins. The downside to this model is that if you are launching a particularly hot product, often it becomes a race to buy up as many tokens as possible.
    2. UNCAPPED SALES — This means that the ICO team sells its coins at a predetermined price but does not cap the total number of coins it will give out. So the more people that invest, the more total tokens ICO will mint. An uncapped ICO will still limit the percentage of tokens available, however, the real percentage of the given token supply is not known until the token sale has ended. Investors also cannot know the value of each token until the sale has ended and all the capital has been raised.
    3. DUTCH AUCTION — Participants get tokens for the same final price, which is set by the auction, irrespective of the time of their bid. A Dutch auction normally entails the auction beginning with a high asking price, which is lowered until participants are willing to accept either the auctioneer’s price, or a predetermined reserve price. The main goals of the auction are to enable everyone to participate while offering certainty about the maximum total value of all tokens at the time of the bid. There is also a reverse Dutch auction system where tokens grow less expensive over time, encouraging investors to hesitate and take more time in purchasing tokens.

ICOs are also incorporating tiered multiple investment rounds and pre-sales in order to generate more desirable outcomes. We can conclude that ICOs are very much still in the process of innovating.

5. How to participate in ICOs?

    Before you decide to participate in an ICO, you should do your research, and never invest more than you are willing to lose!

ICO Participation process consists of four steps:

1. Open an Exchange Account

    Assuming that you’re confident after performing your research and want to proceed with participating in the ICO, then you should open a fiat-accepting cryptocurrency exchange account to convert your domestic fiat currency into popular cryptocurrency of Bitcoin (BTC) or Ether (ETH).

2. Open Your Own Wallet to Participate in ICO

It is absolutely essential that you have your own wallet.
Your exchange account DOES NOT COUNT as your own wallet, as you do not control their private keys.
Participating in an ICO requires you to send BTC or ETH from your personal, private wallet. If you send it from an exchange, you WILL NOT get the ICO tokens since the transfer originates from the wallet of the exchange and technically you do not own any wallet in an exchange.

3. Follow the ICO Instructions

ICOs will most often provide a step-by-step guide to participating in their ICOs.
You should join their official communication channels such as Slack or Telegram to receive the latest updates and ask questions directly to the developing team.

4. Exchanges to Trade ICO Coins

If you believe in the tech, then hold the coins for the medium to long-term, or until your price target is hit (e.g. 2x, 3x, 10x of capital).
If you just want to flip it, then sell it once it reaches an exchange that usually lists an ICO.
Alternatively, if you’ve missed out on the ICO, you can buy it at an exchange.


The most popular ICOs sell out in matters of seconds and that is why it is important to be prepared the moment an ICO goes live. You should also take into consideration other factors such as the speed of the transactions you send. Whether participation is successful is dependent on how fast the ICO receives an investment. If the transaction is not accepted in time, it will be returned to the address that sent it.

Dear readers, this analysis is the product of an extensive research that was carried out in June 2018. Since the world of cryptocurrencies is changing extremely fast, this may not be relevant in the future, but for now, we hope you will find it useful

[1715351019]

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[1715351019]

1715351019

[cuong1610]

Dear readers, this analysis is the product of an extensive research that was carried out in June 2018. Since the world of cryptocurrencies is changing extremely fast, this may not be relevant in the future, but for now, we hope you will find it useful

You can always post that link

[TokensMarketplace]

Dear readers, this analysis is the product of an extensive research that was carried out in June 2018. Since the world of cryptocurrencies is changing extremely fast, this may not be relevant in the future, but for now, we hope you will find it useful

You can always post that link

That's the first sign of a progress 

[Coinworld98]

The ICO analysis report is really useful. At least those who couldn't access it will read it here.

[TokensMarketplace]

The ICO analysis report is really useful. At least those who couldn't access it will read it here.

Thank you for your feedback! We appreciate it

[grinyaaa]

Really very useful information for me! There are so many worthy of ICO, which are worth paying attention to! And of course we need to understand this area! Thanks to the author!
It's a pity that more and more SKAM ICO projects are coming to the crypto-market.

[TokensMarketplace]

Really very useful information for me! There are so many worthy of ICO, which are worth paying attention to! And of course we need to understand this area! Thanks to the author!
It's a pity that more and more SKAM ICO projects are coming to the crypto-market.

Thank you very much! We are glad that this analysis was helpful to you

Yes, unfortunatelly, there are many scams right now, but we need need to separate "the wheet from the chaff" by doing extensive research before investing. Also, there are a lot of great projects out there, that deserve the support of the community

[werizapp]

ICO ANALYSIS
Detailed guide to Initial Coin Offering

1. What is an ICO?

An initial coin offering (ICO) is a means of crowdfunding, through the release of a new cryptocurrency or token to fund project development.

In an ICO, a project creates a certain amount of digital tokens and sell them to the public, usually in exchange for other cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or ether.

Main reasons why public might be interested in a new token are these:
1) The token has an inherent benefit — it grants the holder access to a service, a say in an outcome or a share in the project’s earnings.
2) The benefit will be in increasing demand, which will push up the market price of the token.

An ICO is somewhat similar to an initial public offering in that it allows investors to purchase a “share” (or token) in a new idea or project. They often take place over 30 days and are the primary source of funding for some cryptocurrency startups. Unlike an IPO most ICOs are unregulated and there are few or no protections for investors.

Main problems of ICOs:
  

• Absence of Regulatory Oversight: Regulations are good because they protect people/investors/YOU. It is recommended to have due diligence before investing.
    
• No Track Record: The majority of ICOs don’t even have a working product, just a conceptual white paper that outlines how the coin will work. Not only that, ICOs have been asking for an incredibly large amount of funding.
  

However, It can be said that ICOs are a good thing for the following reasons:

  

• Democratization: Allow projects to circumvent the traditional method of asking Banks/Venture Capitalists that may take a lot of time and resources. Anyone can invest and can earn the possibly huge returns just like how the big boys are accustomed to. Of course, investing in ICO’s is a high-risk venture.
    
• Immense Profit Potential: Many in the space want to invest in the “next Bitcoin”, potentially riding the wave of buying coins at pennies on the dollar and selling them later at an astronomical valuation. Most ICOs have only a conceptual white paper with little to no proof of concept, thereby validating a high payoff potential due to the extremely high-risk investors are taking.
  

2. Origin of ICOs

The first sale of so-called tokens was carried out by Mastercoin in July 2013. Even though not that popular at the time this was a historical moment. The second event that sparked the ICO gold rush was Ethereum in 2014. Seven projects raised a total of 30 million dollars that year, and Ethereum alone raised over 18 million dollars.

2015 was a quieter year: Activity started to pick up in 2016, when 43 sales — including Waves, Iconomi, Golem and Lisk — raised $256 million. Included in that total is the infamous sale of tokens in The DAO, an autonomous investment fund that aimed to encourage ethereum ecosystem development by allowing investors to vote on which projects to fund. Not long after the sale raised over $150 million, a hacker stole approximately $60 million worth of ether, leading to the project’s collapse.

2017 saw an explosion of activity — 342 token issuances raised almost $5.4 billion — and thrust the concept to the forefront of blockchain innovation. Sales selling out in increasingly shorter periods of time fuelled the frenzy, and in the haste to get “in on the action,” project fundamentals became less important to would-be investors.

By the middle of the year, ICOs had overtaken venture capital as the main source of funds for blockchain startups as they flocked to what appeared to be an easier and faster way to raise a huge amount of money without sacrificing equity in the company.

As the ICO frenzy built up steam regulators around the world began to raise increasingly urgent alarms. No country was more concerned than China. In order to protect Chinese investors, the authorities announced that ICOs were a fraudulent way to make money.
This ban was followed by sharp warnings from a number of other regulators, including the European Central Bank and the IMF. Russia has also taken steps to more heavily regulate the cryptocurrency market and a number of large financial institutions have voiced concerns about the state of the market.

Despite the risks associated with them, ICOs are an important fundraising tool. They have allowed more people than ever to invest in new and revolutionary ideas.

3. Types of ICOs

In the ICO sphere, there are typically four types of ICO projects:

   1. Organic — These are the “original” ICOs — new projects that wouldn’t have been possible without their use of blockchain and crypto technology. The easiest way to identify this type of ICO is to ask, “is this project completely impossible using a traditional web tech stack?”
   2. Artificial — A crypto project’s “Artificial” ICO is often a traditional equity round in disguise, with a white paper in place of a financing deck. It’s only natural for companies — particularly those struggling to find capital through established channels — to seek novel ways to finance their businesses. But these are weeds growing in the crypto garden, and they will eventually be eliminated from the market as buyers become more professionalized and savvier.
   3. Synthetic — A “Synthetic” ICO is when an established, traditionally funded company that has built a sizeable audience plans to make the leap to the crypto economy. In the “CPG-ization” of the web, an ICO can be a way to escape the shadows of Amazon and Facebook. For companies that are #2 or #3 (or #10) in a space, shaking up the category can be a smart strategy.
   4. Scams — How to identify scammy ICOs? Read their whitepaper. How do you feel after reading it? Do you feel the FOMO (fear of missing out)? Scam ICOs play very strongly on that concept. If you feel consumed by fear after reading the white paper, it is very likely that you have been emotionally manipulated by the wording and structure of the paper. Most likely, the team who wrote the white paper would have been capitalizing on your greed to push you to make the purchase. Legit ICOs tend not to focus on this fear, but on the core unique selling point of technology, solutions, and problems that they are solving.

4. Types of ICO auctions

An initial coin offering (ICO) is a means of crowdfunding, through the release of a new cryptocurrency or token to fund project development. Just how the ICO intends to collect its funds also contributes to its attractiveness.

There are three main types of auction methods that ICOs employ to raise capital:

    1. CAPPED SALES — In this case, ICOs sell a fixed number of coins at a predetermined fixed price. The ICO team sets a maximum amount of tokens available and cuts off token sales once a particular amount have been sold and the desired market cap has been reached. The advantage of this is that it gives a fixed valuation for your network which makes the process very transparent for investors. If investors believe your network is worth more than the valuation implied by the token price, they can feel confident in purchasing your coins. The downside to this model is that if you are launching a particularly hot product, often it becomes a race to buy up as many tokens as possible.
    2. UNCAPPED SALES — This means that the ICO team sells its coins at a predetermined price but does not cap the total number of coins it will give out. So the more people that invest, the more total tokens ICO will mint. An uncapped ICO will still limit the percentage of tokens available, however, the real percentage of the given token supply is not known until the token sale has ended. Investors also cannot know the value of each token until the sale has ended and all the capital has been raised.
    3. DUTCH AUCTION — Participants get tokens for the same final price, which is set by the auction, irrespective of the time of their bid. A Dutch auction normally entails the auction beginning with a high asking price, which is lowered until participants are willing to accept either the auctioneer’s price, or a predetermined reserve price. The main goals of the auction are to enable everyone to participate while offering certainty about the maximum total value of all tokens at the time of the bid. There is also a reverse Dutch auction system where tokens grow less expensive over time, encouraging investors to hesitate and take more time in purchasing tokens.

ICOs are also incorporating tiered multiple investment rounds and pre-sales in order to generate more desirable outcomes. We can conclude that ICOs are very much still in the process of innovating.

5. How to participate in ICOs?

    Before you decide to participate in an ICO, you should do your research, and never invest more than you are willing to lose!

ICO Participation process consists of four steps:

1. Open an Exchange Account

    Assuming that you’re confident after performing your research and want to proceed with participating in the ICO, then you should open a fiat-accepting cryptocurrency exchange account to convert your domestic fiat currency into popular cryptocurrency of Bitcoin (BTC) or Ether (ETH).

2. Open Your Own Wallet to Participate in ICO

It is absolutely essential that you have your own wallet.
Your exchange account DOES NOT COUNT as your own wallet, as you do not control their private keys.
Participating in an ICO requires you to send BTC or ETH from your personal, private wallet. If you send it from an exchange, you WILL NOT get the ICO tokens since the transfer originates from the wallet of the exchange and technically you do not own any wallet in an exchange.

3. Follow the ICO Instructions

ICOs will most often provide a step-by-step guide to participating in their ICOs.
You should join their official communication channels such as Slack or Telegram to receive the latest updates and ask questions directly to the developing team.

4. Exchanges to Trade ICO Coins

If you believe in the tech, then hold the coins for the medium to long-term, or until your price target is hit (e.g. 2x, 3x, 10x of capital).
If you just want to flip it, then sell it once it reaches an exchange that usually lists an ICO.
Alternatively, if you’ve missed out on the ICO, you can buy it at an exchange.


The most popular ICOs sell out in matters of seconds and that is why it is important to be prepared the moment an ICO goes live. You should also take into consideration other factors such as the speed of the transactions you send. Whether participation is successful is dependent on how fast the ICO receives an investment. If the transaction is not accepted in time, it will be returned to the address that sent it.

Dear readers, this analysis is the product of an extensive research that was carried out in June 2018. Since the world of cryptocurrencies is changing extremely fast, this may not be relevant in the future, but for now, we hope you will find it useful

Thanks for the article. It was really helpful.

[TokensMarketplace]

Thanks for the article. It was really helpful.
[/quote]

You're welcome! One of our missions is to educate cryptonewbies and prepare them for participating in this exciting crypto world

[siagh357]

A good guide on ICO analysis, but I will urge you to expand your research to include how to make a good selection of ICO and how to spot a scam coins since most newbies are been scammed each day through ICO offerings.

[TokensMarketplace]

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[Jerryzack2]

Excellent information. thanks

[thecoinisseur]

Nice intro to ICOs!

If any more newbie investors are interested, I've created a short checklist on what to look for in an ICO: http://www.coinisseur.com/what-to-look-for-in-an-ico/

These are just basics that everybody should know + a few red flags (for example a discretionary monetary policy, i.e. supply in the hands of issuers, etc.)

[TokensMarketplace]

Excellent information. thanks

Glad you like it! Thanks for your feedback!

[TokensMarketplace]

Nice intro to ICOs!

If any more newbie investors are interested, I've created a short checklist on what to look for in an ICO: http://www.coinisseur.com/what-to-look-for-in-an-ico/

These are just basics that everybody should know + a few red flags (for example a discretionary monetary policy, i.e. supply in the hands of issuers, etc.)

Thanks! Appreciate your feedback!