Newbies should be careful when using ICO rating websites

[olabiyijummy02]

There are several ICO ratings websutes out there like
ICOBench
ICORatings
TrackICO
FoundICO
ICOmarks
ICObazaar etc

Recently i was researching a project for investment purposes and almost the first thing i saw on the website was 5/5 and 9/10 ratings of that project linked to these rating sites.

However i proceeded further to do more digging, only to find out that the project is basic and below average, has a very average team and has raised less than 10% of their fundraising goals (below the softcap) 2 months into the token sale.

There is no way a high quality project that deserves a 9/10 rating will such a low progress.
Anyone who has invested due to the ratings on these websites will likely loose their money.

So it is important to take the ratings on these websites with a pinch of salt when making your project research for investment.

[1714017126]

1714017126

[1714017126]

1714017126

[1714017126]

1714017126

[1714017126]

1714017126

[OcTradism]

Newbies should not only be careful when using ICO-rating sites, but also be very careful with ICOs, or IEOs. If they are newbies, and lack of knowledge, they should invest in bitcoin only. Or they can move further by investing in top altcoins, like Ethereum, Monero, Dash, Ripple, Litecoin. Investing in ICOs or IEOs contain lots of risks. ICO- or IEO-rating sites should be considered as one of support tools for them, and newbies have to DYOR before making their investment decisions (ICOs, IEOs, whatever kind of hot trend in crypto to come).

[Bttzed03]

Most of these ICO rating sites are paid and that is already known to many.
To somehow improve their image, they try to make it more reliable by allowing "experts" or "independent ICO analysts" to express their own opinion on these start ups. But I doubt they're really independent.

[odukoyaewatomi27]

You really can't trust these ico rating websites because for of them are moved by financial benefits and therefore they will give a good rating to the project that can pay well. Misleading a good number of people.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…>

I used to think that these kind sites were a place to go to. After all, lacking direct inner information to the ICOs themselves, you’d expect for some review sites to be ethical and to perform a proper ICO scrutiny. Unfortunately, experience shows that their ratings are pretty inaccurate, and often guided by interests that go beyond the ICOs potential itself.

I’ve read a couple of threads in the past by ICO launchers that explained how they were often provisioned with an upfront fee in order to get a good review. That kind of killed my confidence on review sites, and once many of those ICOs have taken place, you get to see how all those scores were pretty meaningless and barely ever came close to predicting which ICOs would make it and which wouldn’t.

[mk4]

Most of these ICO rating sites are paid and that is already known to many.

This. Personally, If I were to invest in an ICO, I would only use these sites for easier access to check the technical specifications of a certain ICO(soft/hard cap, milestones), and for checking the team members. As for the ratings section though? That you should definitely ignore. I'm pretty sure these websites earn a lot of money from these fake ratings.

[OcTradism]

This is what I meant with DYOR. Depending too much or entirely on rating sites is not good, extremely bad in reality. I even don't visit those rating sites because their figures can mislead me into wrong directions and bad decisions. No one can maintain stable emotion all the time, and such rating sites likely cause big mistakes of investment someday. For example, if I want to check a coin that I heard from my friend, I will start with coinmarketcap, from which I can get basic things and links to check more. I don't use other sites to get basics of crypto project, coinmarketcap is enough for my interest.

[Betwrong]

I think we should treat these sites like Google's search engine. Most of the information on these sites is true, as well as most of the search results on Google are relevant ones. But there are paid search results on Google, and paid ratings on ICO rating websites. It's a pity that ICO rating sites do not attach an "Ad" sign to the paid ratings though.

[bitmover]

I’ve read a couple of threads in the past by ICO launchers that explained how they were often provisioned with an upfront fee in order to get a good review. That kind of killed my confidence on review sites, and once many of those ICOs have taken place, you get to see how all those scores were pretty meaningless and barely ever came close to predicting which ICOs would make it and which wouldn’t.

This is certainly a problem...
However I believe that in time some true websites that do not accept paid review will show up, and become trusted. Their "trust" by the community will be more valuable than this "paid" reviews...

[Greatchu]

Its been a long time since I've stopped following ICO rating websites ,many if them are paid off to give projects higher ranks ,you can't depend on them ,do your own research

[wwzsocki]

This is a very well known fact from a long time that all this mentioned in OP services are just scammy and not trustworthy.

Take money for their ratings and use shady practices to use these rankings against ICO which are not willing to pay. They will list ICO "gratis", but with a very low rating, which will make such ICO looks like a bad one. Is enough to pay to get the maximal rating this is the reality.

In the ICO mania times, these services were the number one places to go when it goes to investing in ICO's. Their advisors are known to ask for money and post super ratings for scammy projects. I will not provide any proves here because is enough to search for ICObench scam queries in Google.

If you invest in ICO use these services for information like links, teams, token metrics, dates, etc. The investing part and decision should be done on your own and after deep research.

[Little Mouse]

Almost all of the review sites publish good review once if they get paid well. All of them are paid review. No one is unbiased here. Remember to do your own research before investment.

[Velkro]

There is no way a high quality project that deserves a 9/10 rating will such a low progress.
Anyone who has invested due to the ratings on these websites will likely loose their money.

So it is important to take the ratings on these websites with a pinch of salt when making your project research for investment.

Most websites like this offers to remove negative ratings for a price. Sometimes they provide ranking of ICO's based on who payed more have better ranking position.
They don't do this rankings as service to the public. They want to earn from it. This is not good source of informations. Best source of informations is crypto general forum like bitcointalk. You can read many many opinions in one place from various people around the world.

[LogitechMouse]

Many of these ICO rating websites are getting paid by these different ICO's to have a higher ratings.

Higher money to pay = higher rating so as an investor, don't base it on these ICO rating websites because even they have a high rating on the sites there will still be a chance that they will become a scam or dead token. DYOR when it comes to investing in ICO's.

[OcTradism]

Many of these ICO rating websites are getting paid by these different ICO's to have a higher ratings.

I called them as False Positive Ratings! Whatever kind of False things should be avoided. ICO-, IEO-, whatever-False Positive Ratings.

[Mike Mayor]

There are several ICO ratings websutes out there like
ICOBench
ICORatings
TrackICO
FoundICO
ICOmarks
ICObazaar etc

Recently i was researching a project for investment purposes and almost the first thing i saw on the website was 5/5 and 9/10 ratings of that project linked to these rating sites.

However i proceeded further to do more digging, only to find out that the project is basic and below average, has a very average team and has raised less than 10% of their fundraising goals (below the softcap) 2 months into the token sale.

There is no way a high quality project that deserves a 9/10 rating will such a low progress.
Anyone who has invested due to the ratings on these websites will likely loose their money.

So it is important to take the ratings on these websites with a pinch of salt when making your project research for investment.

Some of these websites you can pay for a good rating. They even email you asking if you want a good rating from them. Some give you a bad rating and use blackmail to try to get you to pay to make it a good review.
The first time I saw these sites I didn't trust them. I warn people not to even bother with then for any other purpose other then to see what they all about and see if they did indeed pay for their ratings.
No one wants to support a project that does underhanded things like that.

[Lucius]

Title of this thread should be "Newbies should be stay away from ICO", or they will stay without money in a very efficient way. Such sites just offer space for promotion, and they can write excellent articles about anything if they are paid to do that.

Internet is a powerful tool which is used for good, but also for many bad things. I would say that everything what is in any way presented on internet should be taken with a pinch of salt - read, explore, and ask questions before any investments.

[bernardos]

What else to expect if money is involved. It is sad how easy it is to pay people off. It would be an interesting research to check some known scam projects and take a look at the ratings they received back in their days and also check which reviewers or advisers issued the ratings. Maybe it is possible to find a circle of these money grabbing fake review writing jerks.   

[Herbet Fry]

Newbies should stay away from ICO at least until their account is old enough to bounty hunt.

These ICO rating websites base their ratings on almost nothing. A lot of what they say just sounds cool or "sophisticated" when in reality it is just gobbledy goop. Seriously read some of these ICO Anns. You will read what they say over 10x and it still won't make sense. In these cases stay away. A good project would be so good at what they do that even an idiot should be able to understand what they are all about.

[olabiyijummy02]

Newbies should stay away from ICO at least until their account is old enough to bounty hunt.

These ICO rating websites base their ratings on almost nothing. A lot of what they say just sounds cool or "sophisticated" when in reality it is just gobbledy goop. Seriously read some of these ICO Anns. You will read what they say over 10x and it still won't make sense. In these cases stay away. A good project would be so good at what they do that even an idiot should be able to understand what they are all about.

Bounty hunting presents a very good opportunity for newbies to acquire cryptocurrencies and while it is very difficult to identify the top bounty projects, newbies can use bounty hunting as a learning process to researching and gaining experience on ICOs and IEOs.
Influencers are mainly concerned about the money that they make and will only mislead the noobs in the cryptocurrency space.