What tips you will give to a new investor to identify scam projects early ?

[krishnaverma]

According to me this can be done by

1) Detailed research about the project and people behind the project.

2) Asking about the project on forums like bitcointalk where more experienced members can give proper advice.

3) Checking the community of the project on social media. If there are lot of bot replies or comments on their posts in social media like Twitter, there is strong chance that the coin price is being manipulated.

These are like general advice but do you some specific signs that newbies can spot in scam projects early. What tips you will give to a new investor to identify scam projects early ?

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[Nwada001]

What kind of scam project is it, actually? Do you mean scam Bitcoin projects or scam crypto projects in general? Your topic should be under beginners and help or possibly altcoins discussion, for I can't think of Bitcoin having any other projects or even Web 3 projects that it could connect to.

Most scam projects can easily be detected by their numerous fake promises, which could sound too good to be true, not even having any good use cases, but yet you can see the project being hyped by many paid advertisers. But most projects these days appear to really be true, with great potential for team planning and developing real things, but at the end of the day all they are actually after is to rug pull and run. So one just needs to be careful before they make any investment in any project; personal research should be done in order to reduce the risk of being a scam victim.

[KiranKBS]

There is no silver bullet to say Project is Scam. Lemme share my thought process if it gelps you.

1. Check Dev Team and their promises are realistic
2. Check any HoneyPots using Dex Analyzers like TokeNSniffer, WuikIntel, HoneyPot.is etc
3. Check their activities in TG, Twitter
4. Check their Tokenomics and justification if they want to hold some tokens
5. Check initial tradings of the coin and find out any trends like they are purposefully pumping to dump or other patterns.
6. Importantly, their project should have Sustainable Earning and Return to investors Model else it will be like Octopus eating himself
7. Invest only you can loose if you trust the project.

[LogitechMouse]

If you aren't ready to lose your money investing into projects especially the new ones, don't do it.

Whether it would be new projects, or whatever project it is, that's the only thing that I'm telling to them because TBH, no one can predict whether a particular project is a scam or not. Yes new projects have some red flags that we investors are putting into it, but the reality is, we don't know if a particular project is a scam or not until they will do it. Though there are still some projects that are obviously a scam, I always give them the benefit of the doubt. I guess it's because I'm not investing into new projects that's why that's  the way I think.

If only there is somebody who can predict the future, and tell which are scam project, and which are not then nobody is getting scammed in investing into new projects by now. We've seen projects in the past that has a kind of legit, a bit trusted, active developers, and yet they still scammed people.

[makishart]

According to me this can be done by

1) Detailed research about the project and people behind the project.

The background from the developers matters a lot in this case. As long as people behind the project has very good background and they will be doing something stupid to destroy their reputation.
Just try to remind you that as we have hundreds of new projects come everyday. This is very difficult to knew whether the project used fake identities or not.

2) Asking about the project on forums like bitcointalk where more experienced members can give proper advice.

Many people in here have been experiencing in the altcoins project started from icos trend a few years ago.

3) Checking the community of the project on social media. If there are lot of bot replies or comments on their posts in social media like Twitter, there is strong chance that the coin price is being manipulated.

This is also one of important metric but sometimes there was also legit project that have been getting so many bot replies caued by they were doing airdrop.
The airdrop hunters are spamming their tweets.

These are like general advice but do you some specific signs that newbies can spot in scam projects early. What tips you will give to a new investor to identify scam projects early ?

My advice never try to deal with a project that offers so many promises that's too good to be true.

[Bananington]

My advice never try to deal with a project that offers so many promises that's too good to be true.

This of course is the biggest red flag of them all! Once the promises sound too attractive, Runnn!!!

Greed and investing do not go together, a greedy investor will be more easily scammed than an investor who is content.

[Yogee]

3) Checking the community of the project on social media. If there are lot of bot replies or comments on their posts in social media like Twitter, there is strong chance that the coin price is being manipulated.

This is also one of important metric but sometimes there was also legit project that have been getting so many bot replies caued by they were doing airdrop.
The airdrop hunters are spamming their tweets.

Yes this is really happening so I suggest to never use their social media presence as a major metric in assessing a project's legitimacy. Some people use it as reference if there is enough hype to invest in a token but for short term only. They buy before the train takes off and sell when more hype is created  - pump and dump purpose only for short.

[bangjoe]

That is the right step to indicate a crypto scam project or not in its project, especially in new projects, and it seems that there are already some people who add their knowledge and experience for anything to do in indicating the crypto scam project.

But the most difficult thing is to indicate whether or not scams in the crypto project that has been large or long journey, in the community, ecosystems, etc. and maybe the project has been running for quite a long time in its industry, like FTX, Terraluna and others who experience fraud Great in the project, this kind of thing is very difficult to indicate, so that even large investors were fooled by suffering a considerable loss until he was carried away.
The consistency of monitoring a project must be done even though you already have a big name in this Insdusrti, do not let you distract and as if you do not care about the money invested with them..

In my opinion, new projects are easier to be identical with these formulas to test them rather than projects that have been running for a long time.

[Ojima-ojo]

According to me this can be done by

1) Detailed research about the project and people behind the project.

2) Asking about the project on forums like bitcointalk where more experienced members can give proper advice.

3) Checking the community of the project on social media. If there are lot of bot replies or comments on their posts in social media like Twitter, there is strong chance that the coin price is being manipulated.

These are like general advice but do you some specific signs that newbies can spot in scam projects early. What tips you will give to a new investor to identify scam projects early ?

Aside from the mentioned points for altcoin investors to avoid scam project, we still have a few red flags which i may likely point out which is promises on a certain % profits when listed, because we have some pump and dump scam that already promised a certain predetermined coin value.


This is all a plot to sway investors into putting down huge amount into the investment and coin during the pre-sale period and at the end the coin when listed will get dumped by the team who will pull an exit one on everyone,  

[Xal0lex]

I have a few sure signs that a project is a scam. For example, the project only has a listing on DEX, such as pancakeswap, one wallet possesses most of the entire offering. The project's tokens are sold exclusively through the site, which can sometimes be freshly registered. The number of Twitter followers is fake. The project's website is single-page and some information is presented as pictures, not hyperlinks, when you go to which you can check the information provided. The roadmap is heavily delayed or, conversely, heavily ahead of schedule.

[Jackl87]

These are like general advice but do you some specific signs that newbies can spot in scam projects early. What tips you will give to a new investor to identify scam projects early ?

I think first of all it is important to mention, that even if you do your own research as thoroughly as possible, then there is still a chance, that you will become a victim of a scam. So only invest money into crypto that you can afford to lose completely.
My second recommendation would be to never invest into meme-coins. 99.9% of them are scams or dead within a few hours or days.
Also don't believe the follower numbers on Twitter. Followers can be bought or boosted with airdrops for example.

[blockman]

In short, DYOR.
Gather information as much as you can and in every place if there's related data you can see from the socials that they've got. All of it are just the same, a community, a place, the forum as everything that they could possibly be in must be looked upon for them. Because you'll need to verify every information you get and the forum is one of the best place to ask and also if they've got an existing community.

[uneng]

A new investor will have a hard time following hints to identify scam projects, because everything is new to him. He won't have any measures to compare one coin to another, because he doesn't know anything yet. For that reason, I would advise him to start investing only in Bitcoin. And only when he gets used to it and experienced about conversations involving altcoins I would suggest him to select some altcoins for his portfolio, following the guidelines mentioned by OP on this thread.

Some things can't be rushed. Time is needed until the investor learns and understands the difference between a promising and unfavorable coin/token, until he learns what is a coin, token, stablecoin, memecoin and their respective features such as PoW, PoS... If you supply too much information at same time, trying to help, he will just get confused.

[Natalim]

Actually, it is part of the research.
 - knowing the team members
 - project use case
 - reading the roadmap

We already have to do these things but unfortunately, it never guarantees us a 100% safe investment. Scammers are absolutely smart now that no matter hard to check, sometimes we still fall into their hands. We just know later after a few days or weeks that a particular project turns into a big scam.

[o48o]

There are ton of things you can do. And this subject has been talked over and over in this forum,
But i have lost faith that most people would even have the tools or expertise to understand how to compare even succesfull projects. Not to mention identifying a scam.

So i am picking one of your advices here:

-cut-
2) Asking about the project on forums like bitcointalk where more experienced members can give proper advice.
-cut-

If you ask about a project. There's a good change that someone in here will take a look at it. Like i often do, even if i don't response to everything.
You might not get the answer you are looking for. And some people blame you for not doing your own research. But if you are asking a honest opinion and not trying to shill something,
you might get answer from experienced people. Some people will overlook the red flags, and some see red flags when there are not any. But you ain't going to lose by asking.

If anything, you'll get more data for your own research.

[JeffBrad12]

identifying scam projects might be quite difficult honestly, you just don't know which project gonna be turning out as a scam, but there are some sign that a project is legit
if you careful enough in your observation, one of the sign is the fact that the project got massive supports from either venture capital or some big exchanges not some measly exchanges
but big one like binance and kucoin and you could be sure that these project legitimacy are really high after all those exchanges would almost 100% sure make a thorough observation in regards
of the coin that they listed they just avoid scams at all costs and you could easily follow that.

[adaseb]

The easiest give a way if a project is a scam if it promises crazy yields like 1% a day or something. Many will think, great after 100 days my money will be doubled. But it’s not always the case.

Sure there are some tokens that can yield 1% a day but it’s in the token not in fiat terms. So you’ll double your stash of some useless token in 3 months but the price will go down 50% in the same time frame.

Biggest giveaway is if they promise yields which just aren’t possible. I’d stay far away.

[killerfrost]

The ambiguity of projects about the necessary information to share with everyone, such as tokenmic, team, capital, project content, ... moreover, look at low-cap and planned projects. ido plan or listed on low quality trading places. The crypto environment can be said to have many special things, but it is also a place that attracts many scammers, taking advantage of greed is a worthy act. I have been exposed to a number of projects that follow trends in the period of 2021 and I have realized that when money flows into this market easily, scammers are active in many places.

[bocyaj]

The best one to identify the scam project by checking the profile of owner and associates in the social media.You have to check with the social media like Facebook,Twitter and LinkedIn will be enough.Because most the real projects will share their own real Id without fear,So they can assure to run the project in long run.Most of the good projects will survive over a couple of years,it was easy to earn good profits from good projects.

[kaseygriffin]

The basic identification of a scam project for me personally is that they are always looking for hype from short term trends, there are things like former ICO, IDO, DEFI, NFT, CEX, DEX, MEME, WEB3,... are all crafted to approach the hype on each stage. It is necessary to research everything before deciding to buy, there are criteria about team, community, token, potential, ... for basic assessment. However, in any environment, they have low quality projects, so I think it is really helpful to look at btc or top altcoins to see what's going on around.