We all know that there are a lot of scams circulating within this community, most of you might also be aware of the fact the mods of this forum do from little to nothing to remove scams from this community. Which I fully understand because it's hard to tell if something is actually scam unless some things are really obvious. At least we don't get spammed with phishing links and affiliate program promotions and that's thanks to the moderation of this forum.
But what's the most successful kind of scam that's been going around? The one and only kind of scam where people still fall for it in an attempt to get quick profit? The kind of scam that people pay to buy their pass in something that doesn't even exist yet? The scam that wants to create the impression that you're
investing in something with a future and success at doing so? Guessed it? No?
Well, the answer is
INITIAL COIN OFFERINGS also known as ICO. It's the new trend among altcoin developers, the new way to easily earn money by doing almost nothing.
Apparently bitcointalk has become the main portal those scammers use to attract attention and get people to put money into their scheme. This makes the community toxic for newcomers and a place scammers use extensively to promote their scams. And we look at the aftermath, the damages that are being caused are pretty serious too. The scammer gets away with a huge sum of money and in almost all cases, investors don't even get the chance to earn their principal back from this
investment. Because, undoubtedly, ICOs in the crypto currency world are nothing more than an attempt from
developers to have some quick profit rather than the
incredible investment opportunity they advertise them to be.
But hey, I've been bashing initial coin offerings for quite some time now, I guess I should bring up some valid points to justify why I support this opinion and want all ICO discussion ultimately gone from this forum. Take a look below, I'll include an entire list of reasons on why ICOs are in fact the worst kind investment one can make and actually have no reason to exist in the first place.
1.
Investing in something that doesn't even existObviously, the
coin that's being offered is virtual, but that's not the point. In almost all cases, developers that accept initial investments don't even have a product in hand rather than just some eye candy to represent their idea. People invest into a project that technically doesn't exist yet therefore putting their trust (probably) on a single person to develop the project he proposed. Totally forgetting that bitcoin was created to fix the problems of trust based systems.
2.
Unskilled developers, absolutely no hope for the future. EVERYTHING IS A LIE By getting some money into their hands, anyone would have been able to
develop what those coins with ICOs are offering. Because let's face it, most of the
features are released to the public (or even the investors) after the ICO (or part of it) has been paid.
Let me also create a list of services you can hire someone for on the Internet along with some approximate prices.
- Brand logo design, custom image designs (usually used first presentation of the coin): 50$-100$
- Copywrigting, promotional material creation, general marketing material (aka eye candy): 100$-200$
- Coin creation (aka copying and pasting code): 100$-200$
- Website creation: 200$ - 400$
- Developer gigs (aka, hiring someone to make your coin have crypto 2.0 features: 50$-500$
- Pools, exchanges, blockchains, faucets, games: FREE
Do you see now? By putting money to an ICO, you are probably enabling a lazy and unworthy individual (or team) to create something they don't even have enough faith in order to invest their own time and money to invest in. And what is this coin actually going to be? Probably just a copy paste of another open source project, just with more marketing
eye candy in order to lure more clueless people onto being scammed.
3.
Enforcing pump and dumps, developer scandals.Even if none of the above seems worrying to some people, we should remember that coin developers that offer ICOs have to live up to the promised that were made to investors so people are passively trusting the developer for not doing several nasty things and delivering what he promised.
Even if a trusted escrow is used to deliver the ICO and a blockchain website is created to prevent suspicious transactions before the distribution, there are still several tricks developers can play, time for another list:
- coin ends up being copycat of other coins,the project was full of empty promises
- Dumping remaining coins right after the markets open
- Not following the roadmap and leaving the project behind after he gets the money
- Severe errors in the code, network and core functionalities after the release and devs are gone
And even if none of the above happens, (which is highly unlikely) what makes you think that you're have a return of investment? Outsiders will most likely have no interest in coins that were released with an ICO since it discredits the coin to the eyes of almost all experienced and serious investors. In short, there will most likely be no one to buy your coins for a higher price than what they were offered in the ICO.
What's my proposal? I believe mods should enforce rules to disallow any discussion about ICOs. Not only they're making this community toxic for newcomers, they also make it an ideal place for scammers to promote their schemes. People are being paid to bump topic just to promote those scams even more, so it affects constructive discussion and brings more spam here as well. We shouldn't tolerate this any more.
TL;DR There's no tl;dr. Scroll up to the top and read the whole thing because aside of my personal opinion, this wall of text includes all the reasons you shouldn't invest in an ICO.
