Topic: 3 kinds of ICOs — Protect yourself - page 11. (Read 13686 times)
much appreciated you for clearing it up.I truly dont see how individuals pick their speculations once in a while furthermore, its tragic when you see a shitty ico makes millions when genuine coins dont get enough consideration
Nice writeup...but it is going to be hard for individuals not to be scammed cos of these ico's Airdrops
Very informative thread and useful information for deciding in which ico to invest. I want to know what's OP opinion about PayPal based business model adaptation on blockchain like Monetha or Utrust? At first it looks like a great idea and proper model for a blockchain. What's your opinion? 
UTRUST’s business is understandable, which is good. I think they’re in a country where we can extradite them or sue them if they screw us, which is good.
Intuitively, one would think that there is big market need for Utrust. The question is whether they can execute.
Bitpay has been doing Bitcoin payment processing for merchants for 4 or more years. One needs to find out why they haven’t expanded to process addition cryptocurrencies. Why haven’t they? Is it unprofitable to do so? Is there insufficient demand from merchants or shoppers? If they wanted to, would they be able to quickly do so?
Bitpay has not exploded in growth. This means that there aren't enough people using Bitcoin to shop. If this is the case, how do you know it's worthwhile to add more cryptos and that processing more cryptos will grow this space?
I like that they have a comparison chart with their competitors. However, how do we know that UTRUST’s will be able to survive by providing the lowest fees?
If UTRUST supports multiple cryptocurrencies, which they should because this is their main differentiator from Bitpay, then why would shoppers use UTRUST’s token?
The CEO does not have a LinkedIn profile. How do we know that he has a high school diploma or any work experience?
With 16 people on the team (and 13 advisors), they should’ve built 8 prototypes by now. Most of these people are doing nothing. This reduces the confidence that they can out-execute Bitpay.
It would be great if a company like Utrust succeeds. Maybe UTRUST can execute. I don’t know, as there isn’t enough information.
Great overview. You've covered the very basic which a lot of new investors have to learn about ICO's. They are seeing these crazy gains and believe every ICO will be profitable, when in fact that won't happen. There are thousands of projects currently launched and many hundred trying to launch soon. How do you think things will look like in a couple of years when the market has matured even more? We'll probably see some heavy regulation, because that's what is takes to keep the markets under control. The investors simply hope to land on a good project, while that project has no obligation to register/disclose or implement any regulation that is usually required by corporations. Maybe that's the solution to the problem, more regulation and not less, but it should be just enough to avoid these problems, too much regulation will suffocate the market and it would be a shame to see the crypto space going into shambles because people keep on making the wrong decisions.
Folks, www.balanc3.net a new accounting platform prove value with new accounting Tech, claims this would be good for investors. Would that work?
In regards to balanc3.net, their homepage has a lot of verbose but says very little.
What accounting is needed for the blockchain?
It says that it will provide accounting services for token sales. Is there a need for this? I don’t know. They should explain why this is needed by token sales, but they don’t. Token sales usually involve having a smart contract receive ETH and sending tokens. The team only needs the total ETH received (one number) and then can put this in their Excel spreadsheet or other regular accounting software. What else do they need to do? If they need to do more, then balanc3 should explain why.
It doesn’t look like they are hosting an ICO, are they? Maybe they’re running a business and will sell their accounting services to ICOs. I don’t know as it doesn’t say.
This is one of most nebulous websites I’ve read.
Thank you for your time in putting this together.
Very informative thread and useful information for deciding in which ico to invest. I want to know what's OP opinion about PayPal based business model adaptation on blockchain like Monetha or Utrust? At first it looks like a great idea and proper model for a blockchain. What's your opinion?
Shortly after reading this, their website was using up a lot of my CPU. My fan was going into overdrive, so I closed the browser tab. Does this happen to you? If they have coding skills, they should not have let this happen.
Could have been a script they added to the site to mine monero or some other crypto with your CPU while you're there like Pirate Bay
I see, very good points, thanks a lot for your input! 
Hey jlp, what do you think about Mobius Network? More importantly, what's your take on Mercury Protocol ICO, project in which Mark Cuban has invested as well?
In regards to Mobius, I read this part:
Quote
The Mobius universal protocol APIs work across all blockchains and connect the internet world to the blockchain ecosystem so developers only have to learn and support one standard.
I don’t know how they will be able to develop APIs for dozens or hundreds of blockchains. Even if they do, what will the API do? Enable developers to create an universal wallet that can send and receive coins to any blockchain? That would be VERY useful, but I don’t think they mentioned this.
Shortly after reading this, their website was using up a lot of my CPU. My fan was going into overdrive, so I closed the browser tab. Does this happen to you? If they have coding skills, they should not have let this happen.
Hey jlp, what do you think about Mobius Network? More importantly, what's your take on Mercury Protocol ICO, project in which Mark Cuban has invested as well?
If I have time, I’ll take a look at those. In the meantime, I'll comment on Mark Cuban.
I think he’s completely overrated. He became rich because he sold his company, Broadcast.com, near the peak of the Dot Com bubble in 1999 to Yahoo for $5.7 billion, netting $1 billion for Cuban. But the company was TINY and LOSING MONEY. It was so worthless and burning so much money that Yahoo shut it down 3 years later.
https://www.gurufocus.com/news/138012/mark-cuban-and-broadcastcom-the-multibillion-dollar-coup
“When Broadcast.com was taken public it had fewer than $7 million in revenues, $28 million in equity, and an accumulated deficit of of nearly $10 million dollars in its brief history. In reality, the company had little or no chance of achieving profitability in the foreseeable future.”
Here is a micro cap stock that you’ve probably never heard of: Castle Brands
https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYSEAMERICAN%3AROX&fstype=ii&ei=dejwWcmaGcaWjAG2sYiAAw
It does $77 million of revenue and has a market cap of $184 million.
Broadcast had one eleventh the revenue. Essentially, Broadcast was a micro micro micro cap. But, it sold for 31 times more than Castle Brands. Yahoo overpaid by 341 times. Can you imagine paying $13,630,000 for a car that is worth $40,000?
Fortune Magazine listed Broadcast.com as one of the 5 worst internet acquisitions of all time:
http://fortune.com/2013/05/21/5-worst-internet-acquisitions-of-all-time/
Yahoo executives, who were responsible for buying Broadcast.com, were canned.
Essentially, Cuban owes most of his wealth to winning a lottery.
I’m not saying that Cuban is a lousy businessman. He was a small businessman. You probably know businessmen or entrepreneurs who created bigger companies than Cuban did.
Cuban never created any hugely successful operation like Google, Apple, Qualcomm, Foxconn, Nvidia, Intel, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Oracle, eBay, PayPal, Facebook, Tesla, etc., etc., etc. Not even close. Yet the media treats him like he has more business acumen than the entrepreneurs or executives from many of those companies I listed.
Cuban, the successful businessman and investor, is completely a creation of the media. It's hugely fake news.
Therefore, ignore anything that Cuban says or does.
In regards to Mercury Protocol, their homepage starts off with:
Quote
Decentralized
Not owned or controlled by any one party
More Secure
All data is tamper resistant and secured by the blockchain
Trustless
Verify messages and transactions without a trusted third party Application
Not owned or controlled by any one party
More Secure
All data is tamper resistant and secured by the blockchain
Trustless
Verify messages and transactions without a trusted third party Application
So what? The above are standard in every blockchain. Are they trying to fool newbies into thinking that they are the first to come up with these?
It also says:
Quote
Application Agnostic
Generalized protocol for all communication types
Generalized protocol for all communication types
Their first use case includes “messaging” and “large file size”.
Are they going to put this onto the blockchain? If so, then this shows their ignorance. If they’ve run Bitcoin’s full node or Ethereum’s full node, they would know that these are already getting bogged down, and these 2 blockchains store small numbers or snippets of code. If Mercury Protocol puts messaging onto a blockchain, it might work for a year or less, before their blockchain grows to 200 GB. Then they will be more bogged down than Bitcoin.
But it gets worse. I thought they were going to have their own blockchain. No. They’re going to put their stuff on the Ethereum blockchain. This means that their application will be bogged down on day one, and everyone else’s application on Ethereum will get bogged down.
For Ethereum's sake and the dozens of tokens on Ethereum, let's hope Mercury Protocol does not put its messaging on Ethereum. The Ethereum foundation should ban it.
Mark Cuban was on television a couple of days ago, bragging about how he was a “technology guy”. He's definitely not a blockchain guy. He never was much of a technology guy.
Their team has 15 members and 2 advisors. With that many people, they should’ve built 6 prototypes or products by now. This shows that they stacked their team with useless people, in order to impress you. Also, there are no LinkedIn profiles to verify that these people are real, or have any work experience.
I agree that nowadays it's much more difficult to find really prospective ICO amoung the ton of low-quality projects and scams. But even if you find such project it doesn't mean that you'll get x2 and higher just after the listing on exchanges. I know that most of investors tries to sell there token asap, and only experienced can distinguish the potential of long term investment. But if you check the most successful ICOs, you'll see that most of them gave huge income for those who HODL.
“If you aren’t thinking about owning a stock for 10 years, don’t even think about owning it for 10 minutes.”
-- Warren Buffett
The ICO is an investment for long term and only who investor can be patient will get profits from this field.
Accept the risk need to hold the token you will buy make you spend few years or even a decade will help you never feel boring.
Corupt countries?
?
Then avoid the USA and Europe. Thats were all the high tech people live. You will find the higherest number of hackers per capita there.
?Then avoid the USA and Europe. Thats were all the high tech people live. You will find the higherest number of hackers per capita there.
There are lots of ICOs from non USA and non European countries. If all the high tech people live in the USA and Europe, then what you're implying is that many ICOs are started by people who do not understand technology. I agree with that.
Corupt countries??
Then avoid the USA and Europe. Thats were all the high tech people live. You will find the higherest number of hackers per capita there.
?Then avoid the USA and Europe. Thats were all the high tech people live. You will find the higherest number of hackers per capita there.
Nice write up OP, i agree with most points. However, even if there are a few legitimate (and good) ICOs, i think we need to rethink the system as a whole and come up with better solutions to get these worthwhile projects off the ground... The company that solves this will be one of the most important groups in the crypto market.
Agreed.
There are legitimate and good projects. But they're getting drowned out by two factors:
- There are so many crap ICOs that investors probably give up searching for the good ones because they've lost patience or don't have the time.
- Investors are being distracted by ICOs with the most marketing. DomRaider comes to mind. This ICO is going after a tiny market. This market is so small that it is questionable that it can even support a small business. Yet DomRaider was running commercials everywhere, including on a Youtube video I was trying to watch. The uninformed viewer will think that DomRaider is onto something big, but the opposite is true.
If this problem isn't solved, then the following might happen in a few years when investors finally realize that they've lost a lot of money on crap ICOs:
- The crypto space will get a bad reputation as being riddled with scammers and crap.
- With the bad reputation, legitimate and good projects will have a harder time raising money, which means fewer good products.
- ICOs will need to do much more work and spend more to prove that they are legitimate and not crap. Think of how much easier and cheaper it would be to build websites if you didn't have to worry about hackers.
- Governments and regulators are always looking for any excuse to label this space as riddled with money launderers, terrorists and drug dealers. They would love to get more excuses to clamp down on cryptocurrencies and ideally shut them down. Soon they'll have more justification. They can shut down ICOs by saying they're protecting investors. China has done this already. Many other governments will get around to it as well. Yes, investors will be protected, but the good ICOs will be shut down as well.
Nice write up OP, i agree with most points. However, even if there are a few legitimate (and good) ICOs, i think we need to rethink the system as a whole and come up with better solutions to get these worthwhile projects off the ground... The company that solves this will be one of the most important groups in the crypto market.
I agree that nowadays it's much more difficult to find really prospective ICO amoung the ton of low-quality projects and scams. But even if you find such project it doesn't mean that you'll get x2 and higher just after the listing on exchanges. I know that most of investors tries to sell there token asap, and only experienced can distinguish the potential of long term investment. But if you check the most successful ICOs, you'll see that most of them gave huge income for those who HODL.
“If you aren’t thinking about owning a stock for 10 years, don’t even think about owning it for 10 minutes.”
-- Warren Buffett
JLP - thanks for this thread. I just came across it today and read the whole thing and will continue to do so. While I don't necessarily agree with all your individual project assessments, EVERYTHING you mentioned in the OP is EXACTLY what I've come to learn over the past year or so through personal experience investing in a couple dozen ICOs.
I agree that nowadays it's much more difficult to find really prospective ICO amoung the ton of low-quality projects and scams. But even if you find such project it doesn't mean that you'll get x2 and higher just after the listing on exchanges. I know that most of investors tries to sell there token asap, and only experienced can distinguish the potential of long term investment. But if you check the most successful ICOs, you'll see that most of them gave huge income for those who HODL.
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