Topic: 3 kinds of ICOs — Protect yourself - page 9. (Read 13689 times)

Great input, thanks a lot. If and when you have time, I'd also love to hear your thoughts on Gizer. Its ICO launches through KYC, on SAFT, the same platform which launches tZero in a few days. Gizer is similar to Enjin Coin, and they also have a working product and promising ideas. Looking forward to your view.

Excellent post, jlp. Thank you.

Would be interesting to reach out to PlayKey and give them an opportunity to weigh in.

In regards to PlayKey, they seem to be much further along than most ICOs. They not only have a working product, but they had it for a few years and it looks impressive, though I didn’t try it. Their business is understandable.

If they got 2.5M users in 2016, I do not understand why they need an ICO or another cryptocurrency. Why don’t they continue growing their customer base? If their market is truly as big as they say, then they should be able to make more money by growing their revenue instead of fund-raising through an ICO.

Why don’t they show any revenue from the 2.5M users? Does this mean that they really don’t have 2.5M users, or that their free service does not provide enough value to warrant a fee?

Their website says that the game industry is $109 billion. This is misleading. This would include games for infants and Zynga Poker. Their source (https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/the-global-games-market-will-reach-108-9-billion-in-2017-with-mobile-taking-42/) shows that most of this is not relevant to PlayKey. I would assume that it is the $24.8 billion of “BOXED/DOWNLOADED PC GAMES” that is relevant, and NewZoo says that this is dropping.

Their white paper claims that 1.5 billion people play PC games. If we assume that PC games are played mostly by males, then this means that close to half of all the males in the world play PC games. Is this believable? Most infants, middle-aged men and seniors do not play PC games. I would think that it’s mainly teenage males up to men in their 30’s that play these games. A significant part of the world do not have PCs. 4 billion people do not have internet access.

Their video tells you to “invest” in their token. This means that they are pushing a security, which is illegal in most of the Western world unless you restrict your investors to accredited investors and comply with KYC (Know Your Client) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) requirements.

Because the team is based in Russia, they are immune from European and North American laws because Russia does not have extradition agreements with them. Therefore, the team doesn’t need to worry about pesky European and North American laws. The team can say and claim anything they want. They can lie and worry much less than other teams about repercussions. If they defraud you, there is little that your lawyers or government can do to help you. An American law firm has filed a class action lawsuit against Tezos (based in Europe) to get money refunded to American investors. Your law firm won’t be able to do that against PlayKey. You won’t be able to do anything.

The risk with any ICO that is selling a security is that if the regulators crack down on these, the token will crash. Teams that are in Russia may be immune from punishment from regulators, but you will still suffer if the token crashes.

Their website says that they raised 16 039 ETH from 1048 backers so far. When I looked at their smart contract (https://etherscan.io/address/0x26d08b9d227933a85e855656dc46ab889e183c88), it says that it received 2,404 Ethers, not 16,039 Ethers. Maybe they withdrew some Ethers from the smart contract, so I went through all 25 pages of the 1242 transactions and none of them were withdrawals. So, are they using a second smart contract, or are they lying about the amount of ETH raised so far in order to give you the impression that they are more popular than they really are? I would tend to think the latter. Since they are immune from European and North American securities laws, they will not get punished for fraud by them, so they can lie a lot more.

I think many ICOs lie about the amount that they’ve raised.

This makes me question the validity of PlayKey’s other numbers:

2 500 000 games
120 servers
$7 000 000 raised from VCs and business angels

It would seem intuitive that there should be a sizeable market for this business. The risks that you are taking are:

• Will regulators ban the token in the future?
• Their numbers are not reliable.
• If they defraud you, you have no recourse.

This is really an informative thread but to be honest people will still rely on other reviews and ratings because of two reasons. First is they don't have that much knowledge to filter these things even if they want to because it's complicated for them. Second, they are too lazy to do it.

You can create a poll or voting for this thread to Moderator or request in Meta thread. I think the moderator of this forum will not ignore a qualify thread like this. To be honest, if you are an investor or newbie want to invest in the ICOs market, these words can helps you know the risk and the method can help you protect yourseft, especially it is very useful for newbie.

Also, if you have time, I'd love to hear about your thoughts on Cryder ICO, a sort of Uber equivalent in blockchain.

Good thread, thank you very much. Now I hardly go to Kapkan fraudulent ICO.

Hey jlp, what do you think about Playkey ICO? It seems quite promising.

However, the potetial project has the whale have invested always increases, but when the price of the token increase, no one knows that, unless the mover the price. Because the whale can't take loss after used a lot of money to pump the price of token has potential and hype. Few years still normal with them because they are rich.

This is great to share with beginners that keep asking this question of legitimacy and investment. Thank you for putting this together. 

thanks for this information. I think I will pay attention before I invest some money on ICOs.

Probably you are confused in the concept of the project or didn't understand it correctly. That's it to such people are invited to participate in the co-creation, development, promotion of projects that they like, consumers of which they can also become. And for this people will receive tokens of these projects. Everything is very good. Someone invests money, someone invests time and ability. And someone and money and time and ability

Great wrote up, thanks for the heads up. The Crypto space is filled with a lot of unnecessary projects that have no real life evaluation.
Some are just try to rip people apart. It's just all about being safe.

OP nailed it. And this thread should be sticky on top so many can read this informative thread. This can raise awareness to all the people especially to those who are planning to make an ICO that aim to fool people so they can know that their evil secrets are somehow expose. This is also serves as a wake up call for all of us not to be easily deceive by fancy thread and lucrative bounty as we all need is a more realistic and timely projects. People really change when money talks so let's us all be vigilant to this.

it's the first thread I read carefully. your statment is very clear and easy to understand and makes me think twice before dedicated to join an ICO.

Great post, jlp. Of course, I feel that it is a minor "shame" that some legitimate ICOs would fall under your category as #2 or even an outright scam. I definitely agree that some of the names you've mentioned, viewed by many as legitimate are just smoke and mirrors. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on great videos and promotional material that they had almost nothing to do with creating.

But this is also the problem that is self-creating. People see that without the marketing hype and great videos, they will struggle to compete for attention and space. I know there are many great projects out there that don't get the attention they deserve because everyone is caught up with the next big thing. And these crypto multi-billionaires like Vitalik are party to this, they know they get their appearance fees or "advisor fees" upfront.

Look at Humaniq for a prime example. Pumped by Vitalik, and now look at where they are going. Absolutely clueless with no product to use in the real world except all their betas and trials.

Oh, my bad jlp, ignore my previous post. I just saw that you already mentioned your view on ARToken and yes, the scaling and size problem does make a lot of sense.

I agree in your statement, If you will just focus on their coins value then probably it might really have a hard time before it will increase. The market is based on supply and demand so you cannot say that it will really increase after the end of the ico.

So, after all, what's your overall view on ARToken? They seem to be getting involved in a lot of events and collaborations for exposure (at least that's what it seems from their blog) and they look like they have some potential in the medium to distant future? What do you say?

To be honest, after reading it again and again. Actually for making money right after the ICO there are MAYBE 1 or 2 ICO a month which will really give you a return after investing in them. I mean with the price going UP and not DOWN after the ICO!

Everything is traded nowadays Etherdelta and its crap no vol everything goes down!