- Come up with an ICO name and possibly some random business problem
- Copy/Paste whitepaper from another ICO, make few changes to make it look unique
- Copy/Paste website from another ICO, make few changes to make it look unique
- Copy/Paste few pictures of obscure people off the Internet (with or without their knowledge), make few changes to names job titles (madeup or real)
- Hire marketing team for few $K to spam next great ICO on all social media and relevant forum avenues
- Pay few dozen shills to visit aforementioned social sites to proclaim it's the next great thing since Bitcoin itself, perhaps even better!
- Sitback and profit$$
Now maybe some ICOs will turn out to be less scammy than some others, but in my opinion just about all of them are scams. The only ones who may be even somewhat legit are the ones who limit their fundraising to reasonable levels, but those are far and few between and even some of those are probably scams just designed to look more legitimate.
This has little to do with cryptocurrencies other than the fact that all these ICOs have been using crypto as a side run around rules already in place for organizations to raise capital, but it had to be stopped sooner or later. I suspect in a few months we will be seeing a "Who's behind bars this week" type of thread going when some of these ICO organizers are (hopefully) brought to justice.
