Topic: How Not To Be Scammed By an Initial Coin Offering #ICO #crypto (Read 1870 times)

Indeed.  Most ICO's nowadays are just scams because devs tend to run off all investors money when they saw they accumulated enough thats the thing why im hesitating to invest into these things because of these happenings.Before you intend to invest or put money on be sure to choose the good one and have really transparency and a good road map and devs are not anonymous  because this indicates chances of scam on little percentage only but doesnt guarantee that their coin will be succesful.

This week alone one Ico has generated over 90 bitcoin in it's first two hours,the projects looks very good and the dev shows transparency of course we will not know only after all the projects are set up and it is being traded on exchanges,if the price continue to be higher after two months then this is a successful ICO but it's rare could be an exception.

99.7 % of all ICO's are scams (with a statistical error of +0.3%).

you must choice is good dev and much team
and must use escrow, without escrow don't buy

Yes, this is the simplest method - do not buy into them.  Often times you can give a new coin a chance to be out for awhile and still get a good price.

Not all ICOs are scam, though the rate has increased recently, people need to realise that no risk no reward. What you need to do is research, research the team members, market potential of the project, do video interview with the team and the most important thing invest in project with trusted Escrow.

In my educated guesses, just look at all of the three if they were becoming fail pennies.


Deep-analyse will look all of the parts of ico, Which means was more detailed about ico. 

Still thinking about those three. I really don't like trading much and don't like to support PoW-based projects (obsolescence of that Proof-of type), so I'm taking part in a few projects and...

...the greatest bounding factor is not having enough time to deep-analyse. Too many details for me to make such prediction. I play with educated guesses. Look at community, look at dev's goals (raise money or raise awareness), and u'll get basic idea

I get your point, but don't think it's a particularly strong one to bear repeating.
The second chart especially just shows what a shit investment the altcoin world is, irrespective of bitcoin. If you want to redraw them with different time frames, feel free.
What wasn't a calculated scam from the getgo would have been quite happy living in a sandbox somewhere, but the mania to monetize everything trivializes and cheapens the whole environment.

Again, those plots are misleading.  They only indicate the obvious: bitcoin was the first, and rose from essentially NOTHING to something, which allows for a HUGE rise.  Altcoins don't have the ambition to start from "nothing".  If ICO's were at the same level of value as bitcoin was in the beginning, it would mean that the whole market cap would be, say, $10,- or so.  And yes, I'm pretty sure that an ICO with a total market cap of $10,- can also display huge rising numbers: if the market cap rises to $1M, then a factor of 100 000 is reached, better than bitcoin on that plot.

The point is, nobody starts out at $10,- market cap as an alt coin, because now, people KNOW that crypto can carry some value.  When bitcoin came out, that was an open question.  Most people thought that something like that could NEVER carry some real world value for strangers (amongst friends, yes, you can pretend...).

This is why, to be fair, in comparing bitcoin to the others on that plot, you should take a starting point of bitcoin when knowledge that it could hold value was known widely, and when competition existed already, which is why I propose beginning of 2013.  Then bitcoin's curve is not so exceptional.

Bitcoin was exceptional when it was the pioneer.  Nobody can be a pioneer after the first pioneer.  That's what those plots indicate.

Thank you for the link and the charts, info. This is what the people in this community should see. The hard facts and the numbers that back it up. Also if those developers who claim that their platforms or projects are such a good idea then why don't they pitch them to venture capitalists? Why organize an ICO and take money from the newbies? We already know what the answer is to that one.

Escrow, not that it actually helps because only after launch you could rely on selling into exchanges with some profit.
Look and research what it is you are trying to invest, meaning what it is they are initially offering to you, would it bring any value to the deal?
Think few times before investing, there might be a similar ICO already and you could just investing on clones.
Seek easy money with high risk else where dude, this stuff is not made for you.

This study is interesting, but misleading, if one takes it as support for "bitcoin is real, and altcoins are shit".

The initial period of bitcoin can show tremendeous value increase, because bitcoin was the very first crypto currency, and initially, nobody thought that the CONCEPT of a crypto currency could even work, so it started out as essentially worth NOTHING.   The rise from "nothing" to "something" is in fact infinite, and it is because the curve for bitcoin doesn't actually start at "nothing" that you can even put bitcoin on the chart.

But one can only discover ONCE that crypto currencies can function and get value.  That was bitcoin.  No crypto currency EVER after will start at "nothing".  People now KNOW that it can obtain serious market caps.  So no other crypto currency can display a rise from essentially nothing to something, showing several orders of magnitude increase like bitcoin can in its first years of existence.

But EVEN BITCOIN will not have such value increase any more.  These crazy rises are over.  Only the first one could display that, not because it went HIGH, but because it started SO LOW.

Like the other thread said: "nobody's buying pizza for 10 000 coins any more".

So the study should be done over, but taken as a starting point for bitcoin, not its starting point which was UNIQUE as being the very first crypto currency, worth nothing, but rather, say, when there were already a lot of coins around, and we can compare bitcoin to the rest with equal knowledge.  Say, beginning of 2013 or something.

An altcoin can never start out like bitcoin started out, because when an altcoin starts out, there is already the knowledge that crypto currencies can have value, and one expects the altcoin to have already a market cap.

It would be interesting to plot the bitcoin line, but taking its "starting point" as 1/1/2013, and compare it to the others.  I'm sure bitcoin still beats many, but it wouldn't be that spectacular.

If you're going to participate in an ICO, don't fall for the shiny images and fancy videos.
In my experience, take a look at the Whitepaper, evaluate the business plan/model, does the team behind the project look credible and are they able to execute on the plan.
Don't fall for projects that say you should buy their coin now because later on it will be worth x times more.

It is also horrible since it makes things very difficult for legit ICO to take place after so many people have been burned in the past it ruins it for legit business. Which is not fair. So its not fair to think all ICO is a scam. But it is good to  expect them to all be a scam until otherwise proven.

Here's a chart of the 118 altcoins that have achieved $250k average market cap for a year (the red line is BTC, the other stray is GAME)



Broken down into years



from http://woobull.com/data-visualisation-118-coins-plotted-over-time-this-is-why-hodl-alt-coin-indexes-dont-work/

Moral: If you're going to hodl, hodl BTC.

Alt coin ICO's aren't dissimilar to penny stocks, everybody looking thru the 99% of shit, chasing the 1% nugget.

You can avoid being scammed by an initial coin offering or ICO if you do research first about the dev or the team behind of that coin that you are interested to invest in, Its all about researching, If you found that the dev have a great records then it is a + point for the coin then if the dev was a new one then don't invest all you money, just invest what you can afford to lose.

The coins you got into should have made a great amount of wealth for you. Hats off to you for finding them quite early in the game and buying into them. What do think about ICOs like vDice, Janus and Wings DAO?  and which existing projects will do well in the coming years?

It is a nice suggestion you have given here. I feel that new users should discuss about ICOs before jumping in and should take efforts to understand the risks involved.

Nonsense. Good way to make profit also some projects like Nxt are here for really long-run. Every potential player (it isn't really investing) should consider to carefully choose strategy. Is there +EV strategies? So far my — one of them