Topic: How to identify SCAMS? (Read 305 times)

There are 4 factors that you have to carefully research:
1. Team: Investigate the core team behind the project. Find out if the team members actually exist or really participate in the project.
2. The Technology: For the more technically inclined, check whether the project’s code is open for scrutiny on github
3. The Concept: Discovering if competitors already exist in the market and how the new project can gain traction in this area is a good question to begin with. It’s important to try to attempt to determine if the project will be able to acquire a share of the market space with their product innovation or services.
4. The Token: If a token is listed on an exchange ahead of their ICO, double check by comparing the listings of other exchanges.

Problems with technical support, Too much advertising, Abnormal superprofits...
Study the reviews, watch the news, pay attention to sponsors and partners, and most importantly - carefully research the project.

By reading whitepaper and checking linked in profile of team helps you to find if the project is scam or real.

Another sign of an ICO scam is that the developers are unable to clearly articulate a valid use case for the token. The token should serve a key purpose in the startup's platform. If it does not, the token will not sustain its value over the long term. Related to this problem is tokens that advertise themselves merely as digital currencies without offering any real innovations or improvements upon existing cryptocurrency technology. Scammers go to length to appear trustworthy but there are things you can do recognise and take action against scams.

Things that I consider before joining ICOs are:

1. Transparent team
2. Well written Whitepaper
3. Active social media (At least 3 posts per week)
4. KYC passed on ICO Bench
5. Unique platform

 Search this forum. There are some topics that are updated daily with scam ICOs.

Great info here for newbies like myself. I would like to ask how to identify a scam when we are looking for privacy coin for example? Most of the time team running the whole team won't reveal its identity. I have found just legit projects so far, but I would appreciate more info regarding this.

Good suggestion

thank.

Recent time I often hear about this Cryptics. I think this planform worth attention if people so often write about it. Gonna check up their website.

Any successful ICO matches the address of their token sales, and a scam hides their address.
This means that no one will determine the exact amount raised and the remaining time for the ICO sales token.

Doing one's due diligence before investing in ICO's cannot be over emphasized.
Check :
1)The profiles of the Team members.
2) Whitepaper and it's authenticity
3) Check Bitcointalk Ann for possible information from others about the project.
4) Check Twitter and telegram community.

For me, I have observed a similar pattern in most of the scams and it includes pitching about the returns in terms of money instead of explaining the core philosophy and road map of the project. This is definitely not a full proof method of identification of scam but in most of the cases, I don't have to do any further research if the other party is just concerned about my money as the investor.

Indeed, just make sure whenever you want to pay, you have understood the project well from every aspect

Read and research first before investing on ICO...  if you have group or people around that can help you in doing such thing go and ask... more heads are better than 1...

You can search that project on this forum and see what people talk about it.
You can ask your friends.
You can consult the opinions of ico websites.
You can do your own research and see if the concept, team, and execution make sense.

For example when reviewing the whitepaper, you should understand that ICO are mainly talking about blockchain technology project which to solve or improve the current existing problem in reality, no matter in which field. Therefore, the whitepaper should be indicating the problems first, and introduce how they will develop a blockchain technology, in a professional manner and data or model support.
Then you should have a look on their road map, whether they are having a sufficient and reasonable roadmap as an ICO project takes time to develop in both their sales part and development part. As long as you think it is reasonable, you can then proceed to (i) social media handling (ii) team / advisor for the project
(i) social media / community manager can show the relationship and the interaction from the team with the potential investors. The team may not be able to develop a super perfect idea and project, but from expectation and comments from potential investor, they can gain a lot information and knowing where to improve from different angles
(ii) for sure some famous or well-known tech developer would give this project a very good expectation, or else you can briefly read the profession from the team member or advisor. It is definitely a bonus if the team has developed similar projects before, experience speaks.

Although the review is kinda subjective, but as long as it can convince you, i think it worth your support and investment first. Failure of ICOs may not be due to the initial development process, may not mean it is a scam.

this topic is one of the topics that we should  look at it very serious because those dishonest people so call scammers are living with us, day in and day out they give as the same problems. To add some few words, let me take this advantage to ask some few questions
#1  What should we do to root out this cancer?
#2  How do we do to trace those people?
#3  Whom should we alert if we are been scam?

Scammers are very good with what they are doing. Scam a lot people out from their money. Always we should do our diligence before get into anything.

Currently what I do now is to follow the reputable companies who mange ICOs as well as their bounties. The success rate with such groups are a bit better than others. Anyways this is crypto, scam can haooen everywhere and so we should be careful and invest wisely amd with caution

I have 10 items that help me evaluate the project.
One of them is White Paper, if I see that the project is promising, then I invest.

My suggestion is that not join any ICO if you are not real know it . Some projects are good disguisers ，but they will dump all coins when it's listed on a exchange platform . If you want to join some projects , I advise you join in some airdrops .

Here are some simple ways to spot an ICO scam:

•   The first and most blatant sign of an ICO scam is that the token’s developers are anonymous or otherwise-unknown
•   Always check if a company is incorporated or not. A legitimate ICO will always have a registered company behind it
•   Never join campaigns that require you to pay first
•   Another sign of an ICO scam is that the developers are unable to clearly articulate a valid use case for the token
•   Token buyers should be wary of startups that advertise overly-optimistic roadmaps

To avoid falling prey to ICO scams, token buyers should educate themselves and conduct due diligence before deciding to contribute to a project.

Thanks a lot for your words. Article is really helpful. But I dont dare to invest in an ICO now.

By finding out on which are the legitimate ICOs, you have to be careful reading their contents.

There are ICOs who are modifying almost everything from other projects, starting from their whitepaper, road maps and their team is composed of snatched pictures on the web.

It is very difficult to identify scams ico so i advice you do not invest in ico and don't give your private key of your ethereum wallet because if you do that you lose your eth balance

Scam ICOs are hard to spot as it start at first time and it will only be revealed in the end or midway. The only way to lessen getting scam is search the ICO about their information and their project's aim/goal that you think it's useful or helpful to everyone. Investing in an altcoin that is not on pre-sale, if I am to invest it would be the popular coins like bitcoin, ethereum and more popular coins.

When in doubt, it's better to do nothing  . And you can always buy those tokens once it hits the market, it's more safer that way. If you're thinking it'll be higher than the ICO price then, please note that it's not always the case as the price is out of the dev's control after it's listed on the market.

Still, majority of scam ICO's are not as polished as you think. The sad truth is these flaws are only revealed once it's confirmed they're a "scam", proves that people did only bother BG checking once they felt they might have been scammed.

Look back and see if you really did check the project throughly. There are a lot of great articles on google if you search "How to spot a scam ICO" like this one, you could use them as a reference. Doubt everything, verify if all the information is true, make sure that everything make sense not just "professional" and "smart" looking


There's no ICO where you don't have to pay but most of them do offer bounties where you will do certain works (mostly advertising) for them in exchange for their coins.

I have written an article about ICO investing which you could refer and hopefully help you in identifying scammy projects. Its a bit detailed approach but hey its your money so its worth the effort.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.40531228

In addition I need to add one thing, when looking for potential ICO's refer to www.icodrops.com,by far all good ICO's listed there. There is a telegram group named top7 icos' its a weekly review by top youtubers about their top picks and the link to it's link is t.me/top7ico. Hope it helps u and I am sorry about you losing your money.

It is usually not too easy to identify a scam. But with careful profiling of the team, you may be able to get a direction. One thing I am really not too sure of is, if every ICO advertised on Bitcointalk is genuine or not.

I don't dare to invest in ico now. If I want to invest, I will only buy bitcoin, Ethereum, ripple, and a few other famous cryptocurrencies. In my opinion, the most recent ico is not credible.

It isn't easy to identify ICO SCAM, so the best way to avoid scam is not dealing with it. Don't invest in ICO, just wait for it listed on small exchanges 1st then you can buy for real tokens/real project. No one can guanrantee for you that ICO isn't scam. Just stay away from it so you can not get SCAM by it.

Yeah that's always the safest option. I was just trying to figure it out that by any chance we can get assured that the project, which we are putting our money in, is legitimate or not? Btw Thanks for the advice.Hope to learn many things on this platform

There's no assurance for these ICO's, why not just put away your interest with buying and joining these ICOs?

That's the safest thing that you can do and it's an assurance that you'll never dropped off with another scam. They are all good in sweet talks and that makes them hard to figure out on what are the legit ones.

yes they are an experience but I have never seen any project that provide you something without paying? like you want to buy their tokens then obviously you have to pay.
please tell me some projects which does not require any payment?

Thanks a lot for the information but please elaborate more on cryptics?

First Search this forum. There are some topics that are updated daily with scam ICOs. (will try to post links later)
Second. never join campaigns that require you to pay first. These are well known pay to receive scams.

I feel sorry that good people fall for scams but it also serves as lesson to be cautious in future.

I would recommend to pay attention to these factors: they must have a good Whitepaper, read it scrupulously, cause some ICO just steal somebody's else Whitepaper and just change the name of the project. They must have MVP on their website, cause lots of projects like to write how cool they are, but don't have anything except these pompous words. Their employees should have profiles on Linkedin, for example, cause scammers are afraid of revealing their personality and often they whether don't have any profiles of steal somebody's photos. Check their groups on the different social networks, they should be active and not filled with bots and fakes. Check their profile on GitHub. I would recommend you to pay your attention to Cryptics - forecasting platform which does use 100% AI. Their project does satisfy with all these requirements.

A lot of scams happening in the ICO market due to lack of knowledge and desperation to dive into crypto market. Although there are many ways by which you can identify these scams like: Team profiles, whitepaper technicalities and etc. But is there any way to identify when all these things are taken care of?
as I just lost some money in a scam named DenCity. Everything seemed genuine at first. what to do in such cases or for assurance?