Topic: How to spot an ICO SCAM (Read 9083 times)

I just go to the website of the ico just to see what the coin to se what they are offering the investors. Then I look at their social media profile to make sure that they are the real faces and to know what they have worked on previously before working on the coin. Then I read the whitepaper, if they are lax on it then it is a fake one, legit ones want to make a real impression

good question, I took part a couple of times in companies that were successful in all the paramitres, but in the end it turned out to be mashenniki, I don’t know how to make the right choice today

This is my redflags about scam ICOs :
❌ The first thing you see on their websites is 'Buy tokens now', '50% discount ending in x days', a count down timing to the end of ICO (means they only care about the money, not the project itself)
❌ Display all the ICO ratings from ICOBench, TrackICO etc
❌ Heavy advertising on ROI (how much you can potentially earn etc)
❌ No contact details (or fake)
❌ Whitepaper focuses on ROI instead of the problems and proposed solutions
❌ Fake team (please Google or LinkedIn search to verify the team members)
❌ The idea itself doesn't need a blockchain but they die die want to use blockchain (to grab money, duh)
❌ 'Buy' advisers (those advisers serve only 1 role, put their LinkedIn profile on the website, and that's all). If the advisers are 'advising' 40 and 50 projects at the same time, I don't know how they can add value to the projects.
❌ Parent company is failing or running out of money so they pivot to blockchain to raise fund and stay afloat

When the development team are not following up what they have promised such as coins on time and schedule for distribution.I think It easy to determine it by asking frequently at their telegram page and if they wont answer directly or it takes days for them to reply

You need to verify the project with different things, like the ICO reviews, experience of the team and their website. This can help you with giving an idea about an ICO.

For ico scams they do not really put a lot of work into the project because they know that they will not be sticking around for long so they are always unprofessional looking and when you are reading their whitepaper you will observe that there are a lot of typos in the document, that is what I mostly look at when looking to invest in an ico

this is a very mathematical theory, it's probably true this theory, I will try to calculate the possibilities. very helpful if this theory is created and can be understood by everyone. thank you

There are a couple of things that you could look out for to spot an ico scam
You should always look out for the team members, make sure that you can put a face behind the project, without a face then you should be very wary
Make sure that you confirm and crosscheck any information before you invest your money into the project
Look at the previous places they have worked at

There are many metrics to use. One is to look at their linkedn profile. Their whitepaper can also be a tell. In my experience, when the text in the whitepaper is not selectable, most likely the project is a scam. Pretty absurd but it happend to me in translations many times.

There are a lot of ways to identify fake icos but you need to take measure to protect your investment from fake icos

Don’t Disclose your private information- Participating in ICOs or airdrop is not a bad thing, but before having proper information, never disclose your private information like wallet information, number etc.

 Check and verify the name of the Founders and Co-Founders- Every Initial Coin the offering has a founder or a co-founder, but when the ICOs which are Fake put the name of founders who do not even exist. Before doing any activities related to ICOs the individual needs to check the names of the concerned person and check the person’s virtual credibility.

  Reliability of ESCROW- ESCROW is an online wallet which preserves the coin unless and until the transaction is done. But when we are doing a transaction we rely on any of the wallet platforms and the end result is the money is debited and the deal is unsuccessful: this means the ICOs are fake. So, while involving in certain constraint make sure they use ESCROW for offering ICOs.

 Get ahead with an email confirmation- Generally, a real airdrop shares the individual a confirmation mail, if you are not getting a confirmation mail on your registered mail id neither any OTP, you should walk –off from the deal.

source- https://cryptomaa.com/btc/protect-your-money-from-fake-ico-and-scam-cryptocurrency-projects/

in my own opinion i cannot determine if that ICO is scam because i thinks  all coming from this forum sites is filtered there application before  they introduce to the market, for bounty campaign participation or investment.we only know if the campaign is scam or  fraud if they not give a payment to all the participant or the investor in the end of campaign.the only things should i know by put the name of that ICO in the google and  put a word scam and search if that campaign is legit or fraud.

Check their identity, I mean the team members. Check their CV, linkedin pages etc.

This will give you a correct idea about the rest of the project. Also check their company license and registration number if possible.

I love this methodology, and I am sure it works. However, as you see, people — I mean dishonest ones — are ready to risk and invest into developing their fraud sites to steal much money further. They become more and more sly, and it is more difficult to catch the scammer. 

The team is probably the main factor to look at before investing in a ICO.
The whitepaper is important as well. Does it look doable? realistic?

thank you for your tip, I will try your tips to choose ICO

There many more thing to consider. Not just because they are fuzzy and decentralized team we can conclude that it is a scam. Sometimes it is not just successful. We can't easily judge such things so i suggest to have just a deep research about an ICO before anything else.

Solid advice. This is also true for new shitcoins that turn into pump and dumps. Take ETHD. What a fuxkin mess that was. No white paper and traded up to $5 each!

Research to the bottom and all the darkest corners of the project - team members, social media profiles, etc. That's how I am doing it. And that's waht everybody who is contemplating investing big money in an ICO should be doing.

The things I am looking in every ICO in which I invest is how old is the domain if it is 2-3 months old, so for me is created just for the crypto-hype and it is probably a scam. Also I look at the team and what kind of people are in it, if they have background for something familiar or something like that, so they probably are good and the project will scale. And last but not least - the smart contract, I am looking for github history and committed smart contract on their repo, just to see how it is written.

i think the actual future use of the coin/token is the most important thing