Topic: ICO basics for Newbies (Read 572 times)

thanks for this tread, I personally know what ICO is. and someday I hope to plunge there ..

I've seen a lot of misinformation thrown out lately so I am reviving this thread to help people out.

Remember, an ICO is basically like a startup crowdfunding process.
These are new (sometimes not so new) companies who are seeking funding and so you can purchase their coin/token to help support their business.

So, that means that currently existing altcoins are mostly not icos.

So neo, iota, etc. have finished their icos a long time ago and are called altcoins.

If you are looking for a place to find upcoming icos, then you can use ico rating sites like icobench or icodrops.
However, most of these sites have very biased reviews (icos pay to have their ico prominently featured).
You can use it as a springboard to easily find the websites of a large amount of icos though.

Another place to look is the announcements section of the altcoin discussion board here on bitcointalk.
This place can be pretty chaotic though because it has ico announcements along with other general announcements.
An ICO will typically label their thread : ANN ICO ... (then name, etc.)

Just a quick warning though, as of now, April 14th, ICOs are having a difficult time because the overall market is very low and slow.
It is typically better to invest in an ico when the market is rising.

(if you feel my thread is helpful, please send me some merit)

Most importantly, remember that fast money does not happen and everything that you tell others is more like luck than the truth. I'll tell you the truth, before investing, read the project very many times and understand how it will work, so think about whether it will work from your point of view? And then decide Yes or No.

I wanted to put a couple thoughts due to some high profile icos still gaining a huge following even after MAJOR red flags have been raised.

I hope you don't see this as FUD but as a case example on why you should be careful.
This has to do with DADI and Arcblock

They are both very popular with huge followers on telegram.
I have no doubt in my mind that both will probably sell out.

However,  there is solid evidence that DADI plagiarized their whitepaper.
Arcblock also has no technical footprint, nothing on github, no product release, no mvp, nothing.
On top of that the devs use fake pictures and names.

I'm not saying don't invest in these or invest in these, you make your own choice.
But with so many icos out there, why put your money into something that has red flags?
Even if everyone else is jumping off a cliff doesn't make it a good idea.

Some things I want to add to this are:

#1) It's important to take into account inflation.  Some ICOs will lock the price of the coin, like 1eth = 1000blahblahblah
This means that if the price of eth goes up, the actual cost per token will be more expensive.
On the other hand, ICOs that just do a fixed price, like 1blahblahblah = .10 cents, then it will be to your benefit to buy when prices of btc or eth are high.

#2) It will help you out immensely if you reach out to the devs themselves and the community.  Telegram seems to be the favored choice nowadays, but it is a place where you can get the most up to date info and speak directly with the team or with others who have substantial knowledge.  For me, being active in the community has told me heaps about the quality of an ico.

#3) Join the bounty campaign of the coin you are buying into.  This not only helps you promote your own investment, but helps you to be active in the community.  Also, it helps your cost per coin be reduced dramatically.

For ICO itself, from what I know from the existing 100 ICOs, its 90 SCAMs. So wise in investing and loving your money.

Crypto world is promising benefits, understand and learn well about the ins and outs of the world crypto because in the outcome many are trapped.
Regards education..

It is a great opportunity for newbie to get knowledge about the ICO.It is the best way to study and involve in crypto currency.

Very good tips. Some stuff i'd like to add on is:
1) Does the coin solve existing problems? If its a solution trying to look for a problem, I generally tend to skip the ICO
2) Does this need to be on the blockchain? If its a project that can be done using an existing system, it might be a red flag as well

Such a lovely post and very much information. thanks man

Really good thread man thanks. I will share this with my buddies who are looking to get involved in ICOs.

I find that there isn't too much in the way of education about cryptocurrencies online, mostly just about the price. Not about how to find a good ICO.

Its really valuable information for newbies.. thanks a ton..

Many Thanks for preparing the useful information.
For some "new" users it will be very helpful.

The most important part is nevertheless ICO research.

This is a very vital information anyone would love to know about, thanks for this

Great advice and definition from you. I hope you can be credited for give this information to people before they start trade with ICO.

This is noted. Thank you so much for sharing.

Not all of the projects are done through ICO, and some don't go directly to the community via ICO.

Also, you should not join ICOs which has most coins premined.Most of the successful ICOs we have seen belong to block chain technology. It would be better to join the ICO of already well established companies and institutional companies as they would have more chance of succeeding. Also, we should avoid to join ICOs whose offering date is more than six months.

what do you mean the study of bitcointalk? i would say even the scam ICO is also on the ANN thread.
i believe the author of the post you quote are trying to say about how to increase the opportunity of getting token/coin via bitcointalk forum.

i would love to add some tips on how to avoid scam ICO not present in the OP post
- not only study their team, in some case you can ask them personally if it is needed to confirm whether they are really a part of the team or not. even if he/she does, take a look at their professional history. even if their team have LinkedIn profile, doesn't guarantee that they are not scamming. sometimes scam ICO just copy paste their profile to make their ICO looks promising.
- study the advisors, and again, ask them to confirm whether they are part of the ICO or not.
- in some case, look at the bounty program they run. sometimes scam ICO is running bounty campaign which doesn't deliver any payment for the participant.

Yes, the study of bitcointalk is clearly a good way to learn about ICO, and most of the smart ICO are in the ANN thread.

learn a lot.good stuff.

investing in ICOs can be pretty rewarding, it is true that you need to do research for obvious things like; who are the people behind it? are they solving a real problem? What about the comunity supporting it etc... I´ve done a few ICOs like Power Ledger, Bankera, LA Token. Eventhough, i am still waiting on Bankera to finish its ICO sale, the oher two have done well for me.

Thank you so much for the sharing idea guys! Looking forward to join in ICO for the first time

This post is helpful for beginners, many people think it is a very profitable thing, but do not know what ICO is, so this post popularize knowledge.

This information is really helpful to newbies and to other members who's not really familiar with some terms used here, especially ICOs.

Very good 101 on ICOs.

My friends are constantly asking me to explain what's this, what's that. Now I will just point then here plus few more places to read.

Great post man! For sure it will help newbies who want to start investing in ICOs.

hopefully with this tread can help a lot for the newbie, and for myself.
I also recently joined one of ICO with a little experience, and full of confidence, I jumped into ICO

I would add to this, that the best way to do research is to try and get in contact with the actual team themselves.

This will reveal so much about the project and you get accurate first hand information.
Any good ico that I have invested in had some means of open communication with investors.
Some bigger projects might do this through a community manager, but I have found that a lot of them, the ceos themselves will take the time to address concerns and answer questions.

This might be seen as shilling, but it is good to share because I am genuinely impressed with the team behind Titanium.
The ceo took the time to personally answer any questions I had.
That transparency made me confident about the team's ability to carry out their plans.

More than anything, I believe the team is what will determine the project's success or not.

Yes its good to do their own research so that they know everything that , no one konw about there researxh in their own ways.

Nice overview, thanks man.

There is a lot of tech lingo that can confuse the beginner into the crypto world and these sort of threads help out new adopters, remember crypto becomes bigger when more people support it!

Great summary for newbie


More links below

https://blog.wavesplatform.com/how-to-run-an-ico-e21b9f8c11d6

ICO is very beneficial for newbie, they get good knowledge about the market by studying. They also learn some basics thing from it to get invole with crypto. But it is immensely important to analyse the project before making any investment.

I am posting this link from another bitcointalk thread.
It is one of the most useful threads by far for those that are having a hard time finding icos.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ico-spreadsheets-2552575

It has a list of spreadsheets that are maintained by various crypto investors.
Most of them have links to ico's websites, ratings, and information such as KYC, US/Chinese citizen participation, hardcaps, and dates.

Once again, it is important to do your own research.

This means you look at the entire website, read the entire whitepaper, contact people or the devs themselves on their telegram, double check the professional profiles of the team, compare the project to its competition, try the product out if they have one, run the numbers and calculate how much profit can be gained through short term flipping vs. long term holding, etc.

It takes a lot of time but there are huge benefits by doing your due dilligence:

#1) You will have 100% confidence and peace of mind when you invest.  Something that is very valuable in this volatile market.

#2) You WILL get profit. Well there is always a slight chance to lose, but  I have never met someone that has lost money after they have done their own thorough research.  The research will weed out the bad options.  The ones losing money are those who don't research or just follow hype or invest off of a mere suggestion.

#3) You will learn TONS about market economics, blockchain tech, investment principals, and more.  I have been able to use all of the knowledge to increase my ability to do my normal trading.

This is good guide for people who don't know what ICO's are, or for people who want to learn something more or to remind them self about something. People tend to forget, that most of the times basic things are most important, and this thread is about that.
There are all kind of ICO's out there and this is good reminder for us to do good research before joining, to be sure that we are not making a mistake.

Just when I was about to start Investing in ICOs!!!, great tips, Thanks, I'll definitely be doing deep researches now that I know all this.

No doubt...
Very useful information not only for newbies as well for all others.
Before taking part in any ICO you should need to study all aspects it will be more helpful to you to choose a healthy project with some extra potential.
You should have to visit the forum & you will get some useful tips.

Well, this is a great thread for people who are learning. On my experience, I've seen so many people asking silly questions either on telegram or BTT... that are answered on the ANN or Whitepaper. My advise: Take time to READ! Understand every point of the project, and THEN ask if something is not clear. But if you ask silly questions on their channels you won't be taken seriously.

Thanks! I really appreciate your work, it is useful.

If you are a beginner, better fill the Airdrops. Study the forum, score points for raising the rating. And when you get Junior status, then it's better then start to deal with ISO.

XRB (Raiblocks) team will open new ico. This is Dadi. (the best project)

Project description :
Token presale starts 22nd January 2018 at 12:00 (UTC) and ends 29th January 2018 at 12:00 (UTC) with 50% discount on the Public Sale price.
Public Sale token sale start 29th January 2018 at 12:00 (UTC) and ends 28th February 2018 at 12:00 (UTC).
Unlike existing centralized cloud services, DADI implements a fog computing structure - a decentralized pool of devices, all of which are connected to the Internet.
With DADI there is no single authority that regulates computing resource distribution. The platform uses cost-efficient fog computing organized by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) rather than a centralized cloud structure, removing the need to pay in advance for private and monopolized cloud computing platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
DADI’s web services are organized around a microservices architecture that provides a series of intelligent apps for building digital products.
Every digital product is powered by web services. And every business using the web will have the option to build on DADI’s platform at a price point unimaginable today. Moreover, all Internet users will be able to use DADI to generate passive income by providing their computational resources for rent.

Must search dadi. Ico starts 22nd january. RaiBlocks team helps them. Come New RaiBlocks.. team,comunity,investment,plan,project are wonderful. Price $: 0.25 per coins.

https://dadi.cloud/public/img/bitcointalkPromo-1.jpg

https://dadi.cloud/public/img/bitcointalkPromo-2.jpg

https://dadi.cloud/public/img/bitcointalkPromo-3.jpg

https://dadi.cloud/public/img/bitcointalkPromo-4.jpg

https://dadi.cloud/public/img/bitcointalkPromo-5.jpg

https://dadi.cloud/public/img/bitcointalkPromo-6.jpg

https://dadi.cloud/public/img/bitcointalkPromo-7.jpg

https://dadi.cloud/public/img/bitcointalkPromo-8.jpg

https://dadi.cloud/public/img/bitcointalkPromo-9.jpg

https://dadi.cloud/public/img/bitcointalkPromo-10.jpg


KEY LINKS

Supporting site for the DADI Crowdsale: https://dadi.cloud/r/v0fy4j5feh

Documents

• Technology white paper: http://dadi.link/id
• Business overview: http://dadi.link/ie
• Web services deep dive: http://dadi.link/in
• Marketing strategy: http://dadi.link/io

Technology

• Supporting site for DADI Web Services: https://dadi.tech/en/
• Documentation: https://docs.dadi.tech
• Source code: https://github.com/dadi

Connect with the team

• Discord: https://discord.gg/3sEvuYJ
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dadi
• Forum: https://forum.dadi.tech
• Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/dadi
• Medium: https://medium.com/@daditech

I'm not an expert, but I'm checking different ICO rating websites, white paper document, I'm also checking the overall idea of the coin/token, why it was developed and what problems could be solved by the usage of this new coin/token.

any specific advice regarding bounty campaigns and what criteria you use to select which one you want to participate in?  I have invested in a couple ICO's but havent yet tried out a bounty campaign.  it sounds like it could be a good way to get "free" money and i have heard rumors that some people have made a lot of money off of bounty campaigns just by picking the right one

Nice summary, I find there is a lot of different language that is used in this forum and to someone who is new to the crypto world it can be overwhelming.

It's a really good thread, thank you. I have just started to explore this phenomenon. As far as I understand, the major part of ICO's nowadays are tokens, not new coins? Ethereum platform is widely reused for the token creation.

I was unable to get you what you are trying to say about ICO and Bounty campaign. You have to understand the difference between these words first I think. Here you can share the tactics can be show by the newbie to tackle with the ICO investments.
Every use to open the way advertize option like many type of campaigns.
They would offer the token sale in the starting time with the certain percentage value. We need to buy the tokens in that time you will get the more money after the coin has been launched but you have to choose the legit project.

Great post,very informative for those starters.ICOs indeed are being tagged as scam investment but if you take time reading whitepapers and re-searching ICOs would be profitable for the newbies.

Great work! It would be great if there was a system in this forum to reward the meaningful post like this. You said that money that you have won is from ICOs, do you have some advices to find the best ICOs?

Very interesting topic. Today we see so many new people that are coming to crypto. Some of them don't realize the risks. Such topic should in FAQs.

A great start for beginners! I would also add information about the bounty campaign.

Bounty campaign is a part of ICO campaign in which the participants in one way or another advertise the project - via Twitter, facebook, Bitcoin talk forum and other ways. For this they receive a tokens of this project for free.

This is a good opportunity to earn without investment. In addition, so gradually you can join the environment and better understand how this system works. And you do not lose anything in case of scam. Only your time. Of course, it's also a pity, but still not like real money.

Thanks, great information for a ICO newbie like me

Nice manual for ICO investing, not on;y for newbies, just basics for everyone who want try to invest.

Becoming active and learning about the ICO is the one size fits all solution for ICOs. If you do your research and it makes sense to you go for it. If you do research and it doesn't then don't, but please don't hop into any ICO without researching and deciding if it is right for yourself.

Great advice! I seen way to many ICO's that have no whitepaper and no listing of the development team. The way I see it, if a company/ICO is hiding the team there is probably a reason why they don't want to show there face(s). To me if an ICO doesn't disclose this information, it's not worth looking into anymore.

Sure!  Also, feel free to add any other points that will help newbies.

This is true:
"Websites and youtubers that list a lot of ICO's with reviews generally get paid to do the review so they are biased.  However, they are good starting points to do your own research."

This is good material - may I have your permission to list it on my website, with credit of course?

Great information for people who are just learning about ICO's.

The big key is just to do your own research and ask a lot of questions at ICO's, it is the beauty of this forum!

Just some basic stuff to get you started:

ICO = Initial coin offering.  Sometimes called a TGE (token generation event).

Coin = has it's own blockchain.   Token = attached to a platform that has utility.

Pre-Sale = Sometimes called a private sale.  Time period where select investors can contribute, before an open crowdsale.  This varies widely.  Some ico's only accept accredited investors during this time.  Some will have a registration whitelist that you have to do to sign up.  Some are open to anyone willing to contribute large sums.  Some are open to everybody.  The highest bonus is usually during the pre-sale period.

Generally, an ICO is a startup company that is trying to raise funds.
Sometimes, it's an already established company that is moving a part of it's product or system to blockchain technology (or they want to expand their business).
Typically, they would have to gather funds through typical investment channels.
Now, due to blockchain and smart contract tech, companies can bypass that and go straight to the community.

Basically, it is like crowdfunding or crowdsourcing with blockchain technology.

People like ICOs because you can typically get a coin for a huge discounted price.
Also, you can be an active part of an exciting new company or project.

People dislike ICOs because there are so many of them, that the quality of startups has really started to decline with many copy cats and startups that have no benefit using coins or tokens at all.
Also, there are many companies that are outright scams or near scams, where you can lose a lot of your investment.

General Advice:
Websites and youtubers that list a lot of ICO's with reviews generally get paid to do the review so they are biased.  However, they are good starting points to do your own research.

You will most likely need an erc20 wallet to invest.  myetherwallet is one of the most popular.  You can adjust gas prices on it, so if you want the ether to go through quickly so you can get a bonus, you can do so.

Become an active part of the community surrounding an ICO.  Join their telegram, slack, or whatever they use and also frequent their ANN thread here in bitcointalk.

The most important parts of the the company to look at to determine if it is a scam or not is the development team and the whitepaper.  Take the time to look at the team's online present and professional profiles.

To determine whether or not it will be a successful investment or not, look at the max supply of coins, how many and where they will be distributed, the soft and hard caps, the price of the coin, whether they have a working product or not, and their roadmap.

Last bit:
Most of my profit in crypto has been through ICOs.  I believe it is a great way to invest ONLY if you take the time to do some hardcore research, don't just follow hype.