Topic: LIST: How to evaluate ICO opportunities (Read 1098 times)

Wow. It feels like it's been a century since I first started this post.

One thing that's become clear to me over the past year is that investing in ICOs requires more than a cursory review of whitepapers and websites if you intend to make strategic decisions.

With that said, the details on this list helped to create a framework for discussing project details with core team members and crypto community members (whom I trust).

In the end, the best way to evaluate an ICO opportunity is not simple... it requires an active, working knowledge of the crypto landscape. This only seems to be gained by actually contributing to the crypto convo.

Thoughts?

All the best my crypto friends!

Crypto Kristen (AKA Kristen_Colwell on Twitter)

Having studied and analyzed all the information, it is very important to understand the development plans of the project after the end of the ICO. Will the project develop further or all in order to simply get the investors' money.

It is very important to understand whether the project has a development plan after the end of the ICO. Whether or not the project team will work further or just want to get money from investors.

Thank you for the information, I think that it will do good for me, as there is a lot of fraud and what to expect from them is unknown, so that wherever you need to climb it is necessary to thoroughly study everything and send out information

 On the other hand, a crypto-trader may take a completely different approach to evaluating ICO opportunities. This type of investor may jump straight to TOKEN OFFERING STRUCTURE.

Sorry for the late reply! Yeah the landscape's changed dramatically since 2017 where participating in an ICO was simple as pie and it'd likely guarantee you t least 2 returns just by participating. Now, you nred to whitelist, do lotteries, and answer questions to prove 'you care' about a project before you can beg good ICOs to take your money. Basically the little guy's getting muscled out of crypto now due to private and pre-sales which makes ICO allocation v. small and often a lottery. ICOs turning into IPOs really. Which means that companies are, as you rightly said, more professional as they need to spend money on rising awareness. But then that makes participation more difficult so it's paradoxical in a way, and you can't simply stumble upon a 100x ICO like one was able to in the past. 

Yes! Very much alive...

And it's funny how quickly things change in crypto. The biggest shift in my view of ICOs and whether or not to invest has been around two points: does the token have a purpose, and does the team know what's needed to bring an ICO successfully to market.

2017 was a drastically different time for ICOs compared to today. An idea and an interesting name could net an ICO millions, but not the same now. However, there is still a huge demand for ICO speculation... ahem, investing. But people seem to be gravitating to projects that have at their core a significant blockchain innovation. Not just another token.

Plus, with the recent bans by Facebook, Google, and MailChimp (to name a few), the real projects have to put more money to get visibility now. This may mean that the overall quality of all ICO offers will come up. The scams won't be as willing to shell out the ad dollars. And if an ICO project is at all serious about getting into top exchanges, they need $$$$$$. SO, I'm now left wondering about the presence of high-quality marketing strategy in ICO projects.... does well-planned and executed marketing indicate that this is a solid team fully invested in achieving the directive?

Just some thoughts.... would love to hear yours!

CryptoKristen 

Was just about to bump this thread again, glad to know you're still alive and active : )

  ::)Hi everyone!

Sorry I have been away. My journey in crypto has been evolving and some crazy opportunities came my way. I have been able to apply my marketing skills to ICOs and crypto-related projects. It's been amazing and I've learned so much.

I think about this list regularly, and often laugh to myself about how much things have changed in the world of ICOs in just 6 months.

I have not abandoned this list. In fact, my skills and knowledge are improving for the better of us all on this thread... LOL I want to share my learnings.

More to come. All the best and let's keep digging.

  :-*CryptoKristen

Yes it is! This is very useful for both side!

I'm surprised Kristen has been away for so long. Even if she has and this thread''s been abandoned, it's still immensely valuable for people out there hence why I'm giving it a big bump!

The most important thing is to understand the development plan of this ICO. Do they wish to go 2-3 years in one direction or they want to simply lure the initial money into the project.

Many things can be noticed only with experience. Factors on which the ICO analysis can be built a lot, from intuition and ending with insider information.

I know that many people actively use mathematical analysis on the basis of wave effects. It is an old theory and it can estimate the prospects of the price growth for coins.            

Thanks for compiled such big and organized evaluation worksheet. Reading and analysing whitepaper is getting harder now as more and more ICO coming out with technical specifications that confusing now.

But this thread should be the first everyone should read before diving into investing in ICO

Making a list is not a bad idea to put everything together but the bottom line of all this is people that cannot even read a WP are trying to be smart by investing on gut feeling.

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Oh, and I'd meant to say, here's another ICO framework that I came across online.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zz49JU69XNJTXE7I1CAGEjjK0L9zLn60CRDvi-70qeA/edit#gid=0

Some interesting tidbits there. One for instance: Signaling by corporate customers / partners - have they got any partnerships lined up (inherently therefore assumes a MVP of some sort)? Would go nicely under competitive analysis I feel.

Speaking of competitive analysis. I'm not sure what (SWAT) means.....

Oh, and a couple of other ideas:

Regarding the 'Is the token mineable' bit. There's also staking. As I'm sure your aware, except in the very early stages of a project mining typically requires computationally intensive hardware to work. Staking on the other hand does not and people are also rewarded for it although to a much lesser extent in terms of the reward. But it's basically something that anyone with a laptop can do. So 'Is the token mineable/stakable)?

And a rather advanced technological aspect is - what type of algorithm does the block chain use? There's loads out there and some algorithms, SHA-1, SHA-2 SHA-256 hash algorithms etc., and some algorithms are more efficient and therefore 'better' than others for the tokens purpose. As I said, it's rather an advanced technological aspect and will largely be determined by the type of token and its utility but it is something that can offer a technological advantage. I'd just put under the tech. section 'What algorithm is the token/block chain built upon? Does it offer any advantages when contrasted with its competitors?'; that should suffice

Sorry for the late response(s)! I'm personally really struggling to see what I can add here. You've pretty much covered it, if there's anything I think of I'll let you know