Once upon a time, an investor is looking for a reliable ICO to invest on. He browses on ICOBench and other ICO rating sites to see what's hot and what's not. Of course, as an investor, you may want to invest on something that's hot.
He saw an ICO named Dumpchain with an impressive 4.6 out of 5 rating, checking the website and so on. He was convinced and he immediately joined....
The ICO price was set at $0.80. The investor bought 10,000 Dumpchain tokens. The ICO campaign will last for 3 months, until....
Admin: We would like to thank all of you for participating in our ICO. The good news is that we have reached hard cap in just less than 2 months, so we're way ahead of our schedule! Your tokens will be distributed within 10 days straight to your Ether Wallet. No KYC needed! Congratulations!
Investor: Hurray! I can feel that Dumpchain will fly to the moon!
After 10 days....
Admin: As promised, all of the tokens are distributed to the participants. You can check our Etherscan here (etherscan link). If we didn't distribute your token yet, kindly send us an email for verifying your purchase. Thank you.
Investor: I already received my tokens. Now let's wait for them to hit the exchanges.
After 5 days....
Admin: Good news to all! We have reached out to Rekt Exchange about listing our token to them and they're willing to list it on Friday at 22:00 GMT. Once they have announced, you can start trading DUMP tokens.
Investor: Oh God this is it!!! To the moon! To the moon!
After a week (Friday 22:00 GMT)....
Rekt exchange announced on their social media that DUMP/BTC and DUMP/ETH pairings are now activated. Admin retweeted their post after 5 minutes. The investor decides to #HODL all of his DUMP tokens until the price reaches $2 per token.
After a week....
Admin: We would like to announce that our DUMP token is now listed on CoinMarketCap!
Investor was so excited and he checked the price immediately. Remember that the ICO price was $0.80, and it slightly goes up to $0.90. He decides to keep #HODLing.
After a week....
In their official Telegram group, many investors started to panic a little bit. Due to the bear market, the price go down to $0.75 from $0.90.
Investor: Admin, when moon? The price goes down a bit.
Admin: For sure, we will moon once our MVP goes live in action! We are committed to finish it on the day it was mentioned in our roadmap. It's good that you keep holding your tokens.
The investor keeps his faith on Dumpchain and sticks to holding. Price stabilized between $0.72 to $0.77.
After a month....
Investor: Admin, when moon? Price got down again.
Admin: Have patience my friend. We are now close to finish our product. I can tell you that when our product is up and running, our price goes higher.
The investor was so excited that the MVP will be finished soon. However, the price is stabilizing between $0.65 to $0.69.
After 3 months....
Investor: Admin, when moon? I just don't know when the dump will end.
Admin (announces on Telegram group): We are almost there guys. However, we are contacted by SEC that we should pause our MVP launch due to licensing issues. We cannot give you a timeframe if SEC would give us the green light to fully launch our MVP.
After the announcement, the price goes down to $0.58 and for many months, it just stabilized to $0.54 to $0.61. However, the investor still holds on to his faith and decides not to trade.
After 6 months, investor messaged the entire Telegram group and said....
Investor: When dump?
Few minutes after that question, price instantly dropped from $0.53 to $0.06 in the Rekt exchange. It was revealed that the admin himself was a dumping whale, and there was no actual MVP made.
Admin: There you go! I dumped all of my tokens. (He leaves Telegram group and never be seen again)
With great disbelief, panic sellers start pulling the price down until all buying orders are empty. In the next few months, no new investors are willing to buy DUMP tokens anymore and trading volume was zero in the Rekt exchange.
Investor leaves the Telegram group and cried all day long.
The end.
His story is not new, it is the story of most investors of several ICOs in 2017. People always believe that the tokens they invest will always increase, it's similar to Bitcoin. And I'm also a blind person who believes that Bitcoin will rise after falling, it's a mistake