I started following the UmbrellaCoin guys like a week back. Now I've not been on BitCoinTalk long enough, and till now just used to jump into currencies based on their valuation inside CoinMarketCap, but I am lately figuring that's too late. So after reading a few whitepapers, I narrowed down to 2-3 ICOs/ crowdsales I was interested in and one of those which piqued my interest was UmbrellaCoin. (
https://www.umbrellacoin.org/) The things which really attracted me were it tackles an area (hidden costs of insurance) which even in the fiat currency world I've not seen anyone tackle, it deals with an industry which is known for bullying customers and leads to a terrible experience and it's formed full of devs from reputed companies. The last point piqued my interest even more when I saw this yesterday:
https://medium.com/@umbrellacoin/dev-update-week-of-july-30th-c5a073206df4 Holy shit, they actually have a prototype/ beginnings a month before their crowdsale almost. So I was considering putting ~ 50 ETH into their Crowdsale. My questions to the community:
1) What's a decent amount to put into ICOs/crowdsales where you believe it's gotta chance. Personally my risk appetite in the stock market is ~30-40k USD total, so even 50 ETH scares me a little but I feel I might be missing the boat if I don't jump in.
2) Is it common or uncommon to have working prototypes for these coins much before their going public?
Thanks
Most ICOs only offer a promise to build upon the project after they get there funding which always makes investing in them kind of a shot in the dark unless they have had successful projects in the past.
When it comes to Umbrella Coin this is pretty exciting news to hear! Ive been following this Coins development for a little while now and I had no idea they where rolling out a prototype pre-release, my confidence in this project continues to grow and I appreciate the new info cryptoisdafuture.
To answer your questions
1st id say If your going to invest in a ICO I wouldn't put all your eggs in one basket but if the project is promising perhaps 15-20% would be a good amount.
2nd Its fairly uncommon to see prototypes pre release I would say this is one of only 4 ICO ive seen in the last 3 months pre releasing a platform