For me I consider if they pay high for bounty campaigns and also have a low minimum token price (most at time that's the trick many project use to get people buy plenty tokens and also use it to take the poor man's little money as he can also buy with the little amount of money he has)
And whether they pay high for refs system. As this will help them get more people.
I also consider the security and location as well.
Topic: What is the first sign of a scam project (ico) for you? - page 3. (Read 2723 times)
I have been considering doing some data mining to build a model to predict scam ICOs based on a number of features we can extract from their websites and BCT threads. I would need to compile a list of scams versus non scams and then do some data gathering but building a classifier wouldn't be too hard (thank you Kaggle contests) using decision trees or other standard methods.
Anyways, my hypothesis is that coins which offer real high 'early investor' bonuses will be scams. People do this to take advantage of greed as it causes people to jump right in without a chance for discussion or proper research. If it is a legit project then they do not need to use this tactic. While this is not always the case as there have been successful projects which did this my gut tells me scammers will do this.
Then there is the presence of shilling. I am currently doing another project with Amazon reviews to detect shilling (and shillers) so may have to come back to this. A product with actual mixed reviews will have a different distribution of ratings as a product with shilling where two disjoint clusters of review scores form. Sentiment analysis methods can be used to assist with this, along with some semantic analysis.
Then we have poor spelling, quickly written up webpages, short whitepapers, unrealistic claims, no escrow etc. BUT NOT ALWAYS. For example some scams have escrow just to throw people off.
It is good to be back Bitcointalk.. Maybe its time to start calling out scams again to keep my peeps safe.
Anyways, my hypothesis is that coins which offer real high 'early investor' bonuses will be scams. People do this to take advantage of greed as it causes people to jump right in without a chance for discussion or proper research. If it is a legit project then they do not need to use this tactic. While this is not always the case as there have been successful projects which did this my gut tells me scammers will do this.
Then there is the presence of shilling. I am currently doing another project with Amazon reviews to detect shilling (and shillers) so may have to come back to this. A product with actual mixed reviews will have a different distribution of ratings as a product with shilling where two disjoint clusters of review scores form. Sentiment analysis methods can be used to assist with this, along with some semantic analysis.
Then we have poor spelling, quickly written up webpages, short whitepapers, unrealistic claims, no escrow etc. BUT NOT ALWAYS. For example some scams have escrow just to throw people off.
It is good to be back Bitcointalk.. Maybe its time to start calling out scams again to keep my peeps safe.
I think that this would be great. Or come up with a weighted analysis that allows the community to provide an overall ranking (score) for ICO's.
Seems like a lot of ICO's scams are giving a bad rep to those that are actually trying to help create real authentic solutions for this world. Ultimately, this hurts the entire industry including the growth of cryptocurrency. We need to collectively come together as a community to report and discourage scams as much as possible. Otherwise, it cripples the growth of this industry and hurts all of us...
For me it is when obvious question is being asked and the team is not asking them, that is when I notice something is wrong, no matter how stupid the question is the team should be able to provide answers to the questions
As stated in the topic, what is the first thing that makes you raise the alarm?
But to me it all depends on what do you define scam? something that you cant make money of , or just something that will dippasear into abyss. Some times scam coin are the ones which pump hardest
- Is the token website a single app page ? What is the tech used ? (Aka website builder, bootstrap theme ...) ? Is the website secure ? (Not ony meaning https there, but also from common security vulnerabilties)
- Are translations bounties well verified ? Or is it google translate ?
- Is the whitepaper a mashup of words or are there real technical aspects ?
- Are the devs participating to events or videos ? Or do we just have some photos without proof of the persons behind the project ?
- Are translations bounties well verified ? Or is it google translate ?
- Is the whitepaper a mashup of words or are there real technical aspects ?
- Are the devs participating to events or videos ? Or do we just have some photos without proof of the persons behind the project ?
I have been considering doing some data mining to build a model to predict scam ICOs based on a number of features we can extract from their websites and BCT threads. I would need to compile a list of scams versus non scams and then do some data gathering but building a classifier wouldn't be too hard (thank you Kaggle contests) using decision trees or other standard methods.
Anyways, my hypothesis is that coins which offer real high 'early investor' bonuses will be scams. People do this to take advantage of greed as it causes people to jump right in without a chance for discussion or proper research. If it is a legit project then they do not need to use this tactic. While this is not always the case as there have been successful projects which did this my gut tells me scammers will do this.
Then there is the presence of shilling. I am currently doing another project with Amazon reviews to detect shilling (and shillers) so may have to come back to this. A product with actual mixed reviews will have a different distribution of ratings as a product with shilling where two disjoint clusters of review scores form. Sentiment analysis methods can be used to assist with this, along with some semantic analysis.
Then we have poor spelling, quickly written up webpages, short whitepapers, unrealistic claims, no escrow etc. BUT NOT ALWAYS. For example some scams have escrow just to throw people off.
It is good to be back Bitcointalk.. Maybe its time to start calling out scams again to keep my peeps safe.
Anyways, my hypothesis is that coins which offer real high 'early investor' bonuses will be scams. People do this to take advantage of greed as it causes people to jump right in without a chance for discussion or proper research. If it is a legit project then they do not need to use this tactic. While this is not always the case as there have been successful projects which did this my gut tells me scammers will do this.
Then there is the presence of shilling. I am currently doing another project with Amazon reviews to detect shilling (and shillers) so may have to come back to this. A product with actual mixed reviews will have a different distribution of ratings as a product with shilling where two disjoint clusters of review scores form. Sentiment analysis methods can be used to assist with this, along with some semantic analysis.
Then we have poor spelling, quickly written up webpages, short whitepapers, unrealistic claims, no escrow etc. BUT NOT ALWAYS. For example some scams have escrow just to throw people off.
It is good to be back Bitcointalk.. Maybe its time to start calling out scams again to keep my peeps safe.
For me, the rule is very simple. If the price is lower than 50% of the ICO price, the project is a scam.
I think there is no way to distinguish between good ICO and ICO scams because they use a lot of advertising and set up a very good information about the future. They use this method to entice investors and then release to users the TOKEN no value. For me, if a good ICO project they will update a lot of good news about the project and try to develop with the investor in the future.
Well, First, check the profile of their team, because it's the easiest to know if their team profile is fake. Then what is the idea of the product? or their ico goal is realistic? That's all I can say
This topic is amazing for future scammers...
As stated in the topic, what is the first thing that makes you raise the alarm?
asking for btc and having nothing to show ps a whitepaper doesnt count. remember when devs made things or released trials and asked for cash?
its so easy to steal with ico thats why they do it. give you a whitepaper and empty words and they get cash. icos will stop when all btc is bled from morons and only smart people with btc left that dont invest in icos.
then youll all cry that most btc is in hands of few. fact is idiots were robbed in scams because they were greedy thinking thwy could turn 10k into 10 million.
would you give the nigerian prince some cash? no.... well icos are your nigerian princes.
I think the for me the signs of ICO being scam is # 1 their payments is very good to be true, 2nd no one known that ico really paying like your friends or other colleges in this site didn't even know or encounter that site even paying.
It having a crowdsale/ICO in the first place. We all came to this space for proof of work and that is the correct and fair way to issue out tokens
As stated in the topic, what is the first thing that makes you raise the alarm?
The first thing that makes me raise the alarm if one ICO is scam or not is when an ICO is trying to raise too much money with just a little percent of tokens or coins for investors and bounty participants, having more than 50% of the tokens for the dev or team. Also, I think an ICO is scam when there are so many premined coins.
There are plain scams, but also "soft" or elaborate scams. One very easy thing to do is to gather some ''devs'', pay someone to do webdesign and to write a good WP, create some hype. One can set up multiple profiles in linkedIn and fake those profiles with random photos and copied info from real profiles. This would give a false impression of a professional network.
GitHub can also be defrauded, albeit it is more difficult because there is a timeline there. So time of activity in GitHub is a good indicator of real or fake expertise. No one would intentionally fake 5 years of expertise since ICOs are more recent. Only if they buy profiles, or if they are mediocre programmers but already with years of mediocre code shared in GitHub. Or if they hack it somehow.
Even more difficult to get is a scam that also cheats the devs allocated, it is never the intention of the "CEO" to develop anything, but he manages to get some guys with real curriculum promising them a good share of the ICO revenue. Being a programmer is not exactly a highly paid profession in average, so some people would be more than willing to lend their names in exchange for a good piece of the ico pie. This might be done even signing legal documents, etc, but the effect is only to protect those ad hoc hired devs. The community thinks singed contracts are evidence of good will and seriousness, even better for the scammers. One life-changer shot of getting some millions in a few months...
After this, it is not difficult to squander the money since there is no compromise on successfully developing shit, after all it is a startup.
Be aware of all these details and simply don't put any money should a red flag pops up.
GitHub can also be defrauded, albeit it is more difficult because there is a timeline there. So time of activity in GitHub is a good indicator of real or fake expertise. No one would intentionally fake 5 years of expertise since ICOs are more recent. Only if they buy profiles, or if they are mediocre programmers but already with years of mediocre code shared in GitHub. Or if they hack it somehow.
Even more difficult to get is a scam that also cheats the devs allocated, it is never the intention of the "CEO" to develop anything, but he manages to get some guys with real curriculum promising them a good share of the ICO revenue. Being a programmer is not exactly a highly paid profession in average, so some people would be more than willing to lend their names in exchange for a good piece of the ico pie. This might be done even signing legal documents, etc, but the effect is only to protect those ad hoc hired devs. The community thinks singed contracts are evidence of good will and seriousness, even better for the scammers. One life-changer shot of getting some millions in a few months...
After this, it is not difficult to squander the money since there is no compromise on successfully developing shit, after all it is a startup.
Be aware of all these details and simply don't put any money should a red flag pops up.
For me the first sign is a project trying to raise money with no working product, an unknown or anonymous team and an unprofessional website and managers.
As stated in the topic, what is the first thing that makes you raise the alarm?
I guess you need toa check this ann and then read the white paper where you need to be wise and then something wrong it is probably a scam and also when the dev is not updating in the campaign obviously probably a big scam in that ico we cant probably determine it easily i guess. 
Team is the most important thing. There should be at least one known and real person in the team.
Fake names, fake photos, fake titles are the first signs for me.
Yeah, but how can you really tell if a photo is fake? Fake names, fake photos, fake titles are the first signs for me.
Most new coins aren't anything new and shouldn't be purchased, and we all should know that by now. And we all know damn well that's not going to stop people from buying them. There's way too much money to be made speculating. It's pretty safe to assume any new coin is scammy. There are some good projects floating around, but new coins? No way.
I'll list the signs that I look for:
-If the team consists of people from the same country.
-If the white paper prepared properly
-If the road map prepared well
-If they use a known escrow agency
-If the teammates' history is clear
I check each of these criteria.
-If the team consists of people from the same country.
-If the white paper prepared properly
-If the road map prepared well
-If they use a known escrow agency
-If the teammates' history is clear
I check each of these criteria.
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