"Revolutionary New Coin which is Anonymous, Secured, Ultra Blazing Fast.."
"BlockChain's 1st .. "
" Coin with AI.."
I bet everyone of you have gone through these adverts in the online space. They sound great, but sadly most of them turn out to be farce or even a SCAM. So what will you be getting out of reading this article? Firstly, you will now know how to spot a FAKE ICO and secondly this post will constantly be updated on the ICOs which I think are confirmed Scam. So if you're thinking to invest in an ICO, make sure it's not in this list.
HOW TO IDENTIFY FAKE ICOs
The Website
Sometimes some websites are so downgraded, that you can understand just by seeing it. They will have spelling errors and lackluster performance. Moreover try to find the Contact Us section. Make sure they are on atleast one Social Media Platform like Reddit, Twitter or Facebook. Also try to see if they have their own customer care email id, e.g. info@xyz.com and not info@gmail.comHave a look at their team.
If it's a team of less than 3 people, most likely its fake. Try to google their names and find them on platforms like Linkedin and Github. Just being present on these platforms also won't do, check their activity and when they have joined the platforms. If its created like 3-4 months before, most likely they are impersonating someone else.
Sometimes, you will see the team being anonymous, by using pseudonyms which is alright. You don't have much of chance here to know if the team is legit or not.Read in between the lines.
Anywhere you see, captions or statements like "you will earn lots of money..", "money making machine..", "No Loss, Only Profit", "10,000% Profit Ratio" - understand that, they are only interested in YOUR Money. No ICO will claim to make only profits and set you a profit-percentage for it.MLM or Tech?
Some ICOs give the illusion of working on a ground-breaking technology but inside they are MLM or Multi-Level-Marketing Scheme and nothing else. Well they are not scam/fake outright but impersonating as a cutting edge tech giant is also not acceptable.Hard Cap
Most Scammed ICOs, I have seen to have a low target goal to achieve. They don't set their cap at a huge number.Change of Address
If you see, the ICO changes their crowdsale address frequently and by frequently I mean quite frequently, then suspect it to be playing around with your money.Fake Sympathy
ICOs have become Smart. Few days after the launch of their ICO, they will come up with a bluff that they were hacked and have lost all their funding. So now they have changed their servers, shifted their office to Moon and are operating from Saturn's Proxy IP. Don't fall for it. Period.Deleting Content
Near the fag end of the ICO, you will see them to delete their Tweets, Facebook posts and comments. The moment you see - it's a SCAM!The Mighty Whitepaper
Okay if you're thinking I will tell an ICO is fake just because it has no Whitepaper, then you're mistaken. There have been few ICOs where the whitepapers haven't been published and the reason being, copied. It is acceptable that the pace at which ICOs are coming, one can try to replicate another's model. But organisations do publish their whitepaper eventually on the day of sale or a day before. So keep that in mind.
ICOs which I have predicted to be Fake and are proven to be:
Ziber
Trust me when I say, they did their homework well. They left no chances to have a doubt. Ziber merchandise, stickers, office, suited men, presentations, brainstorming sessions, intro video, product already available for download - each and everything seemed legit until they fell for the 7th point - Fake sympathy, followed by the 8th. Now when you open their site ziber.io, it redirects to a wordpress blog which has been setup by peeps who were scammed and are trying to unmask the scammers.Eros HQ
Aimed to be the Sex Marketplace has lost its domain and Twitter profile.SigmaCoin
Cheeky videos of suited men and a website which is disastrous than a 5 year old's wall drawing.EtheriyaProject
Pure Bullshit.Ascendancy
Looked promising but I knew their lack of professionalism and random changing of the address would result in a scam
This section will be updated so bookmark it for future use.
Now, that I have laid out all the loopholes of a Fake ICO, one can take a note of it, smartly cover it up and launch its ICO. So remember, a scammer will always leave a clue behind. You just need to find that clue.
DISCLAIMER: These are my own personal thoughts. Please do not take my words as gospel truth and thus do your own research before investing.