If you invested in an ICO, what would be your worst fear?
Most likely that the people you invested in, take off with your money and are never to be seen again, right?
To avoid that, there are a few standard items to check as described by techcrunch. In summary they are:
- Coins/tokens not requiring a blockchain
- Empty repositories, i.e. no code submissions in open source projects
- Big premines, i.e. large allocation of coins to issuer/development team
- Anonymous or shady team members
- Weak or vague whitepaper
- No (clear) roadmap
However, if the above is not the case for the ICO you are interested in, there is a good chance they are still trying to scam you as is most likely the case in my next example.
Back in October 2017, a (pre-)ICO was held for Alloy token. It had stellar reviews everywhere, including on Steemit, and it looked very promising. Even more so due to the fact they seemed to have a working product already with an existing company called Codemojo. The offering was a success, everyone received their coins and communication was frequent.
Since then I (and I presume a lot of others) turned my attention elsewhere due to the relatively long road map and a lot of other things happening in the crypto market. Fast forward to Saturday last week when I was looking for some updates on the project. And what I found was pretty shocking.
- Alloy token website is down and has been down since I checked
- Telegram was not being updated
- Twitter messages basically stopped after ICO
- No response on my questions on twitter
- No response on live chat on the Codemojo website
- No response on email messages to people involved in the project
All very worrying, but the strangest thing is, I don't see anyone on internet complaining they have been scammed by Codemojo. Even here on Steemit where it received quite a few positive reviews during the ICO period, I haven't seen anyone complain about it. Why is that?
Do you think I am paranoid? Or do you think I can kiss my invested Ether goodbye?
Let me know in the comments below!
Images:
https://twitter.com/codemojoio
References:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/07/6-red-flags-of-an-ico-scam/)
https://alloy.rewards.network/