There have been a total of 767 ICOs in 2018 alone according to icodata.io. That's an average of 5.5 ICOs every day! With this many ICOs flooding the market, how can we tell what projects are scams? I have a few tried and true methods to easily spot a scam. At the end of the day, everyone should #DYOR.
1. Check to see if the ICO is a legitimately registered company.
Every company website should have their legal entity name in the footer of their website. Here is an example:
The next step is searching the entity name on official company registry websites. Here is a comprehensive list of company registers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_company_registers
2. Research each team member.
This is an easy eye test. If it looks like bullshit, it probably is bullshit.
- Do they have a LinkedIn?
- Is the ICO listed on their LinkedIn?
- Does the LinkedIn look like a real profile with real history?
- Is the photo of the team member real and not stock photography?
- Are the team members connected to each other?
- Do you have any mutual connections with a team member?
I'm for sure investing in this ICO. That Kevin Belanger guy is dreamy...
3. Does the product or vision the ICO is marketing make sense to you?
As a general rule of thumb, don't invest in anything that you don't understand. If you don't understand the details, it will be too hard to assess the risk you are taking. Don't fall for the shills, and do some research on what your investment is going towards.
4. Does the ICO have code committed to GitHub?
GitHub is a development platform inspired by the way you work. From open source to business, you can host and review code, manage projects, and build software alongside millions of other developers.
An ICO is a blockchain technology company, so product and code go hand in hand. An active codebase committed to at a regular cadence is a healthy indicator of product progress. If the company is putting all efforts towards "shilling" their ICO, and zero effort into their product...
5. Read their white paper.
Most people skip reading the white paper because a long document can be intimidating. The white paper has a lot of details on the vision the team is setting out to build, and is a good litmus test on raising the bullshit flag. Is the white paper too short (< 10 pages)? Is it too vague? Are there statements of grandeur without being qualified? Does it make sense to you?
Check this awesome white paper out: http://goo.gl/nnLcQX 😎 😎
6. ICOcheck.io
This is a community driven background check and due diligence project. They ask all the hard questions, and do a lot of the hard work to uncover any potential red flags. Here is an example of a project under review: https://github.com/ico-check/ico-check/issues/128
Now that you have some tools at your disposal to spot a scam, your homework is using what you learned on Thread.io 😎
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