Lately, it seems one ICO after another is announced almost daily, with a community of unpaid hype men popping up around each of one swearing it's the next Bitcoin. Personally, I'm more than a little tired of all of these ICOs, but putting my feelings aside, I'd like to present to you a few fact-based reasons to explain why I don't participate in ICOs.
LOW ICO PRICE EQUALS EVEN LOWER EXCHANGE PRICE
No matter how well funded an ICO has been of late, few have fared well upon hitting exchanges. This is because many of them are stuck in the idea stage, and have teams with little to no experience at pulling off anything at the scale they're now attempting. What this means in a nutshell is that most of these ICOs will never actually produce anything at all, despite the ideas behind most of them being sound. While it's a bit off topic, I'd add that if some YouTube reviewer warns me that I'll be crying come next summer if I don't buy into an ICO today, it's an easy pass for me, particularly as most of these shills never talk about the qualifications of the teams behind these ICOs when hyping these "can't miss" projects.
THE CAPTAIN OF THE SHIP CAN'T SWIM
And speaking of the developers behind these ICOs... I find it absolutely incredible that they've been able to separate people from their money despite having, in many cases, never produced anything whatsoever for the markets their creations are intended to serve, or any market at all for that matter. For example, consider the heavily hyped Bitquence ICO. Is Bitquence a great project? Well, I have to admit that it's a great IDEA, but I've been unable to find any evidence that the kid behind it has ever done anything of note, let alone anything on this scale. This hasn't stopped any number of folks from tossing millions at the project, which to my mind might as well be centered on developing warp drive propulsion technology. From what I've gathered from my research on developer Shingo Lavine and his team, that'd be about as likely. I'm an experienced writer, but if I launched an ICO to fund a project I swore would rival Frank Herbert's "Dune", looking at my works to date would make it abundantly clear that I wasn't capable of delivering on that promise. Try applying the same scrutiny to these ICOs, and you'll often see that there's simply no way they can possibly succeed given the people involved.
JUMPING THROUGH UNNECESSARY HOOPS
Another thing I've noticed is that a lot of these recent ICOs require you to jump through hoops if you want to get involved, such as funding them with Ethereum... And doing so using the unforgiveable mess that is EtherDelta. I won't go into the many issues EtherDelta has; suffice it to say that it's difficult for me to imagine a viable, let alone valuable project coming out of such a poorly designed exchange, and leave it at that. Combine that with my first point, and ICOs like this will never get a dime from me, even if I have confidence in the team. I'll just wait for them to hit an exchange, drop fifty percent or more in price, and buy in then, needless hoops avoided.
CLUELESS (AND PAID?) SUPPORTERS
By far the biggest problem I have with these ICOs is the countless shills pushing them on the community while conveniently avoiding all of the issues previously mentioned. Some of these people are YouTube reviewers who MAY or MAY NOT be paid hype men, but even worse in my opinion are the average Joes who are excited by an idea and advise others to buy in. The overwhelming majority of these folks couldn't name even one of the developers involved, know even less about their credentials, and are entirely unconcerned by their ignorance. Having been excited by a concept, they've happily emptied their wallets, and now want to empty yours and mine. If someone tells you about a "can't miss" ICO and you ask them who the developers behind it are, I can almost guarantee you that the answer will be something like "What difference does THAT make?"... Which is, yet again, another reason to pass on the surefire goldmine you're being told about.
Anyone remember EOS? If so, then you'll remember what happened to its price when it finally hit exchanges. Now we're told that Bitquence, Populous, and any number of other ICOs are "can't miss" opportunities that are sure to reach triple digit prices within a few months of their releases and so forth. I'm not going to say that none of them will, but I am going to say that the overwhelming majority of them won't, and those that will become the most valuable will need YEARS before they yield fruit. That said, if you're willing to hold onto them long-term or sell immediately when they hit exchanges, that's about the best chance you have of profiting from them based on evidence to date, the great Clif High's predictions aside. I've heard that everyone who invests in altcoins learns in a rather short period of time that instead of placing their faith in the opinion of someone else, they're better off doing their own research, asking pertinent questions, and only THEN deciding whether or not to invest in an altcoin or ICO. This is clearly not true, as most people invest their money on the word of their chosen "crypto guru" from what I've observed, as if when they lose their money they're going to be reimbursed. It's truly mind boggling.
Really quick, I want to let you guys in on a great ICO that's coming up that I'm sure is going to make you 2000x ROI in a year's time. It's called SAMcoin, which is the currency that'll be used on the associated SmokeAndMirrors network...