What you need to watch out for
If you see any of these, consider them red flags.
Bold claims, unrealistic goals
Let's be honest, no coin is going to realistically change the economy and world as we know it in the span of 100 days.
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| Claim | Why it's bullshit |
|---|---|
| We're going to disrupt the industry | A coin that needs an ICO to raise funds obviously wont disrupt anything |
| Proof of Stake is the new efficient mining for the masses | Yeah, so are all the other clone coins! |
| We support the community | Don't we all? |
| We are raising funds for insert charity | And whose stopping you from running away? |
It sounds like complete utter bull. ie. Using all the buzzwords like 'disrupting an industry'. Cryptocompare gives us a good example:
“Our decentralized blockchain-based platform will disrupt the landscape of cryptocurrency investment while building a trustless network of pseudonymous users that leverage swarm intelligence technology to provide real world financial services in a tokenized ecosystem.”
Uh. English please.
Where's your white paper?
If the white paper does not list anything technical, don't invest in it. If it's full of the same bull you find in the Announcement, get out of there!!!
No proof of work on the Code Repository
They might not even have a code repository! Even if they do, check if it's the same as a clone coin with a few lines of code changed!
Good escrow
You need an escrow that is well known in the community, and will look to the benefits of the community as a whole. Make sure they aren't compromised, or hacked.
Spotting an ICO scam conclusion (By -Greed-)
The methodology
There are criteria with various risk points. Summarize all the points of the criteria that the ICO meets to get total score. Total score represents a risk grade on which you can lean to take a risk or not.
Scam points and criteria:
1 point: minor suspicions (for each)
3 points: anon devs; no code snippets, videos, or beta; rushing
5 points: unrealistic goals; fuzzy whitepaper; self-mod topic
10 points: bought account; no escrow
Risk and total score:
low (0-5)
medium (6-10)
high (11-15)
very high (16-20)
extremely high (21 and more)
Example
Let's imagine there's an ongoing ICO of Supercoinxxx in which you want to invest some money.
The topic is self-mod (5 points) with devs that have unrealistic goals (5 points) like creating a decentralized stock market in 2-3 month and a fuzzy whitepaper (5 points) with no technical details. Also you found two minor suspicions (2 points) based on your experience. Which gives 17 points in total. Based on that score you conclude that risk is very high and skipping this ICO.
Overall, your gut feeling should tell you the best. Just use your common sense and stay safe out there.
Happy investing! :)
Sources: https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/guides/how-to-avoid-scam-icos/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1678127.0