How to distinguish ICO-scam
See Declouds company:
Serious, like, guys. ICO collected over 295 BTC (> $ 1 million). Impressive. But representatives of Declouds are already communicating with the German bank DAB bank:
')
Also impressive.
One problem - the picture was a photoshop, and the founders disappeared from all the radars along with the collected bitcoins. Here, by the way, the original image:
One of the first to declare that the project is a fraud - the project advisor. Conclusion? Study the project team, advisors, and ask for proofs. We need more proofs! Do not trust what the project writes on your site. Check everything yourself. In this publication, we will analyze all the details.
ICO campaigns can offer users a decentralized alternative to “Facebook” , and a more “fair” analogue of Apple music in relation to the little-known artists . Startups got a new way to get funds for their projects - and this is good. Tokencard in 30 minutes attracted more than $ 16 million, EOS collected a record $ 170 million in some five days.
However, from the idea to its implementation is not one step, and to invent a product does not mean to create it. Very often, startups "burn out", faced with unforeseen problems. Someone becomes bankrupt after the implementation of his startup, and someone does not take up the implementation at all.
Because of such frequent failures, many countries began to tighten the screws: in China, the ICO is completely prohibited, and in the US it is forbidden to receive dividends with the help of the ICO.
But how not cool - the popularity of the model is only growing. According to Coindesk for the second quarter of 2017, the total share of funds raised through ICO exceeds $ 800 million.
According to the schedule it can be seen that for some couple of months the amounts have increased more than 8 times. It would seem - a fairy tale! But everything is not as simple as it seems at first glance. In fact, there is a certain percentage of popular and successful projects. But all the others quickly fail. And how to be in this situation, an investor who wants to get the maximum benefit from their own funds?
It’s easy to become an investor with ICO, and sometimes it’s very profitable. The key word is “sometimes.”
The scheme is simple: take part in a limited edition of tokens, and later sell them on the stock exchange several times more expensive. Because of the thirst for easy money, many take a "blind" part in each new project that appears, forgetting all the risks. As a result, the ICO market was flooded with fraudsters, and Declouds are just the tip of the iceberg.
Methods of fraud are varied: from elementary fake projects that disappear after a successful ending to phishing tricks and hacking.
For example, during ICO Aragon a fake Twitter account was created. Some users mistakenly took it for real and for a false payment information transferred funds. Fraudsters collected about $ 10,000.
From the fake website MyEtherWallet, they took as much as $ 700,000 during the ICO Bancor. The craftsmen simply copied the site, collecting their users from the crypt.
There are quite arrogant guys: for example, the creators of the Razormind project allegedly created a whole operating system based on the blockchain, actively promoting themselves in the media. It came to contacting Coinidol , who, when collecting information, found many inconsistencies and six months later laid out a full exposure of the ICO owner. As it turned out, even the logo was stolen already from the existing operating system based on linux.
The ICO "Deos" website, the creator of which stole $ 10 million.
Initially, you need to understand - ICO is a high risk. But it's a good idea to follow a few simple rules when choosing an ICO, so as not to run into outright fraudsters:
Always look at the design of the project site.
Attention to detail is very important. ICO is, first of all, a competent presentation of a product that needs to interest an investor. And if you want to close the tab in horror from the site of the next project, then the probability of its success is “extremely small.” See if the logo is stolen, whether licensed or stolen illustrations are used, and so on.
Assess the feasibility of the project
Any project in which money is invested should be real today, and not in the distant future. The hero of the occasion should be not only innovative, but also useful in the interests of a large number of modern people. Someone will use it. Do not invest in projects like SkyWay, which promise to create overhead vehicles capable of developing up to 500 km / h. And all this joy is 7 times cheaper than an ordinary intercity train. Miracles!
The project team is very, very important.
Often, fraudsters do not write about themselves, but about fake people who will help the founders to remain anonymous. The key to a successful ICO is experienced professionals who can easily be found on Facebook or Linkedin. And best of all when the team is assembled from famous people who were previously involved in any cool projects.
Check the legal entity
If you google the legal address of the project, and you are highlighted the address of the kindergarten in the Zyablikovo district, then it is not advisable to invest your money there. Any contact numbers and postal numbers must be active.
Tokens
ICO should have its own monetary system with exceptional benefits for its owner. The released token should not only be sold more expensive, but also have a weighty rationale for its further development within the project. Be sure to read the whitepaper section, which describes this item in detail.
The last point can be considered particularly in detail by the example of our own tokens.
Recall that in the last publication we already told how the Playkey model is changing. We have already launched a working business in the face of Playkey.net (by the way, try playing a free demo through the service if you haven't had time yet ). But this is not enough for us. We want to bring streaming gaming to a new level and move on to the P2P model.
To do this, we are launching Playkey.io, a platform that will allow us to lease the computing power of our computer. So that a gamer on a Mac / weak PC / Smart TV can play new games at high graphics settings and without brakes.
To create such a platform, we are launching an ICO campaign, and the sale of tokens is scheduled for November 1st. We release a limited number of our own Coin (PKT - Playkey Token), which will become the main means of payment for the work of the updated service. The company itself will act as an exchanger, if the user does not want to do this on their own.
The CT will have many appointments besides paying for the internal game time of the service. As indicated in our white paper, the main client plans to introduce a system of bets on games, streaming professional game matches, gaming duels and other activities that will operate in the service.
The idea is that the price of a token in the market is determined by the volume of transactions and its turnover. Accordingly: the greater the turnover, the more money will be “split up”. If we take Bitcoin as an example, there is a limited fundamental issue here, while there is a constant flow of capital into the market. More buyers - the price of the token is higher, and new opportunities for the use of tokens play into our hands.
If you believe Newzoo, then in the world there are already more than two billion gamers, half of whom use a personal computer. Suppose each of them spends only $ 200 a year on upgrading their PCs. Represent the volume of the market?
If you take even a small part of the total number that PKT will use at least once a month (it’s elementary to pay for a service subscription), then the resulting numbers can be impressive. Additional methods of using tokens will only boost currency, which greatly increases the volume of transactions and strengthens the position of the currency.
In this case, we will not directly affect the price of "rental" of your PC. Any miner with a suitable computer will set a rental price for himself, which will provide gamers with a huge selection from the price \ power \ location \ miner rating range. For complete convenience, a special search engine will be created that will help you find the best gaming computer. Such a system will allow gamers to find the perfect offer based on their priorities. Playkey considers such conditions to be the most fair, because it is important that everyone can enjoy the service.
Now the bounty program has begun, on which we have laid down 1.5% of all tokens. You can get them not for money, but by promoting the ICO campaign on Facebook, Twitter, in the branches of the bitcointalk forum and not only. You can learn all the information and get more tokens on the Bitcointalk forum.
And for those who are not eager to become the first buyers of Playkey tokens, we have just opened an official presale, participation in which can be accepted after filling out the form on the site. Terms of presale? The minimum “price” of participation is 60ETH (~ $ 17,000), and a discount of -25% of the cost of tokens.
Applications are accepted here .
Serious, like, guys. ICO collected over 295 BTC (> $ 1 million). Impressive. But representatives of Declouds are already communicating with the German bank DAB bank:
')
Also impressive.
One problem - the picture was a photoshop, and the founders disappeared from all the radars along with the collected bitcoins. Here, by the way, the original image:
One of the first to declare that the project is a fraud - the project advisor. Conclusion? Study the project team, advisors, and ask for proofs. We need more proofs! Do not trust what the project writes on your site. Check everything yourself. In this publication, we will analyze all the details.
ICO campaigns can offer users a decentralized alternative to “Facebook” , and a more “fair” analogue of Apple music in relation to the little-known artists . Startups got a new way to get funds for their projects - and this is good. Tokencard in 30 minutes attracted more than $ 16 million, EOS collected a record $ 170 million in some five days.
However, from the idea to its implementation is not one step, and to invent a product does not mean to create it. Very often, startups "burn out", faced with unforeseen problems. Someone becomes bankrupt after the implementation of his startup, and someone does not take up the implementation at all.
Because of such frequent failures, many countries began to tighten the screws: in China, the ICO is completely prohibited, and in the US it is forbidden to receive dividends with the help of the ICO.
But how not cool - the popularity of the model is only growing. According to Coindesk for the second quarter of 2017, the total share of funds raised through ICO exceeds $ 800 million.
According to the schedule it can be seen that for some couple of months the amounts have increased more than 8 times. It would seem - a fairy tale! But everything is not as simple as it seems at first glance. In fact, there is a certain percentage of popular and successful projects. But all the others quickly fail. And how to be in this situation, an investor who wants to get the maximum benefit from their own funds?
Scam ico
It’s easy to become an investor with ICO, and sometimes it’s very profitable. The key word is “sometimes.”
The scheme is simple: take part in a limited edition of tokens, and later sell them on the stock exchange several times more expensive. Because of the thirst for easy money, many take a "blind" part in each new project that appears, forgetting all the risks. As a result, the ICO market was flooded with fraudsters, and Declouds are just the tip of the iceberg.
Methods of fraud are varied: from elementary fake projects that disappear after a successful ending to phishing tricks and hacking.
For example, during ICO Aragon a fake Twitter account was created. Some users mistakenly took it for real and for a false payment information transferred funds. Fraudsters collected about $ 10,000.
From the fake website MyEtherWallet, they took as much as $ 700,000 during the ICO Bancor. The craftsmen simply copied the site, collecting their users from the crypt.
There are quite arrogant guys: for example, the creators of the Razormind project allegedly created a whole operating system based on the blockchain, actively promoting themselves in the media. It came to contacting Coinidol , who, when collecting information, found many inconsistencies and six months later laid out a full exposure of the ICO owner. As it turned out, even the logo was stolen already from the existing operating system based on linux.
The ICO "Deos" website, the creator of which stole $ 10 million.
How to protect yourself?
Initially, you need to understand - ICO is a high risk. But it's a good idea to follow a few simple rules when choosing an ICO, so as not to run into outright fraudsters:
Always look at the design of the project site.
Attention to detail is very important. ICO is, first of all, a competent presentation of a product that needs to interest an investor. And if you want to close the tab in horror from the site of the next project, then the probability of its success is “extremely small.” See if the logo is stolen, whether licensed or stolen illustrations are used, and so on.
Assess the feasibility of the project
Any project in which money is invested should be real today, and not in the distant future. The hero of the occasion should be not only innovative, but also useful in the interests of a large number of modern people. Someone will use it. Do not invest in projects like SkyWay, which promise to create overhead vehicles capable of developing up to 500 km / h. And all this joy is 7 times cheaper than an ordinary intercity train. Miracles!
The project team is very, very important.
Often, fraudsters do not write about themselves, but about fake people who will help the founders to remain anonymous. The key to a successful ICO is experienced professionals who can easily be found on Facebook or Linkedin. And best of all when the team is assembled from famous people who were previously involved in any cool projects.
Check the legal entity
If you google the legal address of the project, and you are highlighted the address of the kindergarten in the Zyablikovo district, then it is not advisable to invest your money there. Any contact numbers and postal numbers must be active.
Tokens
ICO should have its own monetary system with exceptional benefits for its owner. The released token should not only be sold more expensive, but also have a weighty rationale for its further development within the project. Be sure to read the whitepaper section, which describes this item in detail.
Playkey tokens
The last point can be considered particularly in detail by the example of our own tokens.
Recall that in the last publication we already told how the Playkey model is changing. We have already launched a working business in the face of Playkey.net (by the way, try playing a free demo through the service if you haven't had time yet ). But this is not enough for us. We want to bring streaming gaming to a new level and move on to the P2P model.
To do this, we are launching Playkey.io, a platform that will allow us to lease the computing power of our computer. So that a gamer on a Mac / weak PC / Smart TV can play new games at high graphics settings and without brakes.
To create such a platform, we are launching an ICO campaign, and the sale of tokens is scheduled for November 1st. We release a limited number of our own Coin (PKT - Playkey Token), which will become the main means of payment for the work of the updated service. The company itself will act as an exchanger, if the user does not want to do this on their own.
The CT will have many appointments besides paying for the internal game time of the service. As indicated in our white paper, the main client plans to introduce a system of bets on games, streaming professional game matches, gaming duels and other activities that will operate in the service.
The idea is that the price of a token in the market is determined by the volume of transactions and its turnover. Accordingly: the greater the turnover, the more money will be “split up”. If we take Bitcoin as an example, there is a limited fundamental issue here, while there is a constant flow of capital into the market. More buyers - the price of the token is higher, and new opportunities for the use of tokens play into our hands.
If you believe Newzoo, then in the world there are already more than two billion gamers, half of whom use a personal computer. Suppose each of them spends only $ 200 a year on upgrading their PCs. Represent the volume of the market?
If you take even a small part of the total number that PKT will use at least once a month (it’s elementary to pay for a service subscription), then the resulting numbers can be impressive. Additional methods of using tokens will only boost currency, which greatly increases the volume of transactions and strengthens the position of the currency.
In this case, we will not directly affect the price of "rental" of your PC. Any miner with a suitable computer will set a rental price for himself, which will provide gamers with a huge selection from the price \ power \ location \ miner rating range. For complete convenience, a special search engine will be created that will help you find the best gaming computer. Such a system will allow gamers to find the perfect offer based on their priorities. Playkey considers such conditions to be the most fair, because it is important that everyone can enjoy the service.
Now the bounty program has begun, on which we have laid down 1.5% of all tokens. You can get them not for money, but by promoting the ICO campaign on Facebook, Twitter, in the branches of the bitcointalk forum and not only. You can learn all the information and get more tokens on the Bitcointalk forum.
And for those who are not eager to become the first buyers of Playkey tokens, we have just opened an official presale, participation in which can be accepted after filling out the form on the site. Terms of presale? The minimum “price” of participation is 60ETH (~ $ 17,000), and a discount of -25% of the cost of tokens.
Applications are accepted here .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/370823/
All Articles