How to Avoid an ICO Scam

This era is seeing lots of cryptocurrencies launched every month, and alongside those tokens and coins come dozens of initial coin offerings (ICOs). Investors, as well as scammers, have grown the appetite for these opportunities. While investors are more than enthusiastic to throw in their hard-earned money towards a highly speculative cryptocurrency, the scammers are also equally enthusiastic to take that money away from them. It may be daunting for cryptocurrency investors to make the most out of a new opportunity while being fraud-free at the same time. Blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies keep innovating at such a rapid pace that even the most experienced crypto investors may be having a hard time catching up. While the risks are inevitable, here's some advice to help you avoid ICO scams.

Look out for the whitepaper

A legit ICO should have a whitepaper, which is the foundational document you should first look out for. It should contain the layout for the project’s background, strategy, concerns, goals, and timeline for any blockchain project. The first step towards a sound ICO investment is to read through the whitepaper, and you’ll know that it’s a legitimate project if it looks like this. Any project without a whitepaper should be avoided at all costs.

Find a project with MVP

Many blockchain projects have been promoting and talking about their amazing ideas that are light years away from executions or don’t really have plans of executing. Many investors have lost their money on such projects. Find a project that has a minimum viable product (MVP) or even better if it has a finished and ready-to-use product already to ensure that you don’t lose your investments.

Know where your money is going

If you are putting your hard-earned money into an investment, you would want to know where it’s going. When the coin sale doesn’t have any documents, news, or links that tell you where your money will go, then you might just be dealing with a company that talks emptily and will just take your money to their own pockets.

Use your good judgment

These pieces of advice are just guidelines and are general rules of thumb. ICOs come in many forms, and unfortunately, there is no particular recipe for knowing if it’s a scam or not. It pays to do a lot of research first before venturing into a cryptocurrency sale. Ask the existing members if you can. Read media coverage. Check the liquidity of the coin. At the end of the day, an ICO investment is your judgment call that you will have to base on factors listed here.

A bonus advice

Upon further research, there’s an upcoming ICO that fits all of the factors listed above, the Virie Market. It has a whitepaper that is readily available for anyone to read and study. It has all the information you need about the project, including the background, history, strategy, benefits, and even the detailed use of blockchain and other technologies. It just doesn’t have an MVP, it is a finished blockchain product already. In fact, it’s the first and only blockchain product that has been completed and is now ready to use. The developers used their own money first in financing its completion before they will launch its ICO. They also make it clear that the sale from the ICO will go to further developments and promotion of the project. Download it here and judge it yourself.