How do you find good ICOs?
This question originally appeared on Quora, the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
Answers below are by Matthew Hewlett, Krishna Tharun and Mason Marcobello.
Answered November 25th, 2017
ICOAlert and CoinMarketCap are the best places to find ICO’s worth investing in.
ICOAlert is a list of up and coming, current, and recently ended ICO’s. It is a great resource to find undervalued up and coming CryptoCurrency that may be very valuable in the future.
Without a doubt, ICO Alert is the only comprehensive list of ICOs. The website has a variety of features that allow you to easily research these digital currencies. The website quotes:
ICO Alert does not provide investment, financial, or legal advice. This site cannot substitute for professional advice and independent factual verification. ICO Alert does not endorse any initial coin offerings advertised on this site but does receive compensation for advertising certain offerings in purple text below and in the purple banner above. The content provided or linked on this site is for informational purposes only.
The good old days when Bitcoin was only $4000…
CoinMarketCap is also a great place to research new investments. Coinmarketcap hosts real time data of most CryptoCurrencies such as prices, volume, exchanges, and much more. Learn everything about a CryptoCurrency using the search tab.
So from this, we can see the these websites are legitimate sources for researching these new tokens. Using ICO Alert along with CoinMarketCap is your best bet for finding new ICO’s worth investing in. Good luck with your CryptoCurrency investments!
Answered November 21st, 2017
Originally Answered: What’s the best way of analysing crypto currencies and new ICOs?
Product: It is the most important aspect to see before investing. See if what they are promising is a feasible product and it would serve a fair amount of businesses in the future.
Road Map: Never trust a company without a road map to their vision. See if what they are promising is achievable within the promised time.
Team: Always google the team that is behind the product. See their Linkedin and make sure that they are genuine and have achieved something in the past. Your investment is worth the risk if they are from reputed colleges or worked for big companies or have published papers in the past.
Market Circulation: This is something that is not very important but good to check if you are investing for high ROIs. If the total market circulation is less, then even few millions of market cap can get you good ROI.
Read: If you don’t see any articles about the upcoming ICO on reddit, medium, steemit or any other popular sites then its probably a good idea to wait for some people to notice it first. Always read as much as you can get your hands on.
If not, you might end up investing in something Confido who disappeared overnight with a 375k market cap. A cryptocurrency start-up disappeared with $375,000 from an ICO and nobody can find them
Answered December 26th, 2017
Start with the ICO token metrics. First, calculate market cap to make sure they are not overvaluing themselves compared to other ICOs or existing altcoins. Determine the Market Cap of the ICO: Calculate the token price with this formula ETH Current Price/Num Tokens per ETH. Now multiply Token Price * Number of Tokens in Circulation (tokens sold in crowdsale + presale)
This is the company market cap roughly if the ICO sells all available tokens during the crowdsale. Take this market cap and compare it to the top 100 altcoins to see how the coin compares. If the market cap equals $30,000,000 then they would need to grow to $90,000,000 in order for you to make 3x your investment. Now go to Cryptocurrency Market Capitalizations | CoinMarketCap and see what companies have the same market cap as this ICO. Ask yourself: Is this ICO as good as the existing altcoin and is it or should it be worth the market cap they are trying to achieve with the ICO launch.
Now that you have determined that the market cap is good and that the altcoin has the potential to make you 3x – 5x your initial investment it is time to move on.
Read the Whitepaper: Ask yourself these questions: Is the technology unique? Can this company survive/thrive without doing an ICO? What is the purpose of the token in the company ecosystem? Are they just creating a coin to profit in this ICO craze or does the coin serve an important purpose? How will the coin increase in value, is it based only on hype on exchanges or is it from it being used as a utility in the company? Does this company have competitors that may make this one irrelevant?
Research the Team: First off, is the legitimate? Do they really exist on Linkedin, etc. You would be surprised how often the team members can be faked. Read the linkedin description to see if the team member is full-time with the ICO and if the ICO is even mentioned at all.
Research the ICO Advisers: Are the advisers relevant to the ICO or are they just a shiny attention grabber? If you see the same adviser on multiple ICOs then their credibility/value to the ICO diminishes greatly.
Determine Level of Hype: Don’t underestimate this step. An easy way to get a feel for hype and popularity is to google the name of the ICO. See how many mentions are in the google search results. Make sure you use exact matches such as quotes in the google search so that you don’t get results for the word ‘the’ or something generic. How many times are they mentioned on social media? The best way to do this is to go to BuzzSumo: Find the Most Shared Content and Key Influencers and type in the name of the ICO. This will give you a results list showing content and mentions on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest and how many times the content pieces were shared. Go to the ICO website and search for the websites, social media and chat programs where they interact. Some of the most popular are Slack Channel, Telegram Chat, Twitter, Bitcoin Forum – Index, the front page of the internet.
Check out their existing product and code: For this step you don’t have to know programming or anything like that. You will just want to go to their Build software better, together account as this is where they will store the code for their project. You can see how often they update their code and how active they are developing. Also, do some research on their past products if they are an existing business that is just expanding by offering an ICO.
Research similar altcoins: Go to Cryptocurrency Market Capitalizations | CoinMarketCap and http://CryptoCompare.com and study similar coin charts. Of course, every company is different but you just want to get a general feel for the potential. Right now ICO investors are leaning towards investing in Protocols and Platforms such as 0x, Kyber and Raiden. Ideas that are needed to propel blockchain and cryptocurrency forward.
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