The Wall Street Journal searched a total of 1450 ICOs and found that more than 1 in 5 ICOs showed fraudulent statements. Findings also show that they have managed to accumulate more than roughly $ 1 billion from investors.

The Wall Street Journal searched a total of 1450 ICOs and found that more than 1 in 5 ICOs showed fraudulent statements. This means that at least 271 of the ICOs examined have probably been established for fraud.

The survey revealed that at least 124 ICOs were imitating or concealing their team members, 111 were copies of the technical documentation, 48 were missing from a functioning website, and 25 offered a definitive investment return.

According to the WSJ, most of these ICOs are closed, while some still continue to collect funds from investors.

Findings also show that they have managed to accumulate more than roughly $ 1 billion from investors.

The study noted that many ICO team pages were prepared with photographs taken from stock photo photos. Perhaps the most striking example is the website of the Premium Trend ICO. The search team, consisting of 5 members, was also seen on 500 other irrelevant websites.

Miroskii, one of those fake ICOs, has raised $ 1 million in cash, despite showing Ryan Gosling as the leading graphic designer.

Forms such as Coinfido, BitConnect, Prodeum, LoopX also disappeared with the help of investors. Electrum Pro, a copy of the Bitcoin wallet service Electrum, is another fake platform that has recently attracted attention.

How do you understand and protect yourself from a fake ICO? Here it is:

7 things to look out for before investing in an ICO

Most ICOs can be just a deception. What should you pay attention to before investing in an ICO? Here is the answer.

ICOs can offer great opportunities for investors, but most ICOs can be just a deception. What should you pay attention to before investing in an ICO? Here is the answer:

Let’s take a look at the three types of ICOs in the ICO world from now on.

Fake ICOs: From the very beginning of fake ICOs, the only goal is to take your money and run away. Stay away from them and warn other people not to be deceived. We will soon tell you how to identify these ICOs.

Team ICOs : The only goal of Team ICOs is to earn money that makes up this ICO. In general, their founders have a huge marketing budget and they announce their projects every time. As much as a handful of people hear and invest in this ICO, the founders sell their great rates in the ICO (usually 50% +) and earn money. This means that everyone else has lost money.

These ICOs are a kind of “real” and if you sell your investment in ICO at the same time with the founders, you can also make money. But doing it alone turns out to be a “time gambler” and it comes out as an investment.

Real ICO: Here are the ICOs that everyone wants to be a part of. However, even though an ICOnun is “real”, we still have the risk of losing your money. Another day’s talk about how you can catch a real ICO and what you need to pay attention to in the real ICO.

Note: To determine if an ICO is a deception and to identify an ICO with a good investment opportunity is two different things. In this article, we will focus on whether an ICO is a deception.

One of the first areas we need to look at is whether we can detect whether an ICO is deceptive / fake. We have to ask ourselves these questions.

1- Are these people real?
How do you know if the people on the team are real? Very easy! If you have pictures, you can search for images via Google reverse image, find Linkedin profiles and see who you are communicating with, if the articles on the team are written? Are they experts on this? etc. The details are very important.

If you can not find any concrete information about the people on the team, this ICO is probably a deception.

2- Does this institution / company of this ICO have an office, if it is real?
An attempt to get millions of dollars to invest must be an office. If there is an address on your webpages, make his call through Google Maps. Where? Is there a building in that building? Is there another company / house registered with that adrese?

3- Are there any counterfeit claims?
It was very ICO that we discovered that it had been there for years and discovered it opened 2 weeks ago. If there is a claim about time, you can look up WHOIS and see how long those ICO websites already exist. False ICOs generally work less than 60 days. Using the Wayback machine, you can also see what your web sites look like in the past.

4- Has their partnership been verified?
ICOs claiming to partner with major brands such as “Forbes” and “CNN” in their Web sites should pay attention. In order to determine if a partnership is real, both sides need proof of their partnership.

If, say, ICO XYZ claims partnership with “Forbes”, write “Forbes and ICO XYZ” to Google. If partnership information is only in the sites / social media channels run by ICO XYZ, this partnership is likely fake.

Now that you can determine if an ICO is a counterfeit, let’s see how you can determine the quality of an ICO.

Does the team have a successful background in areas such as technology / business / crypto / finance?

5- Let’s say you’ve proven the team is real, now is it?
Study your past thoroughly. The last thing you want to know after depositing your money is that you do not have any knowledge of what the team is doing.

Do you want to build a building without an engineering diploma?

6- Is the white paper as technical as it is?
Being a real team is different, being a team that knows what you are doing is different.

An ICO’s White Paper is all that ICO. All your information must be in that White Paper. Study it carefully and read it. If your technical knowledge is not enough to understand, ask someone who understands. Most ICOs exaggerate technical areas or fill with unnecessary information. It is very important to detect this.

The quality of ICOs that are not sound technical part can be questioned.

7- Does the ICO give bonuses at ridiculous rates?
95% of ICOs give a bonus to attract investors, but beware of ICOlara, which gives a high bonus of 20%!

The ICOlar, which gives a high bonus, applies the selling pressure when the token is issued to the stock market. Imagine, of course, if you can double your money from an ICO that doubles the amount you invest in the first day. Because everyone thinks so, the token quickly depreciates.

Of course, it is impossible to tell everything you need to be safe. We hope that several sections you read from this article will prevent you from losing money. If it hurts, what a happy one!

Please be careful and remember when investing, do not invest more than you are willing to lose.