Investing in blockchain can be tricky especially when new ICOs are launching at a speed of light. To understand more about blockchain and ICO investments, I have interviewed Konstantin Boyko-Romanovsky, an entrepreneur, cryptoexpert and a founder of The Abyss, the next-generation digital distribution platform.

1. As a successful blockchain investor could you share some tips on what are the most important key factors when it comes to investments in cryptocurrency?

To begin with, understanding the product you’re investing is crucial. My successful investments are always based on thorough market and project studying.

Secondly, consider people who are behind the project. It is of vital importance to believe in idea -- and the people bringing it to life.

When choosing cryptocurrency to invest, try not to listen to any investment guru, MBA senior analyst, etc. Nobody on Earth really knows what price it’s gonna be tomorrow. So don’t buy them experience for your own money. And never follow the Twitter traders’ advice. Some of them buy coins before posting and profit from you. Rely on your intuition and technical analysis, but better trust your intuition, because charts can be drawn by a smart manipulator. Sometimes you simply like the logo, then start digging into the project, investing and earn.

The last one I’ll mention here and definitely the most important, is self-control. F.e., a market or certain cryptocurrency is increasing rapidly, you automatically think of a missed opportunity while you’re not there. Stay calm, don’t panic -- you need to take it easier and treat it as a game, sort of. The less you think of it as money lost, the better. When nervous and selling something in fear of losing everything, life punishes you and the next day it all grows all of a sudden, this happened three times to me at least. I do now have a tendency to save some coins even on disappointing occasions and plain fall, in case rapid growth occurs.

2. When investing in new cryptocurrencies and ICOs, how do you segment successful ICOs from fraudulent ones?

I’ve paused ICO participation for almost six months working on a new project of my own. Nonetheless, I mostly relied on intuition paying attention to the details, founders’ communication with investors, in particular. I also check the official accounts, look through Advisory board - although ICO advisory itself is quite scammed, people listed there might not even be aware of that. Anyway, you sometimes look at the project and realize something is wrong with it. Once I failed and invested in a dubious project, which did not even have the website and, of course, the founder vanished immediately. Good thing, I was ready to risk that sum of money.

3. We live in a crypto bubble right now. Is it wise to invest large amounts of fiat money into crypto, or should we wait and see if crypto stabilizes more?

It is of common sense to go all-in on your investment only with absolute confidence on the coin cryptonomic prospects. Three times this year I was sure about rapid token growth, once even ready to make a silver bullet investment - of course, everything grew massively then. Anyway, don’t put all eggs in one basket, you would rather succeed investing 10-30% of your “spare money”. These should be the money you are ready to lose. Also, never take a loan for any crypto-asset investment, using credit money not being a professional usually slips into complete financial disaster.

4. As founder of The Abyss, you’re now aimed at conducting the world’s first DAICO? What is DAICO model all about, and why did you choose to apply it to your Token Sale?

DAICO is an improved version of an ICO merged with the benefits of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. It was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and is oriented at simplifying the fundraising process and making it more secure and transparent by allowing project’s contributors to control the withdrawal of funds raised during the campaign. With the help of the Oracles - the appointed industry leaders that will monitor the project during the development process - the contributors will be able to refund the invested money in case the team fails to implement the project.

The DAICO idea matched perfectly with our vision of how the ICO should look like. Usually, when the project team raises the required funds, it ceases the work, or at least the activity decreases significantly. We’ve seen such examples many times. But DAICO will not allow this. It is the contributors’ protection mechanism, at the same time helping to sustain the team’s motivation and increase confidence in ICO as a fundraising method. These are the DAICO’s most valuable features.

Besides, DAICO utilizes the best of blockchain’s technology features - the smart contract - that will prevent all sorts of fraud. The Abyss DAICO is under entire control of the smart contract, that will be fully exposed, with every single coin visible to all.

5. Do you see any disadvantages in using the DAICO model?

No one has done it before. And this is the major concern. Since we are pioneering the DAICO model, we don’t know all the issues we may deal with and the effect they can cause. But we expect to reveal and get rid of all the weaknesses at earliest stage, if there are any. We must foresee all the attempts to abuse the system.

Finally, no one is secured from the Ethereum collapse. We are exposed to this risk but we understand and take it, since we believe in Ethereum.

6. Is it hard to setup a DAICO?

It really is. First, you have to make your smart contract reach the stage of perfection, then you should get it audited by several reputable auditors. This requires greater financial resources.

In general, it is always hard to be the first. You should recognize the future trends and seize the opportunities when they arise. Being the first, means you acted fast. And when you are slow, there is no chance to be the first.

7. ICOs are happening on a decentralized platform, the ICOs themselves are hardly centralized. They inherently involve many people trusting a single development team with millions of USD of funding.

We are a centralized company, but despite this, DAICO allows to control funds in a decentralized way. There would be an option to vote for the refund of the remaining contributed money. This is much better than entrusting all the funds to the unknown founder who can disappear one day. DAICO is a mutually reinforcing symbiosis between the centralised and decentralized schemes. By its design, the DAICO concept ensures trust.