Over the past few months I have delved deep into more than a dozen ICOs and their whitepaper. I often asses the project to see if it is legally, operationally and technically viable (of course there are more aspects such as team, approach, etc.). Most turn out to be complete garbage!

For the ones that pass the bullshit filter, I usually come with quite a few challenging questions and start shooting them at their team (mostly through the ICO’s Telegram channel). This is where I noticed that I need to add another criteria to whether invest in an ICO or not, and that is the ICO’s Telegram Channel!

While Telegram Channels are the most widely used means of communication between the company and the investors, It is often the most neglected one.

Here are a few points I discovered (potentially big red flags), which you should consider before investing (If you are managing an ICO and reading this, the following reasons might be a red flag for your investors so you better start fixing!!):

Admins who are not team members: One of those stupid things I found is that I can’t see the name of the admin as a team member on the ICO’s website. If ICOs are expecting people to invest millions of dollars in them, their team should be handling all the communications and be ready to answer any questions. Now I am not saying that I have never seen a team member being an admin in the channel. I have seen of course, but they were not active at all. TEAM MEMBERS SHOULD BE ACTIVE IN ALL COMMUNICATION CHANNELS EVEN THE TECHNICAL ONES. Admins who have fake names and/or fake profile pictures: I mean seriously, the ICO is asking for all sort of KYC from the investors and expecting million of dollars investment, yet their admins use fake names and fake images. DO NOT INVEST A CENT IF THE ADMINS HAVE FAKE NAMES OR FAKE PROFILE PICTURES. EVERYTHING SHOULD BE TRANSPARENT. Admins have no clue about the project or some technical aspects of the project: There had been many times that I had technical questions regarding the Whitepapers and most of the times admins were referring me back again to the the Whitepaper or providing me with useless pre-written answers. Some even couldn’t communication in a sentence what the project is about. Of course they really don’t need to have deep technical knowledge of the project, but it is expected that they forward the question to a technical team member to answer. There has been occasions that I needed to fight to get a straight answer to my technical question. Worst of all were cases that it became apparent that they don’t even have a technical guy in their team to answer my questions! DO NOT INVEST IF YOU SEE THAT ADMINS ARE EVADING YOUR QUESTIONS. Of course if your questions are When exchange? When Moon? or When Lambo you deserve to be neglected.

In a series of next posts I will be sharing analysis of a few high potential ICOs that you might be interested. Don’t forget to follow me for more!