Just a few words for all newbies about the differences between Pre-Sales and ICO’s before I get started…

If you are an old stager in the crypto universe jump over to the section with my personal Pre-ICO recommendations below.

Mistakenly people see the words Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and Pre-Sale (or Pre-ICO) during the launch of new cryptocurrency projects and think that they are the same event — but they aren’t. Let me break it down for you really quick…

Pre ICO means a token sale before the main crowdfunding campaign (ICO).

ICO is the main crowdfunding event for raising funds for the development of a cryptocurrencies project before going live. For a successful ICO there should be a set amount of capital needed for the project which is called a hard cap.

Simply said, an ICO is the equivalent to an Initial Public Offering (IPO) transaction when a company sells shares to investors to become publicly traded.

Pre-ICO on the other side, is the sale of a set token amount before the main crowdfunding event (ICO). It is a newer phenomenon that just showed up recently.

Now you might be questioning yourself “Why have a pre-sale before the main sale?” — legitimate question.

From the companies perspective,

the pre-sale allows it to raise funds at the projects early and critical development stage. It’s a financial boost for the whole ICO campaign and product when it’s most needed. It’s also a way to test and measure the initial hype about the project.

From the investors perspective,

it’s a huge opportunity to be one of the few selected people to buy in before the official crowdsale begins. Early enthusiasts who participate in the Pre-ICO, so called angel investors [Link], are usually rewarded by a cheaper price per token and also a higher bonus amount, plus additional perks or merchandise.

But it’s not all rainbows and sunshine. Pre-sales are tied to high risks and downsides…

Investors of pre-sale tokens risk to lose their money or to get their investment without profits. In other words it is high risk traded for high reward.

Cryptocurrency Companies, on the other hand, must beware of short-sighted investors. Pre-sale token holders often turn around and dump the tokens after an ICO, when the buzz has boosted the value of their coins. This can be a substantial hit and cripple the cryptocurrency’s value leading to a snowball effect causing the price to continue falling.

A pre-sale can sometimes also be too successful. If a token is oversold, the team might have to retract some amount of tokens. It reflects a bad image on the company trying to get back sold coins from investors.

Therefore, cryptocurrencies with pre-sales should set strict limits in form of a hard cap on the amount of tokens released. It minimizes concerns that the team is just trying to make as much money as possible.

Enough preached…

Here are my personal Pre-ICO picks:

imusify

is an award-winning multifaceted music crypto-community platform “reinventing the global music industry” in order to “liberate music makers, music fans, and music entrepreneurs”. By use of innovative protocols and frameworks, imusify will facilitate a direct peer-to-peer connection between artists, fans, and other stakeholders. [Link]

The platform will integrate the best practices of streaming, crowdfunding, media sharing, social and economic networks using the NEO blockchain. This will do away with the need for intermediaries. It will also provide transparency, resolve inefficiencies and ensures that every artist and other service providers are rewarded in line with their contribution. Some of the use cases of the platform services include artist crowdfunding, incentivized content creation, transparent artist royalty payments, network collaboration, and open source development.

Artists’ opportunities are enhanced across the board, even small independent musicians will have a marketplace where they can license their work to be used in videos, films or podcasts. The platform increases visibility opportunities for such artists as well, letting them offer exclusive content to early supporters and issuing affiliate licenses that allow people to earn money selling tickets or music from their platform.

The ultimate imusify’s mission is to give the control over music industry to the community.

There are already several decentralized music streaming platforms Soundeon. Most of the functions they offer are the same, some minor things like the model of crowdfunding and additional marketplaces are unique to imusify. The concept itself is very promising, however, its competition with Soundeon is going to be fierce.

Pre-ICO: 01 Aug — 01 Sep 2018

Token Symbol: IMU

Pre-sale token supply: 100,000,000

Pre-ICO Bonus: 30%

Website Link

Vectorspace AI

Vectorspace is another Pre-ICO that’s on my radar. It is a crypto discovery platform enabling dynamically generated “Smart Baskets” (token baskets for traders, funds, ETFs)based on user-selected trends that exist in search, social media and news. [Link]

The Vectorspace AI platform enables dynamically generated intelligent “token baskets” based on user-selected trends that exist in search, social media and news. The reason we’ve included the word ‘intelligent’ is based the ability for these baskets to determine for themselves whether or not to include additional cryptocurrencies or components from related baskets that may increase overall returns. Baskets that interact this way with one another will conduct these kinds of transactions between one another using the Vectorspace utility token, VXV which is also required to dynamically generate baskets. Components within the dynamically generated baskets can be made up of cryptocurrencies along with other new innovations for stores of value in the cryptocurrency space that may arise in the future. Traders, investors and funds can optimize basket returns by applying filters such as technical analysis indicators and custom algorithms. Human researchers and curators of baskets are allocated VXV for their work in this area. The VXV utility token can be used to purchase blocks of dynamic basket generations in addition to subscriptions to higher level features offered by the platform including transacting baskets as trades on exchanges. VXV utility tokens are awarded to creators of top performing baskets which are displayed on a leader board each month.

Vectorspace is not only designed for cryptocurrency discovery but as well as a suite of sophisticated tools to help traders and investors increase their profits with other cryptocurrencies by reducing risk and maximizing gains. Their focus is on “Advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) & Sentiment Analysis for Smart Cryptocurrency Basket Trading”. Their “Smart Baskets” are based on the ability for these baskets to determine for themselves whether or not to include additional cryptocurrencies or components from related baskets that may increase overall returns. It’s not just the developer’s plans, they already have live products any crypto trader or investor can use today to simplify her/his life. Their site updates every few minutes powered by their algorithms.

According to their whitepaper: “A growing number of organizations offer the ability to trade a basket or group of cryptocurrencies with a single transaction. Similar to a traditional ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund), “token baskets” as they’re more commonly called, enable a fund or individual investor to spread their risk, diversify and lower volatility while maximizing gains with more safety and stability. This approach is valuable but incomplete. For example, taking the top 20 best performing cryptocurrencies and placing them in a basket or fund minimizes gains compared to enabling fine-grained custom creation of token baskets. Which groups of cryptocurrencies are beating the market? Why? What do they have in common? How strong are those relationships? Are those relationships well known and obvious or are they hidden relationships? Are the relationships numerical or nonnumerical, based on concepts, context and sentiment, or a combination of both?”

Pre-ICO: Nov 2017 — present

Token Symbol: VXV

Pre-sale on IDEX: https://idex.market/eth/vxv

Pre-sale token supply: 5,500,000

Pre-ICO Bonus: None

Website Link

ROMAD Endpoint Defense

ROMAD Endpoint Defense is a fully functional next generation antivirus that is using an innovative patented approach to chase the malware. It is a revolutionary approach to cybersecurity. This cutting edge malware behavioral analysis tool classifies hundreds of millions of malware strains according to their genetic code and identifies the families that they belong to. There are no new strains for ROMAD; they will be discovered and eradicated immediately.

The ROMAD blockchain is based on a hybrid Proof-of-Authority (PoA) and Proof-of-Reputation (PoR) model. The first stage is to verify the record format and the second stage is the use of the statistics classifiers to look for an abnormal behaviour. The ROMAD Endpoint Defense user interface is extremely simple. The vast majority of the end users is not the experts in cyber-security, so should not dwell too deep into the project settings. Thus the next generation anti-virus should be as simple as possible. ROMAD is to go its heavy way to the market full of competitors. The scheme is beneficial for both end users and token owners. It’s peculiarity is end users are paying only when ROMAD Endpoint Defense successfully repel the malware attack. [Link]

The project won the prestigious Security Shark Tank awards two times in a row in 2016 and 2017.

Pre-ICO: 20 Aug — 20 Sep 2018

Token Symbol: RBDT

Pre-sale token supply: 150,000,000

Pre-ICO Bonus: 5%

Website Link

DREAM

DREAM (previously Moneo.io) is building upon a revenue-generating blockchain talent platform established in 2016. According to their website, “DREAM validates ideas and builds teams, enabling more projects and startups to succeed. Powered by AI, driven by real-world success.” They plan to distinguish themselves from entrenched industry leaders like Upwork and Fiverr by focusing at first on curating the best platform to hire blockchain-specific talent.

Building on the success they had with Moneo, Dream has envisioned an ecosystem where every project built using Dream contributes to the efficacy of their AI solution. This AI solution, called Dream Builder, is described in their whitepaper as, “an advisor, project manager, and team builder — guiding entrepreneurs through the exciting, yet treacherous first stages of building out an idea. The knowledge that was previously lost from project-to-project is captured and used to deliver qualified answers and validated solutions to clients.” [Link]

Pre-ICO: 25 Jul — 01 Aug 2018

Token Symbol: DREAM

Pre-sale Token Supply: 36,000,000

Pre-ICO Bonus: 40%

Website Link