Since 2011 I am following the Blockchain revolution. I’ve seen Bitcoin go from 1$ to 30$ and back to ~2$ again. But as most of you, I did not buy that huge stash and kept it until today (unfortunately). Things were looking different at that time and even if I bought that stash, I would probably have sold it at one of the numerous crashes around 50$, 250$ or 1200$.

Still, I can’t complain, I made some decent profits here and there on trading various cryptocurrencies . I have some crypto money to invest, risk and play.

As for many of you looking for a nice deal, the ICO hype is very interesting for me as well, but time-consuming to read through whitepapers and to decide if something is worth to invest. I am very conservative towards ICOs and altcoins and really try to understand what an team is up to and what kind of people they are. If I see too many red flags, I immediately stop to loose time on that project.

Where did I invest?

Tezos

Tezos came up with their ICO at a time when the Bitcoin community was highly divided about how to move on. I found it attractive to solve the problem of governance. Looking back, I maybe was also carried away a bit from the hype around Tezos. But chances are still intact to see my investment back and having helped funding a solid project. We will see…

Lykke

Lykke is an interesting project from Richard Olsen, one of the founders and ex CTO/CEO of OANDA, the worlds 4th biggest Forex broker in 2017. His new project Lykke aims to be the worlds biggest marketplace for all sorts of assets (including forex and cryptocurrencies, tokens etc). Lykke uses the blockchain and colored coins to settle trades. I invested in their ICO in 2016 and bought some more LKK in the following months (colored coins which represent shares in the company). The 2017 spring hype wave on cryptocurrencies pushed this investment far into the profitable area. Lykke is still a very interesting project, which I highly recommend to have a look at.

Modum

Living in Switzerland, I was looking for ICOs from teams from my country, because I felt that it would be easier to judge if the people behind are scammers or not. So I found modum.io, a swiss company trying to revolutionize the supply-chain of pharma logistics (as a first stage) and to help companies to cope with new EU regulatories. Some things convinced me to invest: They have a tested prototype of their product. Their team evolved out of cooperations with the universities of Zurich and St. Gallen. They are looking for a capped and decent amount of investment money. And last but not least: they are located in my city, so I can simply knock on their door if necessary.

Cajutel

Of all the ICOs I invested money, this discovery and my following investment took most time. While searching for swiss based ICOs, I visited their website for the first time and my first thought was “What a badly set up ICO scam”. Many of my alarm bells started ringing and I left the page again.

But somehow, a few days later, I again came across the site and decided to have a deeper look as the basic idea and the possible result (establishing cheap broadband internet in west africa for the profit of the people and the shareholders) made sense to me. I contacted the team on their telegram channel and asked very critical questions and criticized their ICO page. I also made sure that the people really are who they were saying they were, because there was the possibility that scammers were misusing identities of real people.

Finally I came to the conclusion that this is a real project with real people and a very clear business plan (despite their somehow clumsy ICO marketing). The business plan is outlined in their whitepaper (which is the most detailed information on their ICO page). By chatting with Andreas Fink, the founder of Cajutel and the key person for it’s success, I also realized that the project is in the making since a few years and is shortly before rolling out (if the starting investment can be achieved). So finally I decided to drop around 8 ETH into the project (proof).

What am I trying to tell you?

A good ICO or a good idea is not made by a good looking and perfectly responsive website. See it as a suspicious sign if it looks to good and has tons of marketers behind, but nobody with technical skills, very specific goals or working products. Invest even more time in due diligence and try to see the real project/product behind it and the real people and their motivations, skills or specific goals.

Disclaimer: I am invested in all the ICOs and projects above. My post is not a recommendation to invest. Everybody must make his due diligence and then decide as rational as possile if it is worth to risk the money he/she can risk to invest.

I only say that sometimes it’s hard to see the real value behind a project an idea, an organisation or a person, when the first thing you judge is the beauty of the website.