Aside from doing your own research to identify potential ICO scams there are resources available for free, such as ICO tracker, that provide warnings concerning current ICOs and future ICOs.
This is a very useful website for viewing all of the current ICOs that are taking place and to keep an eye on up and coming ICOs just around the corner.
In this post, we’ll have a look at a handful of current ICOs that have been flagged by the website as potential scams.
A common denominator among these new tokens is the absence of information about the team behind the project. These examples are generally clear-cut cases but there also exist some very sophisticated scams that people have invested a significant amount of time into creating.
Simply because the website has issued Scam Alerts for these tokens doesn’t signal that all other tokens listed on the current ICO pages are SAFE! It simply indicates that these are the most obvious cases.
More sophisticated scams may create a completely fictional team and provide bios and titles for each member along with a list of qualifications. It’s still up to us as individuals to do our homework before investing in any token sales.
Beer Token
Wounded Warrior Coin
0x2x Exchange Protocol
Synthorn
Beer Token (Scam Advisory)
- ICO dates: September 7th to September 30th, 2017
- Website: https://www.beertoken.io/
- Whitepaper: Yes
- Team: No
Not every token sound futuristic, the Beer Token ICO is proof of that. Right off the bat, there are no names associated with the ICO and that likely is the primary reason for ICO tracker’s Scam Alert label.
No development team.
No CEO.
No names associated with the Beer Token and the ICO.
The Beer Token website is a cluster fuck of red flags as well. Flags go up for vagueness and a glaring lack of detail in just about every department from the team, to Use Case, to contact information.
The first page shows a beaming blond waitress with an oversized Oktoberfest mug full of brew with "ICO" stamped across her chest.
Another page describes the Use case for the Crypto Beer in a laughably vague passage consisting of 2 sentences.
The Whitepaper
Well the paper IS VERY WHITE...
The Whitepaper is an incredible 2 pages in length with the first page consisting of only a title and a promotional photograph. Page 2 sheds a little more light on the Use Case for Beer Tokens.
Your girlfriend cleaned your room?
Send her a BEER.
Your employee did a great Job?
Send him a BEER.
Someone wrote a great article or made an
interesting vlog?
Send them a BEER.
Not making this up, this is the from the actual Whitepaper.
If somehow you're still not convinced the Whitepaper includes an ETH (Ethereum) Hash and asks those interested in participating to simply "send your desired amount of ETH to this address" and...
CHILLED BEER TOKENS WILL BE ISSUED TO YOU IMMEDIATELY
Stunning, isn't it?
Thank god this ICO just ended on September 30th and I hope no one reading this was duped into sending any fraction of ETH to this obvious scam.
Conclusion: Dumb-money vortex
Wounded Warrior Coin (Scam Advisory)
- ICO period: September 10th to October 31, 2017
- Website: http://www.woundedwarriorcoin.org/index.php?wwwRedirect
- Whitepaper: Yes
- Team: No
If you’re familiar with the world of questionable charities you might know that charities that purport to support military veterans and police officers are commonly used as props for charity scams.
These types of charities appeal to people’s sense of duty to their nation and to their patriotism and exploit it to their benefit.
“What? You don’t support our troops?”
I suspect that the same sentiments that are used to bilk people of their money in the charity world are employed in this token ICO.
Similar to the Beer Token, Wounded Warrior coin asks people to make a donation to a BTC address and that WWC tokens will be sent to you within 24 hours.
Once again, no information of the team members are available on the website. However, they do have a link to a Discord channel where you are encouraged to talk with the developers. Also, apparently the Source Code is available for download from a .zip file.
As a precaution - Do NOT download any files from this site! The site does not have HTTPS.
Conclusion: I think the Scam Alert from ICOtracker.net is completely justified, multiple red flags here.
Disclaimer: I'm not a financial expert nor am I a crypto-currency expert. This is not financial advice, and I'm in no way affiliated with any crypto-currency developers. I'm simply stating my opinion based on the company websites and the Scam Alerts issued by ICOtracker.net.
Still to come... Synthorn and a sex industry token called LustCoin
Related Post - https://steemit.com/scam-ico/@v4vapid/how-to-identify-ico-scams
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