Welcome to yet another sub-thread of cryptocurrencies!
Here we focus on investment-grade ICOs while staying away from shady and obfuscated ones.


New to blockchain and cryptocurrency?
Might want to start with the pinned cryptocurrency thread: https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/4320604


What is blockchain? I only know about bitcoin.
Blockchain is the technical foundation that bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies are built on.
In other words, blockchain = the technology, bitcoin/other coins = the application that runs on the technology.


What is an ICO (Initial Coin Offering)?
As of Q4 2017, ICO is a largely unregulated way to raise fund for blockchain ventures/start-ups.
It opens up the once exotic investment opportunity to the mass market, which is the opposite of traditional funding models. (regulated, strict review and pitch process etc)

Generally, every ICOs try to raise fund at varying stage of development, some have live running prototypes while some are still on planning stage.
Most ICOs provide a white paper, which is a piece of document that explains the ICO thoroughly, covering the business model, technical schema, the team, roadmap, funding utilization etc.

If you are positive about the ICO, you can invest in it in which you get tokens representing your investment.
Most tokens are utility token, which means that the token grants you the right to consume the services offered by the ICO.
Some ICO issues tokens that represents a stake in the company itself, in other words you own part of the company (similar to stock equity), however more and more ICOs are moving away from this as it involves complication with their respective country's investment regulators.

By product of an unregulated industry is that there will be significant amount of ventures that will fail, underdeliver or straight-up scams.
Hence our goal here is to filter out the bad guys and maintain a living list of healthy ICOs.


What makes a good ICO then?
While not exhaustive, generally these are good points:

Presentation:
- Is the ICO site well made or it looks like one made by editing free web templates?
- How is the presentation text written, funny layout, grammatical errors?

Business model:
- How feasible is the business model?
- Read the white paper.

The team:
- Check the background that they are indeed who they claim they are, including their credentials.
- Pop their names in Google, you might be surprised sometimes. (not in a good way)

Generally avoid ICOs with these signatures:
- One that claims to do everything without details on how they plan to do it. (breadth without depth)
- Strongly emphasize on post-ICO price surge ("Your coins worth 10x in 6 months! Join now!") rather than the ICO's vision and impact.
- Integral part of the ICO is getting people onboard as your downlines via referral aka MLM, usually with lucrative referral bonuses.

Article from TheNextWeb:
https://thenextweb.com/investing-2-0/2017/1...yptocurrencies/


The don't(s):
- Don't openly share your referral links, keep that private.
- Strictly no MLM-esque ICOs.


Happy investing!

This post has been edited by V-Zero: Oct 9 2017, 08:03 PM

This post will be our living handpicked list of ongoing and upcoming ICOs.

For more comprehensive ICO listings, check out these sites:
https://www.smithandcrown.com/icos/
https://www.coinschedule.com/


Ongoing

Electroneum
Mass market mobile-centric cryptocurrency with gaming focus.
https://electroneum.com/
ICO price: $1 = 150 coins
Post-ICO price:

CrowdWiz
Crypto investment platform based on crowd wisdom. (2 brains are better than 1)
https://crowdwiz.io/
ICO price: $0.83
Post-ICO price:


Upcoming

QASH/Liquid
Global liquidity provider.
https://liquid.plus/
Launch 6th Nov

Smart Media Tokens
Online content monetization.
https://smt.steem.io/
Launch 2018

Hero Token
Collateral based credit facility for the un/underbanked.
https://www.herotoken.io/
Launch TBC


Past

AirSwap
Frictionless p2p ERC20 token exchange.
https://www.airswap.io/
ICO price: $0.30
Post-ICO price: $0.35

Astronaut
Establishes a fund that invests in quality ICOs.
https://astronaut.capital/
ICO price: $0.80
Post-ICO price: $1.19


Disclaimer:
All the above are not a buy call, invest at your own risk, you have been warned.

This post has been edited by V-Zero: Oct 29 2017, 11:36 AM

QASH/Liquid
Global liquidity provider.
https://liquid.plus/
Launch 21st Oct

There is discount of 20% from October 21-25

anyone who wants to partcipate it, can PM me.

I can say that this would be another bitcoin/ETH for financial service token

This post has been edited by jack2: Oct 6 2017, 01:19 PM

QUOINE, Leading Global Fintech Company, Launches ICO (QASH Token Sale) to build QUOINE LIQUID, a global liquidity platform for the crypto economy


http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/qu...campaign=buffer

This post has been edited by jack2: Oct 6 2017, 01:59 PM

I already registered but kinda taken aback they want personal info eg IC & etc and also need certain amount to participate..... Already bought token from Astronaut and Electreum so hmmmm

This post has been edited by Spectreoutreach: Oct 7 2017, 01:55 PM

Since institutional investors are large part of their audience, they'll need those to fulfill KYC and AML requirements.
Personally I find that a plus point, enterprise backing is always good.

The postponed their ICO to 6th November it seems.

What does one benefit from sending u a PM ? U get referral commissions ?

Yes, they are the first to get licensed from Japan. They need to fulfil the KYC for compliance requirements.

Yes, posponed from Oct 21 to Nov 6 to wait Japan's some approval so Japanese can participate as well.

Early birds got 20% discount on ICO.

Referral commission system is not ready yet.

You will be under my group and get priority lo.. haha

I wanna ham my assets into this ICO.. It will be the next of BTC and ETH for financial service.

This post has been edited by jack2: Oct 7 2017, 02:34 PM

Nice boss

You definitely could make yourself to be a good salesman

No. I am not good saleman. My strength is to teach or on educational field.

Optimism aside, always invest only what you're willing to lose.

I have a 15% AUM hard limit on my overall exposure to blockchain investments.
I classify them as super high risk.

can i join under your group too? lol but ran out of bullets. had to bring wifey to medical recently, so need to hold on crypto investments.

This post has been edited by gerald7: Oct 8 2017, 09:53 AM

Article from TheNextWeb that reinforces what I shared above:

How not to be scammed into buying crappy cryptocurrencies:
https://thenextweb.com/investing-2-0/2017/1...yptocurrencies/

This post has been edited by V-Zero: Oct 8 2017, 01:09 PM

CrowdWiz and AirSwap ICO going live tomorrow at 1pm and 9pm local time respectively!
Personally investing into both.

PM me for referral link if you think this thread helped!

parking for sharing some ICOs, good thread.

This post has been edited by heavensea: Oct 9 2017, 08:50 PM

QASH is promising (if you do spend some times to read their whitepaper), will share more latest information over here later.

Do not hesitate to pm or tag me over here if you guys interested to know more about this project.

AirSwap tokens open sale (non-capped) sold out in < 15 mins.

come join whatapp group to discuss

https://chat.whatsapp.com/IHmPxM2KMvQGnalg4x9DVB

Spotted potential ICO (Think it as online pawn shop based in Philippines)
Project name: Hero Token
Token symbol: HERO
Website: https://www.herotoken.io/
White paper: https://s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/her...aper_082917.pdf
Hard cap: 200,000 ETH (public crowdsale ICO contributors own 80% of total token supply if hard cap is reached)
Conversion rate: 1 ETH = 200 HERO
Maximum market cap at ICO on a fully diluted basis: US$84 million assuming current Ether price of $335
Bonus structure: 30% bonus during first 3 hours of presale / 20% bonus from hour 3-24 of presale / 10% bonus during day 2 – 3 / 5% bonus during day 4 – 7 / 2.5% bonus during day 8 – 14
Presale or white list: Presale has not begun yet
ERC20 token: Yes
Crowdsale date: Not announced yet (please refer to Hero Token’s website for the most up-to-date information)
Token distribution date: Not announced yet

https://crushcrypto.com/analysis-of-hero-to...isX1T.x_kr561PI

This post has been edited by Spectreoutreach: Oct 14 2017, 05:05 PM

Looks good with all those existing VC funding and enterprise backers.
Will dive into the white paper and update post accordingly.

Keep them coming!