7 Guidelines againt ICO scam - Ebook – Luca Venturella

Introduction

The phenomenon of ICOs exploded in 2017, thanks to the popularization of the blockchain in the common language, in particular Bitcoin and other realities such as Ethereum. You might have seen, even by mistake, a Gaussian curve called the Rogers curve. This type of curve, designed by the American sociologist Everett Rogers, indicates how people adopt technological innovations.

With these categories of people in mind, I did a little research.

On November 29, 2017, Coinbase announced that there were 13 million active users on its platform, not just Bitcoin but also Ethereum. Out of pure curiosity, I analysed some data from the World Bank.

If we take the population in 2017 where Coinbase can open wallets and the age group of those who use bitcoins as a reference (I considered ages between 20 and 59), it equals to about 480 million people, and if we compare it with the 13 million users, we will find that the ratio is 2.7%. Even if this estimate is not correct to the tenth of a percentage, because we do not know the exact data, we can say that we are at the threshold of the "Early Adopters".

In other words, we are in a phase where only the more prone and "practical" people are interested in the technological innovation in question.

Innovators and first acquisitions, on the whole, are objectively a small percentage of the population, so they are not enough to give a "mathematical" security on the success of an innovation, but it is an interesting figure nevertheless, making us reflect on its potential implications in the future.

Surely, we should pay more attention to the ICOs that will be proposed, because we are waiting for regulations and because the Rogers curve forecast sees a huge increase in users who will "eye up" the blockchain and could potentially be a godsend for potential scammers.

In the next chapters, I will make a general Pindaric flight on what an ICO is and what tokens are, as well as an overview on some specific points that I consider important and interesting to analyze. Subsequently, I will structure 7 "killer" questions to conclude the whole journey.

There is a lot of material on the internet, sometimes too much and sometimes contradictory, which leads to confusion and uncertainty about what is really necessary to consider in an ICO.

Not to mention those who quickly point the finger at ICOs because they are too susceptible to fraud. Although, at the same time, they generally take ICO's defenses because they are "the new way of doing fundraising" or "an important innovation that looks to the future".

I think there is space to make a grouping of sources, to clean up prejudices and finally summarize this phenomenon. With this e-book I will give my personal and objective reading of the situation, obviously without the pretension of universality, but with the intent of being useful to those who don’t want to fall for the so-called ICO “scam”.

Above all, I will try to explain the "why" of certain questions or criteria to be evaluated carefully, without throwing a random list of points to follow without reason or an explanation.

End of the first chapter.

Other chapters which are in the e-book:
1- What is an ICO?
2- ICOs Trend
3- What are the types of tokens?
4- What is a Utility Token?
5- What is the Howey Test?
6- Startups
7- The Team
8- Lean startup
9- Burn Rate and Soft Cap
10- The 7 Guidelines
11- Further Details
12- Real ICO Scam Test
13- Conclusions

Here is the Amazon link if you are interested to buy my e-book: https://amzn.to/2EyFe2I

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