I've been involved in the Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency space since late 2012 and yet it's only been recently that I finally decided to give ICO's a try.
Some ICO's can be very profitable, while others turn out to be a big flop, and more recently there's been more bad than good and ICO's as a whole have kind of gotten a bad rap. That said there are a few that come out and moon and make people a lot of money. It's all about investigating and researching the project and the team before getting involved.
Back in August on the suggestion of a buddy I decided to throw some of my crypto profits into an ICO called DMarket. I didn't know that much about the project, but a buddy of mine who was involved in the gaming space recommended it and said it was going to be big.
Now typically I would do my own research and due diligence, however I decided to take his word on it and throw in a couple hundred bucks. This was back mid August.
Now I knew going into it that coins weren't going to be distributed until early November and I knew it would be a few weeks after that until they would be listed on an exchange so I can't be made about that. Though this was my first ICO from what I've seen from other ICO's and from talking to people that is a bit longer than things normally take, but it is what it is.
What was more frustrating is that after this long wait to finally get the tokens passed out they wound up extending the phase one funding another two weeks, I'm assuming they didn't sell enough tokens or didn't raise enough money. Then phase 2 began which was going to take about another 10 days or two weeks.
During this period they partnered with another company called Dream Team and started raising money for another project. Now maybe this wouldn't be a big deal to some but to me it's like they are diverting focus to another project before they've even completed the project I'm involved in and gave me my tokens.
Fast forward phase two ends and they then begin an "audit" before passing out tokens. The audit takes about a week or 10 days then they announce they will pass out tokens. We wait a few more days and they tell us login to our account and click a button that says "get tokens" and we'll get them.
Well, we all do that and then they announce tokens will be handed out in "waves" so not everyone will get them right away. Apparently the direction to click the token button was just busy work to keep us appeased because nothing had even started, a few more days pass and here we are Monday December 18, 2017. Supposedly today they will begin passing out tokens, again in waves so I could get them today, it could be towards the end of the week.
The one positive thing I can say is the team has been responsive to support e-mails. Anytime I've e-mailed them I've gotten responses within minutes and they stick with me until we resolve my problem. Aside from that however the experience has been largely bad.
There hasn't been a ton of marketing or promotion from the team, there hasn't been really a clear roadmap or great communication from the team. The project has dragged on much too long as well IMHO.
With so many new people entering the cryptocurrency space I tend to see a pattern with new investors. They start out buying on Coinbase for the simplicity and ease of use. They then move on to using GDAX which is a little more complicated but saves on trading fees and is free to send off of. Oftentimes people then move onto Bittrex to trade altcoins and after that people sometimes get curious or greedy and look to ICO's and/or HYIP programs looking for even better gains.
Not telling people not to get involved in ICO's but keep in mind a fairly stable coin like Litecoin is up over 6000% on the year so think long and hard about whether you really need to take bigger risks for bigger gains because there's plenty of money to be made in the quote on quote large cap or mid cap cryptos.
Just be cautious. When investing in an ICO checkout the team. If they aren't willing to share their name and bio's stay away. If the website is poorly put together, not well written, etc stay away. If the white paper is crap stay away. If there isn't a strong community and/or some interest in Telegram, Reddit, Twitter, etc stay away. If the team hasn't done anything successful in the space stay away, etc, etc, etc.
What's your thoughts on ICO's? Have you had success or been disappointed? Anyone else invested in Dmarket? If so what's your thoughts?
