ICO Research the way I do it

Hello and welcome to my new blog. I will be posting all my future ICO Alerts here , as Twitter is not offering enough letters for a proper ICO overview. To kick off, I would like to share with you how I do my ICO research. This should help you read my future ICO Alerts and give you understanding the way they are structured.

My set of parameters for ICO research

I am sure all of you reading this have their own set of parameters, that are important for you when you research ICO (or any crypto project).  Mine are Token Metrics, Team & advisors, Social media, Vision, Roadmap, MVP, Partnerships.  For the best result, all of the above need to be met. And I always check them in this order, as today`s ICO market is a numbers game and you want to be checking as many of these as possible. It happened to me many times in the past, that I was checking ICO project, everything looked great, but as last step I checked token metrics, where it failed. I can exclude at least 70% of ICOs based on the first 2 parameters alone.  That makes my life easier.  Now I will explain all of them in more detail one by one.

Token Metrics

I am looking to getmax hard cap of $50m, but that is absolute MAX and only is acceptable if project is great. Holy grail for me is anything below $25m. 

Circulating supply is very important, as it will influence the speed in which price ups and downs in future cryptos happen. See Ripple as example, the   hype level it reached beginning of January and even despite of the hype it only reached all time high of $3.65 (XRP circulating supply is 36bln, total 99bln!). It takes a lot of money flooding in to the market to move a whale like that.

Also very important is to see how many of all tokens available are offered for sale, I like to see 50% for sale and up (but by exeptional project will go as low as 40%, I never go below that). I would like to mention here, that I find more and more projects, that offer tokens for price, where hard cap is reached before all tokens are sold. Unsold tokens are burnt. This way, they move the participation of sold tokens down (say to 40% compared to stated 50 - hope this makes sence). Hopefully that makes sense

Lock up period  of teams tokens prevents flood of tokens to the market  which would cause the price to go down. The longer the lock up period the better. Some projects do lock ups for sold tokens as well, which is nice as it helps to keep the price stable, since very little people are selling it.

Team and advisors

Experience in field related to the ICO project is essential. It won`t help that team is experienced in selling shoes when they want to launch  medical records network.

Superstars within the team, preferably in the core team, if nothing else at least in advising team. At least one is good, anything more than 2 is very good. The reason why I like to see this is, that someone  who worked for large corporation  is less likely willing  to damage their reputation for ICO project.

Clickable links to LinkedIn and few hundreds of connections, just to double check that person is really who they claim they are. Also to check previous work experience

Years of experience in the field, especially important if no real superstar can be found in the team

Size of team and right positions filled is another important factor, as only marketing and selling experts in the team are not enough. Blockchain project need blockchain developers to achieve their goals etc. Generally speaking, the bigger the team the higher the probability that the project is taken seriously by founders

Social media

Size of social media accounts, especially of the ones on Telegram and Twitter are important. Anything with less than 5k followers doesn`t have enough hype to create long term interest in the project, at least 10k is my preferred option

Admins in those groups and managing those accounts and their communication (or lack of it) are deciding factor. If they cannot answer questions, are not replying or even worse are rude to people, I am out

Quality conversation and quality followers are what I am looking for. Too many GIFs and 'when lambo?'type of questions put me of project, as it suggest weak community

Vision

This one is pretty straight forward, I like to see original projects that could bring crypto to the masses or improve on already existing projects

Roadmap

Long roadmap that is full of steps that will increase value or popularity of the project is what you want to see here. As detailed as possible is preffered. Also acts as kind of a checklist of how the team is working. If the team misses 3 milestones I tend to sell my holdings, as it usually drives the price of tokens down

MVP

I prefer to invest in projects that have at least MVP released pre ICO. Alpha release is preferred option. Also like to see testnet release not long after ICO.

Partnerships

Another factor that shows how thoroughly the team was working in the pre ICO stage. This gives a bit more credibility to the team and the project as whole, as this very promising sign of future developments. Please note, that even though partnerships are listed on the website of the ICO, it doesn`t mean they are real. In the recent weeks there were few ICOs with fake partnerships listed on their websites, please double check

White paper

After all of the above factors, I make sure to read the white paper to understand the project better. 

Please note, that even with this extensive research, you have no guarantee when investing in ICO.   Investing in ICO is risky  so due dilligence is very important. The above factors and their fulfillment help me drive risk of loosin my investment down, however there is no way of knowing which investment is the best for sure. And remember, if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Thank you for reading, hopefully you enjoyed it. You can also follow me on Twitter here.