Sorry for the click-bait title, but I really want to have some comments on my first post about what you think about ICOs.

First time I met a guy working on blockchain technology, it was at the beginning of 2017. He was so enthusiastic about Ethereum that he convinced me to invest a bit in it.
I did it, but I was wondering if they could be some new cryptos that could make the same return now than if I bought few BTC in 2011. I discovered ICOs.

What is an ICO ?

“An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is used by startups to bypass the rigorous and regulated capital-raising process required by venture capitalists or banks. In an ICO campaign, a percentage of the cryptocurrency is sold to early backers of the project in exchange for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies, but usually for Bitcoin.” (definition from Investorpedia). The ICO investor bet on the success of the company and its business model and expect an increase of the value of its cryptocurrency (called token). Most of these new tokens have their own business model and properties, with a wide range of uses :

You want create a cryptocurrency that is funny ? People created Dogecoin.
You want to be paid by watching porn ? People created Vice Industry .
You want a cryptocurrency that suit cannabis industry ? People created Potcoin .

Good practices when investing on ICOs

I try to find articles on steemit that already has provided advice to invest in ICO, here are the best I found, write by kriptonoob :

• HOW TO FIND SUCCESSFUL AND PROFITABLE ICO - Step By Step Guide (Part I)
  abstract : check website quality, check team credibility (about their experiences on linkedin, where they are based etc.)
• HOW TO FIND SUCCESSFUL AND PROFITABLE ICO - Step By Step Guide (Part II)
  abstract : check the use of the token (👍 if most is used for the technology), check market cap = (price of token) * (number of total token) (👍 if low compared to competitor)

There are also some platforms that evaluate the ICO, the laziest ones can choose the top-ranked:

https://icobench.com/ : my favorite, it’s reviewed by several peoples

https://icorating.com/ : sometimes provide analysis on ICOs

https://www.icoalert.com/ : allow to see easily the calendar of pre-ICOs and ICOs

https://topicolist.com/

https://icowatchlist.com/

https://icobazaar.com/

https://www.coinschedule.com/

(Please put in comment those I missed)

Other tools :
https://icostats.com/ : allow you to track the ROI of previous ICO
http://www.socialmention.com/ : to know the trend of a keyword on social media

As James Altucher said in this video, most of the ICOs are overrated (his actual term is “scam”) because of the hype of cryptocurrencies. That why you need to invest in ICO that will resist to the explosion of the blockchain bubble, with a real business model behind. A good way to verify that is by answer these questions:

• will I use the final product or token created by the ICO ?
• does the blockchain technology is really essential on this project ?
• how this project out perform the current solutions ?
• the maturity of the project : is there a POC , some customers ?

My biggest ROI from an ICO : Dent coin

I invested in late July 2017 in some ICOs, including Dentcoin where I bought 130 k DENT for 66$. Today, the 31/01/2018, here the valuation of my DENT coins that I kept :

screenshot from altpocket , a altcoin portfolio tracker. I have 45 k dent because I withdrew 84 k DENT to invest it in other ICOs, otherwise if I had sold the 130 k DENT when they reached 0.1$ the dent I would have 13 000 $ with 66 $ dollars investments (this was the highest value of DENT was 0.1$ , see graph below).

source : coinmarketcap

Dentwireless is a “worldwide mobile data marketplace”, that allow phone users to sell data mobile using dentcoin to others.
My motivation to invest in dent was that I would use it now if it already existed: I travel quite a lot and if we do not have data mobile you can be lost, unable to book hotel etc. There were two solutions back then: pay the expensive data mobile from our country home operator or buy data mobile from the local country location that we won’t use entirely.
Today, the app is available in several countries in the world and there a lot of a progression for this crypto, it may not be to late to invest in it. More info on their website.

Since then, I invested in several ICOs but I will share with you the one where I invested the most.
It is Bankera, an ICO launch by Spectrocoin.

Bankera ICO

Bankera ICO is lead by Spectrocoin which is a bitcoin (and other cryptos) exchange and wallet provider that sell prepaid credit card you loaded with fiat currency by converting bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It has more than 400 k existing client and an average of 2.5 M visits/month and now it’s around 5 M on their website. Bankera ICO will allow Spectrocoin to become a real and regulated bank with the EU standards.

Even if the the roadmap is not very precise and the IT team is not detailed, I invested for several reasons :

• it is a product that I will use
• they already have clients
• The current price of the ICO is 0.020 € and on the SCO (Second Coin Offering) the price won’t be lower than 0.1€, so the value of your tokens is multiply by 5
• 20% of net transaction revenues will be sent to holders of Bankera’s tokens, SpectroCoin customers Included: that why I already received some money from Spectrocoin’s activity, even if Bankera is not operational yet. I received 0,03% of what I invested in ethereum. In one year, that will be : 0,12*52 weeks = 1,46 % if the revenue remains stable as well as the ethereum value. When all the ICOs will be finished, the yield will go down because the revenue will be shared to more people. The table below showed the expected yield if the revenue of the company remains the same as today.

State of fundraising	token sold in total	annual yield
end of ICO	10 000 000 000	0,55%
end of SCO	17 500 000 000	0,32%
all token sold	25 000 000 000	0,22%

These are the lowest rates you can have and can easily multiply by 5, 10 maybe 50 times !

Want to invest ? Here is the link (affiliate).