Thanks for your efforts to get the word out. There's such a steep learning curve for people new to cryptocurrency that it's unfortunately rather easy for the perpetrators of these types of scams to find victims.

These days I'm also becoming increasingly worried about ICOs. With First Blood and SingularDTV selling out so quickly, it's clear there is massive demand for ICOs with a ridiculous amount of people looking to flip coins for rapid, easy gains. I'm sure this fact is not lost on scam artists either, so I'd expect to see many scam ICOs in the months ahead trying to prey on the greed of the masses.

Regulation is one way to combat this problem, but then the question is what jurisdiction applies to any given crowdsale and how exactly do you enforce it across non-existent virtual borders? Going down that route simply opens a whole can of worms that's not easy to deal with.

For now, I think the only way to combat such things is by knowledge. Posts like this one that raise awareness are always good. People need to be educated as well on how to conduct their own due diligence to separate out good investments from bad ones. There are always warning signs to look for. One telltale sign for me is if a project pitch sounds like the digital equivalent of a used car salesman trying to sell me a lemon. Some common red flags:

• anything that promises fast returns and focuses too much on the money aspect
• lacking a well defined project roadmap
• has a little known dev team that isn't transparent about their credentials