ICO Examiner - Free Trip to the Moon! Free! Free! Free!

As some-one who is now currently spending every waking moment of his day immersed in ICOs - reading white-papers, conducting research, writing articles, aggregating stats etc - naturally I also find myself also having to participate in Telegram channels, Slack forums etc.

When I do so, it is to engage with a project representative in order to dig a little bit more into the concept that has been presented in the white-paper.

I'm starting to notice, however, that other people seem to be taking a different attitude - and they seem now to be dominating the discussions. Here's a run down of the three most common questions I see on ICO forums (or variants thereof):

• "Hey guys, so when do you reckon this one is gonna moon?"


• "When are we planning to hit the exchange here?"


• "Anyone got a tip for an up-coming bag?"

I am aware, of course, that the ICO phenomenon is mostly now a hyper-sale of concepts from which - how to put it? - less than scrupulous / competent / diligent groups of people go asking for millions of dollars from less than discerning investors who get hyped up by the stories of big bags like NEO, Steem or the latest one, NEBL.

Lots of people appear to be working from the assumption that this will magically be the case for all other ICOs out there. I exaggerate here but only slightly, I think.

Are We Bubbling?

On the other hand, I also buy into the analogy according to which we are now living through the Blockchain-equivalent of the noughties tech bubble - a new technology is set to revolutionise many different aspects of our lives as the Internet did all those years ago.

As a result, if you can filter out the chaff, and you can judiciously find those solid teams out there with legitimate and promising business models, then indeed there is every chance you can MOOOOON (there, I said it).

These people will offer legitimate trips to the Moon - but to climb aboard requires some measure of common sense, and that includes things like:

Not buying into a project that is asking for $100 million without so much as a MVP to back up the proposition. I'm thinking EOS here, specifically.

Not buying into a project that is asking for $50 million when its so-called marketing team is clearly unaware of the concepts of justified text and spell-checker. I won't name this one since I suspect mafia.

Not buying into a project that clearly isn't a fit for the Blockchain: "Decentralised Air Travel!" - absolutely, transparency in flying, exactly what the world needs!

Not buying into a project where not even a single member of the team is posting his Linked-in profile.

Ok, end of b*tch. Back to the grind - because nothing in life comes for free.

Ciao, ciao...
ICO-E

PS - We hit 300 followers today - thank you Steemit!!