Initial Coin Offering (ICO) has become one of the easiest ways to raise funds for startups and businesses. An ICO usually requires a whitepaper with the product roadmap, team bios, distribution of tokens, a functioning website, and some social media presence to connect with the team.
Cryptocurrency has also become a playground for scammers. The anonymous nature of cryptocurrency, it’s impossible to know the real person behind a computer screen. There have been many fake ICOs. As a matter of fact, 1 out of 5 ICOs are red flagged for some kind of false information or scam, according to a study done by the Wall Street Journal. The study revealed that out of some 2000 ICOs, 124 ICOs faked team members, 111 had copied whitepapers from other ICOs, and close to 50 didn’t even had a functional website.
Out of 1,450 ICOs, 271 has found with at least one red flag that makes them suspicious of some kind of wrongdoing or false information. As a matter of fact, several ICOs have used stock images with fake names for their team members.
Look at the above photo, a stock photo representing Ram Rosenfield as a lead blockchain developer is actually a stock photo.