There’s a lot of noise out there. Choosing which new cryptocurrencies to focus on can be hard. At the core of many of today’s cryptos planning to launch are are scams, half-baked ideas for projects, inexperienced teams, bloated capital structures or a goal more focused on the ICO than the importance of getting listed as a proper trading vehicle on secure exchanges thereby benefiting original token holders. There are sites out there that do a fairly good job of curating and screening these kinds of factors. What it takes to be ready for a successful lift off can be defined by the following points: : Why are they doing this? If it’s simply to provide a return on an investment, then buyer beware. If they lay out a clear vision where the value proposition is easily understood this would be a good sign. It should be more than just a “we’re making the world a better place”. This will help it pass the scam test. What really helps pass the scam test is whether or not they have a working product you can take for a test drive. Motive : What has the team executed on in the past, together? It should first and foremost be technology related. You should be able to quickly look this up on the net. Get them on the phone if possible to see if the team even exists at all. I do this with every team I invest in. Experienced Team : How much crypto are they offering to the public? Gauging demand for a crypto is key. Not everyone is going to want to take a position in it. These factors should determine how much crypto should be offered to the public. If these numbers are way off then it’s going to be hard for the crypto to move up without enough demand. As a token holder, this is an important aspect to analyze. Capital Structure : This connects directly to the point above. If they raise too much money during the ICO, they’re going to have to clear loads of ‘flippers’. These flippers are those that purchase tokens during the ICO and as soon as the team lists the token on the first exchange, they sell right into it creating a massive amount of sell pressure they’ll have to clear before anyone makes any real returns. It can take months and sometimes years before a team can clear sellers like this before the token can appreciate with any kind of real value. Raising the right amount money during their ICO Here are 5 groups that are ready to execute on newly minted cryptocurrencies that have the right stuff in terms of what it takes for a successful lift off: [ ] is an open and distributed protocol for App Stores using blockchain technology and smart contracts. Serving over 200 million users, AppCoin (APPC) tokens are the new native currency of the app economy that ensures trust without intermediaries. AppCoins link The design of the AppCoins protocol rests on three main pillars: 1) transparency, 2) equitability and 3) community-focused. Firstly, open and transparent standards facilitate trust and privacy. Secondly, revenue shares are redistributed away from unnecessary intermediaries to end-users and developers. Thirdly, through open-source code, knowledge is accessible to the community. The current problems in the app stores flows are further described in this document, as well as the risks contained in each of them. Concepts like “proof-of-attribution”, use Ethereum network smart contracts and state storage, allowing cryptographically to reach an acceptable digital agreement between users and developers. This new AppCoins power app economy network will be launched within the next 12 months, leveraging on existing 200 million annual unique active users of the Aptoide app store. Token sale proceeds will be used to incentivise developers, OEMs and end-users. By 2022, Aptoide aims that 1.3 bn people use AppCoins powered app stores. Impressive! [ ] platform enables dynamically generated “smart token baskets” based on user-selected trends that exist in search, social media and news. The reason they’ve included the word ‘smart’ is based on the ability for these baskets to determine for themselves whether or not to include additional cryptocurrencies or components from related baskets that may increase overall returns. Baskets that interact this way with one another will conduct these kinds of transactions between one another using the Vectorspace utility token, VEC which is also required to dynamically generate baskets. Vectorspace link According to their whitepaper: “A growing number of organizations offer the ability to trade a basket or group of cryptocurrencies with a single transaction. Similar to a traditional ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund), “token baskets” as they’re more commonly called, enable a fund or individual investor to spread their risk, diversify and lower volatility while maximizing gains with more safety and stability. This approach is valuable but incomplete. For example, taking the top 20 best performing cryptocurrencies, placing them in a basket or fund minimizes gains compared to enabling fine-grained custom creation of token baskets. Which groups of cryptocurrencies are beating the market? Why? What do they have in common? How strong are those relationships? Are those relationships well known and obvious or are they hidden relationships? Are the relationships numerical or nonnumerical based on concepts, context and sentiment or a combination of both? These are the questions Crypto Discover is designed to answer. Vectorspace AI’s Crypto Discover platform is an advanced cryptocurrency discovery engine that enables a user to automatically generate a token basket or “mini-index fund” made up of cryptocurrencies that are related to trends in news, global and local searches, concepts, context, keywords, hashtags, social media, URLs and other dynamic content.” Vectorspace looks to bes designed to help you increase your profits with other cryptocurriences by reducing risk and maximizing your gains. Their focus is on “Advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) & Sentiment Analysis for Smart Cryptocurrency Basket Trading” and they have live products any crypto trader can use today. Their site updates every few minutes powered by their algorithms. It looks like they’re at the early stages of their pre-ICO but farther along in terms of product offerings released in addition to their patents referenced on their in collaboration with . crowdsale page Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Sweet! [ ] is claiming to revolutionize wealth management services with a community-centric approach powered by blockchain technology. They are a wealthtech DAO offering Swiss-made crypto investment solutions to the world. They say it’s a new paradigm that offers best-of-breed investment solutions available to everyone with no frontiers nor restrictions. Whether you are an individual, a DAO or a financial expert, SwissBorg says they are a democratic ecosystem where you can manage a portfolio of crypto assets. SwissBorg link They have something they call Smart Madates which are based on a collection of multi-signature smart contracts providing the ideal framework for customized investment strategies. Each member of the community will be given the opportunity to contribute to the development of SwissBorg and will be rewarded in tokens. Each person is unique and should have a tailor-made solution that fits his or her requirements in terms of risk, target returns, financing and other services. The team has over 90 years of combined experience in investment management. In addition to their trading activities they also develop and encourage ongoing research in fields like AI and Swarm Intelligence. Sounds great! [ ] is the decentralized system of Reputation Building for Employees in the world. The Ethereum blockchain enables Aworker to provide independent rating services. Aworker’s mission is to help people build successful careers, affirm their professionalism and make money. Aworker link Employees will be able to obtain a reward for their proper performance, professional and communication skills. With the help of WORK Tokens and Ethereum blockchain technology, they are creating an independent rating of professionals all over the world. WORK token is a token for professionals. The stronger a worker’s reputation is the more beneficial terms are offered to an employee by our partners. Aworker is created to help people boost their careers, show their experience and obtain additional rewards. Their ambition is to create a new ecosystem for Work 2.0 to help specialists boost their professional skills and make names for themselves in the field. The next step is to develop the ecosystem providing employees with special offers on partners’ products. All calculations will be done in WORK Tokens. The higher the Ranking and Reputation of an employee, the more favorable conditions will be granted. They are offering the companies an application for recruitment process automation with access to a database, which is without peer. HR managers will be able to see a candidate rating, performance at the last job and confirmed skills. The blockchain will provide the most unbiased and reliable information to fill in this gap on the recruitment market to meet companies needs today. According to their whitepaper “We want to create the world where people are rewarded for their skills and achievements at work. And companies receive a reliable rating of specialists to facilitate the candidates selection process.” Makes good sense! [ ] say there is no way for AI communicate data to each other and coordinate processing. Everything has to be done manually, expensively. There is no way to find AI services, nor any way to judge the quality of an AI service without using it. This creates unnecessary risk. SingularityNet link There solution includes protocol specifically designed to solve these problems while opening the AI market to the entire world. SingularityNET enables AI-as-a-service on a permissionless platform, so that anyone can use AI services easily. By wrapping each AI algorithm, they will create a simple protocol for exchanging data and coordinating processes between AI, solvig the communuication problem. The AI to AI economy takes form on the SingularityNET market, where any AI service can be discovered and purchased. By making it easy for AI services to be linked together, the SingularityNET market can offer automation-in-a-box at ultra low costs. SingularityNET is powered by the AGI token, which makes the decentralized economy possible. The AGI token also solves the Assignment of Credit Problem, allowing us to quantify the value an AI agent brings to the market. This problem is the first step toward creating Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and the AGI token makes this breakthrough possible. Sounds fairly ambitious but they’re certainly on the right track. Hopefully they’ve got the ICO versus getting listed and becoming a trading vehicle balanced right. Good to go! — — — — — — — — — — — — — Choosing which ICOs to build positions in will be hard but possible and maybe a little easier with a little thing called ‘Due Diligence’ or DD for short. Things to remember to avoid scams and target quality: Find out what their motive is Gauge the experience of the team Get em on the phone! Kick the tires Check the cap structure Make sure they’re not going to be bloated with flippers right after they publicly list on an exchange! Enjoy! Originally published at medium.com on December 5, 2017.
