There are still many websites that list upcoming ICOs (initial coin offerings) online. Regardless of how many times people have been warned, the self defeating mentality of "I'll find the next bitcoin" is still quite alive. But, will it always remain the same?

_{Cointelegraph.com}

The magic word

It's not my intention to be insulting with this observation, I'm simply trying to be sincere. Investing is not for everyone, and it's specially not for those who don't like to research, to dig deep. This whole idea that you might just strike oil if you stomp on the ground a little too hard is comical, but also dangerous.

As we know, last year, 2017, was a year of utter craziness. Bitcoin along with many other cryptocurrencies saw one of the most unsustainable bull runs anyone had ever witnessed and this brought forth many of the expected players; the scammers, the hackers, their victims of course, and not too far from that, the gamblers.

It was hard to miss, you could buy almost any ICO and granted you would sell after launch, you were bound to make some return on your investment, but if we think about it for just a second. How was that even a thing? Buying into projects was not done with the idea of supporting an initiative, believing in a blockchain solution. Buying into an ICO was just a gamble to get more BTC, nothing more.

Regardless of where within the rainbow of shadiness a project would lie, hackers, scammers, etc, all they had to do was include the key word, the magical word: blockchain.

You might be surprised to know that an Iced Tea bottling company gave this a go, and their stock went up over night. But, you would be right to ask "What does Iced Tea have to do with Blockchain?" - The answer: absolutely nothing

You have to love the research

If you don't feel like reading about it, if you don't feel like watching videos about it, if you don't understand why the project needs a blockchain to begin with, then the best thing for you to do, and mean this sincerely is nothing.

At this point there are still hundreds if not thousands of cryptocurrency projects that do not need a blockchain. That is, that the problem they are solving, is either a problem that does not gain advantage from being decentralized, or that is not really a problem to begin with.

What I'm trying to say basically is that those who actually look into the white papers, who do a conscious attempt to understand the value proposition of the crypto project, those are the only ones that could possibly even make a judgement, and even though I don't have any hard numbers, I'm confident that the investors who have and are succeeding on this space, are precisely of this curious nature.

Most ICO's fail

The numbers here don't lie, and it doesn't take much to see that what I'm talking about is true. As a matter of fact, there was one ICO last year that raised 40k in just three days, the name, EUT, but guess what it stood for? Useless Ethereum Token, yet people bought it up. That may have been an extreme case mind you, but my point stands.

Today there are plenty of websites that list ICOs, and keep a rating system for them. Now, to me that is somewhat shady, simply because as far as I know, the way the rating system works is not transparent and thus, I'm sure it's manipulated.

As you might imagine some lawsuits have been issued, not only against the ICO's that have defrauded people from millions, but also from websites who list them. The results of those lawsuits have been unimpressive to say the least and the game continues.

One interesting thing about these ICO websites is that if you speak badly about them, you are likely to get a cease and desist letter. That is, if you are someone of notoriety of course, but let's break that down. They are basically protecting themselves from people who want to hold them accountable for pushing or shilling, pick your word, ICOs that have scammed investors out of their money. If that's not ironic, then I don't know what is.

What should you do?

In one word: research - If you want to survive this "game", if you want to be here years from now when the waters have calmed, when we've finally reached adoption, then you must become better in you judgement. Of course, this is only if you are interested in investing, either sweat equity, or actual capital, but there is literally no other way around it that I know of.

To me this bear market has been the mode ruthless teacher of all, and as much as I may say I won't miss it, I'm pretty grateful for the experience, and for having learnt as much as I have. Yes, learning, all the way down.....