ICO NEWS: Almost half of all ICOs fail, Bitcoin.com reports
There are a handful of tell tale signs that can alert potential investors to a less-than-legitimate ICO. One is the team member listed on the website. It’s always advisable to investigate each listen team member one by one. Look a their LinkedIn and see what’s been said.
Many fraudulent ICOs make people up while others have been known to use stock images or even famous people in their bio pics!
Additionally, it’s always advisable to be weary of celebrity-endorsed ICOs. Often, they turn out to be either scams or they get shut down by the SEC for being basically unregistered securities.
Introducing ShoCard
Armin Ebrahimi, founder and CEO of ShoCard, has been busy mining his contacts to craft a solid squad in preparation for ShoCard’s May crowdsale.
Ebrahimi might be one of the best people to start a company that uses blockchain technology to protect and share digital identities. His 30 years in Silicon Valley include a spot as senior vice president of platform engineering at Yahoo!, where he looked after its registration and anti-platform services.
“You don’t think you’re going to be so careless with it…”
“You don't think they're going to be so careless with it,” said Ebrahimi, lamenting the firm’s trajectory after he left. “Yahoo wasn't in the same spot, and it took its eyes off the ball.”
However, these breaches gave him valuable insight: The world needs a better way to manage identity. Now with ShoCard, Ebrahimi plans to use blockchain technology to do it. As he saw during the dawn of the web, he plans to capitalize on this new emerging technology that he believes will change our working paradigms in the future.
This time, he hopes to use a robust team of his own choosing to engineer that change, spanning not only his leadership team but also his broader community of advisors and investors. As it goes through its initial phases, he said that a startup like his needs a mixture of skills.
Looking to the future
The launch team must have the go-to-market experience to help get the technology into the public eye, but also an ability to look to the future rather than the past when developing a new way to manage identity.
“For disruptive technologies like blockchain, you must have the ability to question previous ways of doing things,” he said. “Sometimes blockchain firms have great teams, but they still have elements of central services inside them. You must be flexible and be prepared to challenge your preconceptions.”
2018 looks set to be an even bigger year than 2017 for ICOs. However, companies are being forced to comply with often increasingly stringent regulations. And scams still abound…
