In a world driven by hype and FOMO [Fear Of Missing Out]It’s becoming clearer every day that a diligent crypto enthusiast needs a litmus test to pick a token to support in a world where truly viable projects are hard to find and good projects with long-term potential are even harder to separate from money grabbing ‘shitcoins’.
With recent developments where most new cryptos are hitting record lows, and new ICO projects not living up to their hype after the crowdsale, it is now common for disappointed ‘investors’ to blame ICO promoters on social media. themselves for not doing proper due diligence to pick the most likely post crowdsale winner before purchasing a token during the ICO.
From my extensive observations, it has been observed that most crypto buyers buy coins during an ICO based on FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) created by the masters of hype behind that coin. Many simply bought without understanding the purpose of the coin post-ICO, or what to do with the token after the crowdsale. When nothing happens after the ICO, as is often the case with many ICOs, they will jump on social media to cry bloody murder.
Recently, my team and I have completed a tour of Africa and parts of the United States to promote Nollycoin ICO. We’ve hosted and sponsored various conferences, held live AMA (Ask Me Anything) press meetings, and had tons of one-on-one meetings with crypto whales, small investors, and crypto millionaire wannabes of every hue.
Through all of this, one thing that surprised me above all else was that most of the token holders who participated in the token sale had no idea about the underlying business or project behind it.
Even stranger in my observations was the surprising fact that many couldn’t tell you the value proposition of the project, its purpose or the company’s plan to disrupt the market and capture a share of buyers in their industry. They only bought the ICO because some Telegram or Facebook page they visited told them to ‘buy’. Hold and buy more’. Most simply operate on animal instinct rather than objective discussion.
Now, if most of the people I met were just teenagers or uneducated people, I wouldn’t be so surprised at the level of ignorance of many of the crypto ‘investors’ I met. In contrast, many of the people I met were college graduates and people of some means. Yet less than 10% of them can easily articulate why they buy a currency in the expectation that it will increase in value over time. Everywhere I went, few people in the crowd could tell me the names, experience and powers of the corporate managers of the companies selling the coins.
The thing that most of them can mention is that the coins were recommended by ‘respectable’ influencers when the data proved that most of them were paid respectable money for creating FOMO and otherwise useless shitcoins.
Outside of the so-called bogus influencers, all crypto buyers knew that the group leaders were Russian, Chinese or Korean even though they knew absolutely nothing about them. It was as if all you needed to have a successful ICO was listing names of people in Korea or China or Russia that no one could verify with a simple Google search.
While I agree that there are certainly many factors to consider in deciding whether a project’s token will increase in value over time, I think the acid test and the most immediate evaluation criteria should be the currency’s utility beyond what happens. On crypto exchanges.
Although most crypto token owners I’ve met don’t even know this, the reality is that if you buy a token from most ICOs, you’re not really ‘investing’ in that company. You are not buying shares in the company and you are not buying any security from the company.
And at best, when you bought tokens during most ICOs you were ‘donating’ to a project in exchange for a utility token or coin that legally had no real value outside of the business ecosystem controlled by the issuing company.
In order, apart from your hopes of ‘mooning’ the price of the token or making you a millionaire, there is little else you can do with the token other than enjoy the utility attached by the ICO company, if any.
Since no one can predict for sure how a crypto will perform on a crypto exchange once it finally gets there, and recent experience has shown that the price of most tokens will likely nosedive in the first few weeks of hitting an exchange (due to large sell offs by speculators) the exchange is expected to ‘ Outside of ‘mooning’, it would make some sense for you to see what other value or utility you can get from your token.
As the crypto revolution continues to rev, morph, and adapt to various market developments, the only way to make sure your money isn’t going down the drain is to make sure you can still get great value and benefits from using those tokens. Even if you can sell it for an immediate profit on an exchange.
When making this determination you must ask yourself this basic question: What is the price, product or service offered by the company that sells the tokens that will give me enough value for my cash to make this purchase worth my time?
In a world of crash prices of tokens on various exchanges, the more opportunities you have to use in real life with a token outside of the expected list on crypto exchanges, the better the chances are that you won’t be disappointed or stuck. Tokens that are useless to you.
So, you must ask again and again: If this coin never trades on an exchange, will I still be happy that I supported the vision? If this token loses 70% of its value on an exchange, can I still use it and get my money’s worth with it elsewhere?
If you can’t answer this question positively after reviewing the whitepaper and investing in the company’s claims, then you should think twice before buying that coin.
A recent case-study
Take a current ICO like Nollycoin which is a token to power a blockchain enabled movie distribution ecosystem. No matter what happens with Nollycoin on crypto exchanges, the coin’s promoters have created several favorable scenarios for the coin’s buyers to ensure that their supporters and token hodlers remain smiling.
The Nollytainment ecosystem includes some great utilities attached to the Nollycoin token
• Ability to use Nollycoin tokens to watch exclusive movies in cinemas and cinema houses
• Ability to use Nollycoin tokens to access 1,000 movies on their Netflix-on-steroids blockchain movie distribution.
• Ability to use Nollycoin tokens to purchase products and services on NollyMall which is like an Amazon platform for entertainment-based products.
• Ability to use Nollycoin tokens to pay school fees on the NOLLY Academy platform and partner companies
You see, beyond the usual expectation that tokens might be listed on a crypto exchange platform, you need to look beyond the hype of an ico to the immediate and potential utility of the token and the viability of the underlying project behind it.