There are plenty of sites out there that list ICOs, but what are the qualities of the best ICO listing sites? One factor that can’t be undervalued is accuracy.
If an ICO list is riddled with errors, it’s of no benefit to the ICOs themselves or the potential investors. Incorrect information not only makes a site look unprofessional and unreliable, but it can even be actively damaging.
According to a recent Bitcoin.com article, less than half of ICOs survive their first four months, and Cryptonews has reported that close to 80% of ICOs are scams. An ICO list should be working to help investors find the projects that are apt to succeed, and help those projects find investors. Here’s how data can help and hinder.
Start and end dates
There’s really no more basic information about an ICO than when it’s going to start and finish. Within that time frame, it’s also important to have accurate information about when each phase of the sale will take place, and what the bonuses are for investing at that stage.
The consequences of incorrect dates are pretty clear. If an interested party is looking for an ICO to invest in now, they’re going to set their search parameters accordingly. If they find projects listed as being active which either haven’t yet started or have already finished, they’ll get frustrated and leave the site. Meanwhile, they may have missed out on great ICOs that were active, but didn’t have the correct dates listed and thus didn’t make it into the search results.
Some sites like Cointelegraph’s ICO Calendar really emphasize the importance of accurate dates.
Exchanges
If a listing includes what exchanges a coin is or will be available on, it’s vitally important that the list includes all of the exchanges that will offer the coin, and none that will not. It will be frustrating for users looking to buy, sell, or swap an ICO cryptocurrency if they can’t actually find the correct exchange to do so. It may even lead to confusion and purchases of similarly-named coins that won’t actually do their buyer any good. And at the same time, the project misses out on potential investors if they grow frustrated with their attempts to actually find the right exchange.
Exclusions
Few things could be more disappointing than finding an ICO that you’re really excited to invest in, only to discover that you’re not eligible due to the regulations of your home country. And for an ICO, few things could be more annoying than to discover that a site had incorrectly listed which countries were and were not allowed to participate in funding.
Funding options
Each investor has their own preference for what sort of funds they use to back ICOs. Those who are new to the crypto-sphere may be most comfortable investing fiat currency that they understand the value of, whereas crypto enthusiasts may only trust products that are backed with ETH or BTC. A crypto ICO list should make it clear which currencies will be accepted during the ICO and what the minimum investment is. Likewise, they should have accurate information about the soft cap and hard cap so potential investors have a clear picture of the project’s goals.
All the right names
Typos are a plague we all fall victim to from time to time, but they’re important to avoid in a professional website such as an ICO list. When dealing with ICO projects, it can be easy to make a mistake on the project name, token name, or the names of any of the members of the team.
This is especially true with peoples’ names, as the international nature of the crypto community means you’ll often encounter names with letters in combinations not found in your own native language, and if you have any sort of autocorrect installed it may “helpfully” correct peoples’ names to match a more common spelling. It’s always important to double-check facts, both out of professionalism and out of respect for the other people in the industry.
At the same time, social media links need to be accurate as well. A lot of people and businesses have similar names, and beyond that, sometimes an ICO may have a social media presence separate from the parent company behind it.
Fair and impartial ratings
Not every list includes crypto ICO ratings, but for those that do it is important that they be fair, impartial, and above all, accurate. Every rated ICO should be judged by the same criteria, so that it can be clear how and why they received the rating they did. Ratings based on the judge’s gut feeling or how much an expert got paid have no more value than randomly assigned numbers.
Inaccurate ICO ratings are a thorn in the side of the crypto community. When scams and ill-conceived projects receive high marks, it makes the entire industry look untrustworthy. We cannot hope to attract new people to invest in the market if they don’t feel like they can rely on ratings sites to help them make wise investments.
Keeping it up-to-date
ICOs are starting and ending every day. A look at the ICO Tracker on CoinDesk shows a sharp increase for 2017 and 2018. It’s important for a list to be up-to-date for it to serve any value. How to achieve that is up to each individual list. Some may find it easier to simply let users submit ICOs which are added automatically, but an automated system means you can’t ensure that all of the facts are right.
Yes, it should be incumbent for a project to provide all of the right information, but you never know when some helpful fan will have taken it upon themselves to help an ICO get listed, only to make a few mistakes in the process.
It’s more time-consuming, but better if there’s a human touch involved, verifying information and making corrections before things go live.
Because of how fast-paced the world of ICOs and cryptocurrencies can be, there’s always something new to do when you’ve decided to try to be the best ICO list out there. Following up on everything to make sure our listings and ratings are accurate is a constant job, but one worth doing. The crypto community deserves a reliable and accurate source of information on current and ongoing ICOs. Nothing but the best will do, no matter how much work it takes to make it happen.
Staff Writer
