Wall Street Journal: Red Flags For More Than 15% Of Crypto Projects

The Wall Street Journal made new research about how more than 15% of crypto projects that are trying to raise funds via initial coin offerings (ICO) make the investors stop and rethink since the projects have serious red flags that should be reconsidered. In the latest blockchain news, we take a closer look at the research.

The conducted investigation and the analysis of the whitepapers show that about 3,300 cryptocurrency offerings and ICO that were launched last year (2017) likely committed plagiarism or misinterpreted the project founders but most importantly promised unrealistic returns.

The reporters of the Wall Street Journal compared how the sentences were constructed in the reports in order to find duplication and also searched to identify offerings where there were no team members provided. If there is no team members named or the founder of the project, this is always a red flag for the projects since they should be one of the first details that the investors look for.

Also, the reporters found keywords such as ‘’high return’’ because it is a manifestation of critical marketing terms and also analyzed how the projects unrealistically offered the ‘’high returns’’ and advertised it as a ‘’can’t miss’’ opportunity.

More than 30 projects are now being carefully examined by regulators and half of the project websites are now unavailable.

This is not something we haven’t seen before on the market. One of the largest cryptocurrencies by market cap TRON has received a red flag for possibly plagiarizing sections of its whitepaper.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is also conducting a program for taking down of fraudulent ICOs such as the ‘’Operation Crypto Sweep.’’