What does it take to be a top athlete in 2018? Talent, grit and, a diversified portfolio? So, investments are not required join the professional ranks, but more athletes are investing in diverse opportunities to ensure their financial health lasts long after they hang up their jerseys.
From investing in tech startups to financially backing restaurants and films, everyone from Steph Curry to Serena Williams is finding more ways to support businesses and ventures they believe in. As Initial Coin Offerings continue to bring in more attention from investors, it’s likely that these fundraising mechanism will soon attract athletes in groves. Floyd Mayweather is one athlete who has already dabbled in cryptocurrency, having invested in Hubii Network’s ICO last August.
While the incredible success of some ICOs like Filecoin are luring in both experienced and novice investors, the industry is still rife with fraudulent listings and flimsy teams. By February 2018 it was revealed that 46% of the year’s previous ICOs had already failed.
It’s impossible to predict the long-term viability of a crypto-based product — there are too many outside factors: market volatility, competitive solutions, etc. However, through stringent due diligence, investors can put themselves in the best positions possible to invest in quality ICO listings.
Check ICO Review Sites
ICO review sites are designed to make an investor’s life easier. If you’re just starting the process of exploring ICOs, it’s in your best interest to check out a trustworthy ICO rating site like ICO Reports. Many ICO review sites leverage their own analysis methodology to deliver some kind of trust or success score to inquiring audiences. The internal teams at these sites do most of the heavy-lifting for audiences.
Final reviews are typically the culmination of extensive research in which review site analysts: they through each listing’s whitepaper to ensure it is original and factually correct, research the resumes and backgrounds of each founding team member, assess the specifications of the actual token or coin sale, and survey the project’s social media profiles and crypto forum activity to better understand the extent of their community-building efforts.
Once all of these parts have been gathered, the ICO review sites compile and summarize their findings to give potential buyers as much information as possible.
Read The Whitepaper
ICO whitepapers can be intimidating; These reports delve into the technical nuances of the product, the exact product implementation steps the organization will take, and the economics of their specific cryptocurrency. Anyone unfamiliar with crypto and blockchain jargon may feel daunted just after reading the introduction. But for the serious investor, the white paper is one of the most revealing resources a crypto company provides.
Research The Team
Team is often the most important factor that weighs on an investor’s decision. An entrepreneur can have a brilliant, lightning-in-a-bottle idea that can impact lives for the better, but if said investor has not formulated the right team to bring this idea to life, chances are investors will walk away. Products can be tweaked, and implementation mistakes can be fixed, but culture, experience, and passion can never be faked.
Assess The Roadmap
Any ICO worth an investor’s time should offer a short and long-term roadmap. It is in the best interest of any financial backer to understand exactly how the investment will be used to hone the product or grow the team. All ICOs should publish a roadmap that reveals their estimation for ow long it will actually take to build out their solution and at which point in time the public can expect to benefit from their launch.
If an ICO listing does not have a roadmap, it should send off major warning signals. It’s not as though every organization without a roadmap plans to take an investor’s money and run (although some have done this) but, rather, the organizations that are unable to define their next steps are not yet ready to enter into the next phase of development and, therefore, should probably not launch an imminent coin offering or token sale.
The proliferation of ICOs is staggering, and still on the rise. It’s likely that we’ll soon see top athletes backing these decentralized solutions, thus setting off even more of a frenzy around coin offerings. But anyone, athlete or not, should not let their enthusiasm for this type of fundraising blind them to any red flags. Conducting thorough assessment is the key to not getting burned at the end.
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