Gaining Admission to ICOs is Literally a Lottery

It’s no secret that public tokensales are on the decline. The trend, which has been accelerating all year, has seen the bulk of the action transition to private and pre-sale rounds, leaving the public to fight over the scraps. To compound the woes of retail investors, gamification has made entry into the most coveted ICOs a lottery in which the odds of admittance are low, and the odds of profiting lower still.

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Welcome to the Great ICO Gamble

In the words of Groucho Marx, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member”. Generally speaking, if a public tokensale is easy to get into, it isn’t worth getting into. Investing in ICOs has always been a hazardous pursuit, what with the risks of exit scams, unfair discounts to friends and families, phishing websites, gas wars that enable whales to snag the lion’s share of the tokens, and all the other pitfalls that are part and parcel of navigating the crowdsale landscape.

Investors have deemed these gambles worth it, however, in the knowledge that if they did their research and picked the right projects, there was a chance their toil would pay off handsomely. Today, however, the odds of success have been slashed dramatically. With public sales for the most popular ICOs now all but extinct, members of the public hoping to make the whitelist don’t just need to look sharp – they also need to think sharp.

A number of projects have begun initiating quizzes as part of the registration process. Designed as a means of weeding out the pure speculators, with the hope of attracting “true believers” in the project, quizzes have been used by the likes of Quarkchain. Having attracted over 70,000 whitelist registrations, Quarkchain decided to launch a quiz based around the workings of the project. Entrants who scored more than 60/100 would then entered into a lottery for one of the limited public sale places.

ICOs Are Leveling Up Their Gamification

Token Foundry, a global platform that allows anyone to buy vetted tokens, with no discounts to early stage investors, also includes a quiz as part of its registration process. And judging  by the results posted, successful quiz completion is by no means a formality. In a recent blog post, Token Foundry noted that of the 2,000+ registrants for FOAM, whose tokensale it is hosting, 25% failed the questionnaire. It explained:

“So far, 25% of the people who have tried to register for the FOAM sale have provided answers that indicated they either don’t understand what the FOAM token is, or that they don’t intend to use it (i.e. speculators). Those people are now blocked from being able to participate in the FOAM sale.”

This week Carry, whose pre-sale was completed in just 98 seconds, also announced a quiz for whitelisted public sale applicants. Priority will be given to “those who empathize with our mission and impact Carry has in the world.” Origo Network has gone one step further, offering a last chance for pre-sale participants willing to upload an Instagram picture or image containing the slogan “Origo is Privacy”. It’s a lot of hoops to jump through just for the privilege of participating in a crowdsale that, statistically speaking, has only a 1 in 5 chance of generating a profit, based on this year’s ICO results.

A handful of investors who complete the entrance exam for their preferred tokensale make it through the lottery for whitelist registration and purchase tokens will come up trumps. The remainder will be destined to keep riding the crowdsale carousel, searching in vain for a project that will let them in and allow them the opportunity cash out for a modest profit.

Do you think quizzes are an effective means of deterring ICO speculators? Let us know in the comments section below.

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