You know when you’re walking down the street and find a $10 bill? That’s bonus money. It’s a nice little present — extra cash, given to you by the grace of God.

That’s the money you take, and instead of spending it on a Starbucks latte, you can invest in an ICO.

Your coffee is not going to 50x in value…but an ICO might.

That’s called ‘low risk, high reward.’

This is not financial advice, by the way. I’m just saying.

Only 20% of the 70 ICOs issued in November are trading above their ICO market cap. Most people lost money. Many of those ICOs were scams.

The bar on ICO risk standards is being raised. By regulators, but also by amateur investors. Now that you’ve felt the burn, or have friends who have felt the burn, you know to do your due diligence. You know not to spend money you can’t afford to lose.

You should look at 1) experienced management teams, 2) strong partnerships, 3) viable technology and 4) leading investment funds backing the deal.

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A few that I am following (but NOT necessarily invested in):

ElonCity (ECT) — ElonCity is turning our energy system into millions of local micro grids, enabling a homeowner to produce, store and trade renewable energy (Adam Rifkin has a great video on this FYI). The ECT token is mined with a clever “Proof of Stored Power” (POSP) protocol.

One ECT is earned when 32 gigawatt hours of electricity is mined, enough to power one million homes for a day. The power connects directly to direct current (DC) appliances. While this startup isn’t yet in the beta stage, the power infrastructure provider is backed by over a dozen private investment fund. Eloncity (ECT) — All information about Eloncity ICO (Token Sale) — ICO Drops

Zapaygo (ZAP) — Buying entertainment and leisure tickets online means you no longer have to spend your lunch hours doing the queue at the box office for a football game or concert tickets. Once at the event, though, there are long lines to get in, buy a beer, purchase an autographed t-shirt, etc. With the Zapaygo app, you can get priority entry access and anything being sold delivered to your seat.

No more missing the winning goal. While using your app, you earn rewards in ZAP tokens — already pre-listed on three exchanges and exchangeable for fiat or crypto. They have a 10+ year contract signed with the largest events organizer in Europe and a pretty good looking exec team. Business Showcase: Zapaygo

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WatchUGot (WUG) — Since AidCoin placed its CharityStars on the blockchain and made charitable donations traceable and auditable, the charity world has been reinventing itself. WatchUGot has combined the GoFundMe and social media model to mobilize community funding of events. Users post funding challenges and donors can track the impact of their giving. WatchUGot (WUG) — ICO rating and details

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Terra Virtua (TVA) — The fully immersive VR platform brings gaming, sports, film, and more to your screens with a Netflix subscription model (I’m a big fan of recurring revenue models). BAFTA-nominated games industry executive Gary Bracey heads up a team of video game industry veterans from PlayStation, Microsoft Studios and Electronic Arts. Video game industry partnerships have been formed and game creators are developing content. Terra Virtua

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Quadrant (eQUAD) — Quadrant is one of several data aggregators and analysis engines for the AI world I like. AI needs lots and lots of data. The more data machine learning can acquire, the more it can learn and the smarter machines can be. This data is also very valuable. Following the Google+ data breach, Quadrant promises to block out malicious code and data tampering. Quadrant Protocol (eQuad) — All information about Quadrant Protocol ICO (Token Sale) — ICO Drops

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Soundeon (SOUNDEON) — Launch your music career or become a music investor and producer in another rising star. Individual artists can launch their own token sales to finance personal projects. Investors receive a share in royalties from music streaming and concerts, and can even trade those rights. Soundeon | Music platform

Liquidity Network — What happens when you bring together an inventor of oracle systems, the developer of the REVIVE offchain payment balancing protocol, and the developer of smart contract verification? — A10,000 tx/s blockchain with no-fee transactions, instant transfers/swaps and no congestion called the Liquidity Network. Vitalik Buterin is anxiously awaiting its launch. Liquidity Network ♦ Plug and Play Off-chain Transfer and Swap Platform.

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DBrain — Among the flurry of AI technology and data blockchain marketplaces cropping up, DBrain led by Dmitry Matskevich stands out. The founder of several AI data companies engineered a $20 million exit for B2B AI company Flocktory. DBrain is backed by reputable investors with strong backgrounds in AI and Blockchain. The AI solutions provider for industry pays crowdworkers to label data and create narrow AI datasets. Data labeling, reports DBrain, is responsible for 70 percent of the success of AI. So far, 20,000 crowdworkers are onboard and 4 million tasks have been performed. Dbrain

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Ledgity — By 2022, security token offerings (STOs) will represent 90 percent of the $10 trillion digital asset market capitalization. Ledgity envisions a market in which equity, debt, funds and other securities will be tokenized. The Ledgity wallet has been designed to hold your digital assets. The platform also provides tokenization tools. Ledgity — Platform for Security Tokens

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Solana — At 710,000 tx/s, SOLANA aims to operate blockchain exchanges with the speed of NASDAQ and transaction processing times on par with Mastercard. This will scale according to Moore’s Law and be super cheap ($0.000001 per transaction). The time between events is cryptographically verified and sequenced, and can be reordered. Solana: A new architecture for a high-performance blockchain

Solana has something in common with a few others I like — it is teeming with first rate engineering talent, who are so busy developing the tech they do not have time to launch an ICO. One, I will leave nameless (run by ex-engineers of a technology giant) cannot even seem to put together a credible website — typically, we would run from these ICOs.

But on technology, the Solana team of former Qalcomm engineers and specialists in token economics are ahead, having completed multiple testnets in 2018, and ready to go live in Q1 2019. So when the ICO does hit the market, the technology will be operational — a rarity in the ICO world. So, I am adding it as a new ICO rating metric — a first class engineering team that team does not have time for the ICO.

Misha is a Japan-based blogger, author and entrepreneur. http://mishayurchenko.me/ #BullishonBitcoin

The Contributor has shared his personal views and opinions in the article. Blockchain Magazine urges readers to conduct their own research with due diligence into the company, product or service mentioned in the content above.