I decided to quit ICO's. From December till now I invested about 5 eth into several ICO's. Invest what you can miss, this is what was able to miss.
- most is sold in pre-sale to big investors, leaving scraps for crowdsale
- much attention to marketing, less to working product or realistic time lines
- immediately available on EtherDelta and IDEX, sure sign of little interest in token economics/future
- no lock on pre-sale tokens, whales take their x2, x3 or x-whatever as soon as possible (I would probably have done the same). Prices drop to below ICO price.
- too many ICO's without distinctive differences.
- too many ICO's in general
- too much tokens reserved for team/marketing
- many ICO's don't even have a crowdsale anymore (which perhaps is a good thing as the little investors are protected this way)
- ICO prizes are quite high. 1eth = 1000/4000 tokens is pretty common, but with a hc of 40 million, this will not easily go x10 or more.
Your obervation have shown that many ICO nowadays are carbon copies of previous ICO of a diffent company. There are some investors that have been discouraged because of the effects of dumpers in etherdelta which put the coin in underperformance status. Many who gets the coin are bounty hunters willing to dump the moment token get into their wallet.
Some tip to give you is that before you invest try looking for a unique ICO, an ico which dont have a resemblance to others. And do some research first. 5 ETH is big money bro.
This crypto business is a lot of trial and error but the good thing is that we learn along the way.