I just noticed Dnotes on Coin Market Cap. It seemed to pop up out of nowhere with a $380 Million market cap and $2.50 price, with a 9000% 7-day gain. I was like, WTH?!?! Where did this come from??? So I started looking into it.
Apparently, Dnotes has been around for 4 years, not doing too much. Now, it is set to be listed on the Cryptopia exchange on May 12th, 2018. This seems to have had the effect of bumping the price up to $2.50 from about 6 cents. That's an amazing jump!
Problem: Dnotes are only currently trading on some scammy-looking exchange located somewhere is Eastern Europe or the Ukraine/Russia. They are still running some kind of an old fork of Dnotes & have not yet upgraded their nodes. The other exchange, Trade-By-Trade has the correct price, but their ID verification process is so backed up that it's taking about a week to verify your ID documentation.
This could be a great opportunity to make a small initial investment and get a butt-ton of profit - or it could be a scam. The thing is, it doesn't look like a scam from their website. It looks legit, but it's just now launching and it's very, very "iffy." So, I agree with your basic message of cautious optimism: BUYER BEWARE. A small risk might be worth taking for a big reward. Throw in $20 and see what happens. If you get scammed, oh well - it's only $20. If it's legit, you could have 10x's your money by next week.
I might take the time to do some more reasearch, set up a Cryptopia account, and give it a spin. No risk, no reward. But, I have no idea what will happen.