To make an assessment about ICOs, one should look at several factors relating to its team, market and business. A diligent investment strategy with careful assessment of ICO’s team, product, partnerships, current development phase and the market potential should yield good returns for an investor.
Investing in ICOs is risky, there are a lot of scammy people out there and I think that there is in fact an ICO-bubble (of shitty projects with no value) going on. And yet I think that maybe the next Google will emerge out of this fancy new way of funding. Before putting your Bitcoin, Ether or whatever in an ICO, you should ask yourself these six questions:
Question 1: Is the project just hype or will it potentially provide value?
Question 2: Who is the team, are they known, are they already successful?
Question 3: Are there "dark periods" in the road-map, do they have a plan?
Question 4: Is there a (good) Hardcap, will unsold tokens will be destroyed?
Question 5: Does the project really need the blockchain?
Question 6: Are the founders engaging with the community?
With this questions in mind, it is of course not guaranteed that the projects will be successful. But you can easily avoid most of the bad ICOs, that are built on hype and / or scam out there.