ICO Warning: HumanX is Most Likely a Scam

Currently, in the final phase of its initial coin offering (ICO), the project claims to be developing an integrated platform consisting of several pieces. Creating a video sharing website, music sharing platform, cryptocurrency ranking app and charity network among the proposed solutions, HumanX coin appears to be doing its utmost to appeal to as many potential investors as possible. Although each of its solutions could be considered appealing, practically all have already been done before, with little to no spin being added to make HumanX stand out. Besides this, the project has several highly suspicious characteristics that paint a big red flag over it.

Warning Signs

When it comes to scam projects, few go to extreme lengths to dupe potential investors. Instead, the vast majority of illegitimate projects go for the best bang for their buck, by expending minimal effort to produce a passable facade — typically content with stealing just a few hundred to thousands of dollars. HumanX falls into this category, lazily throwing together fragments of successful projects to produce what it hopes will be enough to fool casual or inexperienced investors. Evidence indicating HumanX is almost certainly a scam can be broken down into three major factors:

The Team, or Lack Thereof

In what is often the case with scam projects, HumanX opted to completely omit their team or provide any evidence whatsoever that the people developing the project are qualified and experienced enough to produce a successful product. Of course, the project also neglects to include any company registration details, despite claiming to registered as HumanX Group LLC — supposedly a non-profit organization in Singapore. Those behind the project also took the additional step of blocking what might have shed some light on those behind the project, anonymizing the Whois registration details of the domain hmx.global.

Plagiarism of Several Projects

After further investigation of the project, it became apparent that the concept and website content seemed very familiar. As it turns out, the HumanX coin concept is actually an amalgamation of several other relatively successful projects, including the decentralized video sharing platform Viuly, and blockchain-based music streaming platform Musicoin. In fact, HumanX goes beyond simple mimicry, instead deciding to straight up plagiarize content from multiple projects, haphazardly throwing it all together into a sloppy soup of words. 

Unrealistic Soft Cap

For a project looking to produce at least six distinct, and highly complex parts of its ecosystem, HumanX has a suspiciously small soft cap. While many projects look to raise in the range of $500,000+, HumanX has its soft cap set at just 300 ETH, currently amounting to just $35,000. As of yet, it appears the project has only managed to scam just over 5 ETH, or somewhere around $580. As is common with these types of scams, it appears that the orchestrators put just enough effort into appearing passable, which in turn has manifested with them raising a relatively paltry amount.

About Scam ICOs

Unfortunately, as new technologies and funding methods develop and become widespread, it doesn’t take long for criminals to begin wisening up to new opportunities to make easy money. In terms of success, scam projects like HumanX can be considered among the least successful types of ICO scams, and generally, do not manage to get away with significant sums of money. Other, more complex scams often go to extraordinary lengths to generate large amounts of investments, including generating a detailed and original whitepaper, extensive marketing, and often even producing a minimum viable product (MVP) in some cases. Luckily, few criminals possess the coordination, connections, and marketing capacity required to pull off a genuinely significant scam, with the vast majority of scam projects instead opting for somewhat of a “lazy scam,” doing the bare minimum required to seem like a worthwhile investment. HumanX, for example, can be considered the prototype of a lazy scam, using generic ICO templates for the website, plagiarizing the content and ideas of other proven successful projects, and doing the bare minimum in terms of advertising.

How to Protect Yourself

In today’s market, vigilance is essential as the number of unscrupulous projects looking to separate you from your hard earned money grows. Despite the worrying trend of recent scam ICOs, many scams can be easily avoidable if a bit of due diligence is performed, since the vast majority of scams feature one or more relatively obvious clues that something is not right. Remember, the majority of ICOs, including those that will inevitably scam may seem viable at first glance — be careful not to confuse viability and legitimacy, and vice-versa. In addition, complexity is not always a sign of security, as some, particularly daring scams have even managed to fake that. In general, we recommend only investing in projects with fully public teams as accountability is one of the surest defenses against fraud. Many projects, particularly those looking to scam will omit or delay the release of team details to ensure their theft does not come back to haunt them. For an in-depth look at the best investment practices and ICO due diligence, we recommend reading our helpful guide: How to Perform Due Diligence When Investing in Crypto ICOs. What do you think is the best defense against scam ICOs? Are there any tricks for identifying likely scam projects? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!