Crypto presales and ICOs: how to vet a new coin before you buy

Every bull run brings a wave of "new coins" pitched as the next bitcoin. In Mexico they show up as Instagram ads, TikTok clips and Telegram groups where everyone seems to be winning, often in Spanish and English at once, aimed at locals and foreigners alike. The pitch never changes: buy now, in the presale, before the price jumps on the exchanges.

This guide won't tell you which presale to buy. It gives you the tools to judge one yourself: how token sales work, which tokenomics numbers matter (tokenomics means the token's economic rules: how many exist, who holds them, when they unlock), how to sanity-check a contract without being a developer, and what Mexican law says. Named scams such as fake advisers and cloned exchanges are covered in our crypto scams guide.

Presale, ICO, IDO: what the labels mean

A new tokenA digital unit created on an existing blockchain such as Ethereum, BNB Chain or Solana. It can represent a currency, a usage right or a vote. needs two things to exist in the market: buyers and a place to trade. Early sales solve both. The project sells part of the supply at a fixed price, takes USDT, ETH or BNB, and promises to deliver the tokens on a date called the TGEToken Generation Event: when the token is created or released to buyers and can start trading.. Weeks or months can pass between paying and receiving.

The difference that matters most isn't the label, it's who holds your money while you wait. On an exchange launchpad, funds and tokens never leave your account. On a self-hosted presale you send funds to a contract or an address and trust someone to deliver.

Binance and Bybit launch programs today

When people search "new coins on Binance" they usually mean its launch programs. Names and rules change often, so check the app before moving funds. When we reviewed this guide, these were live:

Binance Launchpool. You lock BNB or certain stablecoins for a few days and "farm" the new token in proportion to what you locked. You don't buy anything and your balance comes back in full. Launchpool's 72nd project, Opinion (OPN), was distributed in March 2026 to people locking BNB, USDC and other stablecoins, and it started trading with a Seed Tag, Binance's label for new, highly volatile assets.

HODLer Airdrops. Binance takes a retroactive snapshot of who held BNB in its yield products and sends them the new token before listing. No extra payment.

Megadrop and Binance Alpha. Megadrop combines locking BNB with quests in the Binance wallet. Alpha is a showcase of early-stage tokens inside the wallet, with a points system that gates some launches. These tokens aren't on the main exchange yet, which is exactly why they're riskier.

Binance Launchpad. The classic token sale, where you commit BNB to buy at a fixed price. It has seen far less activity than Launchpool and airdrops in recent years; we couldn't confirm when its latest sale took place.

Bybit runs a similar set: Launchpad for token sales (verified account required), Launchpool for locking coins to earn the new token, and Token Splash, which hands out rewards in a newly listed token to people who deposit or trade it. We compare both exchanges in our Binance review and Bybit review.

Tokenomics: the numbers worth reading

The price per token almost never tells you anything. Find the project's tokenomics page and ask a few concrete questions.

How many tokens exist and how many circulate? Total supply is the maximum there will ever be; circulating supply is what can already be traded. A token at USD 0.01 isn't "cheap" if a hundred billion exist.

Who holds the rest? Look at the split between team, private investors, treasury, community and public sale. If the team and funds hold more than half, the risk of heavy selling is high.

When does it unlock? Team and investor tokens usually have vestingA gradual release schedule: locked tokens are paid out in portions over months or years., often with a 6- or 12-month cliffAn initial period when nothing unlocks. When it ends, a large block is usually released at once.. Every unlock date is a day when a lot of people can sell. Some sites publish unlock calendars for large tokens; for a small one, the schedule should be in its docs and in the contract.

FDV versus market cap

Market cap is price times circulating tokens. FDVFully diluted valuation: token price multiplied by the entire supply, including what is still locked. is price times every token that will ever exist. The gap tells you how much new supply is on the way.

A real case shows it. The TRUMP token launched in January 2025 and peaked at USD 73.43 on 19 January that year. According to CoinGecko, when we reviewed this guide in October 2026 it traded around USD 1.66, roughly 97.7% below that high. Only about 28% of its supply was circulating: market cap was about USD 469 million while FDV was above USD 1.6 billion. More than two-thirds of the tokens had yet to reach the market.

These thresholds are our editorial rules of thumb, not official standards. They tell you where to dig harder.

Memecoins: volatility with nothing to slow it down

Memecoins sit at the other extreme. PEPE had no presale and no lockups: its whole supply, about 420.69 trillion tokens, circulates, so market cap and FDV are the same. That didn't make it stable. Per CoinGecko, PEPE hit its low in April 2023 and its high in December 2024, about 500 times higher; by October 2026 it sat roughly 84% below that peak. USD 100 bought at the top was worth about USD 16.

That's not a recommendation either way. It's simply the normal size of moves in this kind of asset. If you're curious about memecoins with a longer track record, our Dogecoin and Shiba Inu pages explain how to buy them in Mexico and what can go wrong.

Red flags in a presale

None of these proves fraud on its own, but each one raises the bar. A few together are reason enough to walk away.

Paid influencers. Plenty of videos that "discover" a presale are ads. If the creator doesn't disclose payment, that's already a bad start. Mexico's consumer-finance watchdog, CONDUSEF, has warned about schemes spread by people posing as influencers and promising monthly returns of up to 30%.

Guaranteed returns or listing prices. "It will list at 10x the presale price" is a promise nobody can keep. The market sets the listing price.

Ads with politicians and celebrities. AI-generated videos of President Claudia Sheinbaum "inviting" people to invest have circulated in Mexico, and she has publicly said they're fake. In Argentina, the $LIBRA token promoted by President Javier Milei collapsed within hours and left 86% of buyers with losses, according to a Nansen analysis cited by the press. A token with a politician's face on it has no government backing.

Sites that ask you to sign permissions. Many fake presales are wallet drainersSites that, once you connect your wallet, ask you to sign a permission letting a contract move your tokens. After you sign, they empty the wallet.: they copy a real project's design, ask you to "connect wallet" and then sign an approval. Sign it and they can move your funds without asking again.

Manufactured urgency. Countdown timers, "final round", referral bonuses. All built to make you buy before you research.

An anonymous team with no track record. Anonymity isn't a crime in crypto, but if nobody answers for the project and the money goes to a wallet with no controls, there's no one to hold to account.

How to check a token contract without coding

Nearly every new token lives in a public smart contractA program running on the blockchain that sets the token's rules: who can mint more, charge fees or freeze transfers.. You don't need to read code to run a basic check.

1. Get the contract address from the official site and match it against the one in the project's verified social accounts. If they don't publish it, that's a warning.
2. Paste it into the right block explorer: Etherscan for Ethereum, BscScan for BNB Chain, Solscan for Solana. Check that the source code is verified (usually a check mark next to "Contract") and when it was created.
3. Look at the holders. If a handful of wallets that aren't exchanges or vesting contracts hold most of the supply, they can crash the price whenever they like.
4. Review the owner's powers. Functions to mint new tokens, pause transfers, blacklist addresses or change the sell fee give the team full control. Ideally those powers don't exist, are capped, or need several signatures.
5. Run the address through a token scanner. Free tools flag whether a token is a honeypotA token you can buy but not sell, because the contract blocks or taxes sales at close to 100%., whether liquidity is locked and whether risky functions exist. Treat them as a first filter: a clean result guarantees nothing.

If you've connected your wallet to a site and have second thoughts, there are tools that list the approvals you've signed and let you revoke them. Do it right away. For anything meaningful, keep a separate "burner" wallet just for experiments; our crypto wallets guide shows how.

What Mexican law says about ICOs

Mexico has no dedicated law for token presales, but that doesn't mean anything goes.

The authorities' warning. In December 2017, the Finance Ministry (SHCP), Banco de México and the banking and securities regulator (CNBV) said publicly that ICOs are not legal tender and have no backing in Mexico. They had no record of any ICO issued in the country, only sales of foreign ones, and warned that some issued in Mexico could breach the Securities Market Law and amount to a financial crime.

The Securities Market Law. Article 7 says securities offered to the public in Mexico must be registered with the registry kept by the CNBV. The law defines a public offer as one made through mass media to an indeterminate audience. If a token works like an investment, promising gains from a team's efforts, and is advertised to anyone in Mexico, the seller may be making an unauthorized public offer. The liability sits with the issuer, but as a buyer you're left with no protection at all.

Banks and fintechs are out. Banxico's Circular 4/2019 bars banks and licensed fintech institutions from offering virtual assets to clients. No presale can honestly claim to be "CNBV authorized" or "backed by Banxico". If it does, it's lying. Our guide to whether crypto is legal in Mexico covers the framework in depth.

Taxes on both sides of the border. If you're a Mexican tax resident, selling a presale or airdropped token at a gain can trigger income tax as a disposal. If you're a US citizen living in Mexico, the IRS still taxes you on worldwide income, so the same sale may matter in both countries. Keep the date and cost of every purchase and the value of tokens when you received them. Details in our Mexico crypto tax guide.

Due-diligence checklist

Go through this calmly, ideally a day before you decide. If you can't answer a question, you have your answer.

If you decide to take part

If you still want in, set rules. Use a fresh wallet, separate from your savings, and fund it only with what you'll use. Buy through the official platform, never through an "adviser" who asks you to send money to them. If the sale runs on BNB Chain or Tron, check in our USDT networks guide that you're sending on the right network. Write down what you paid and decide in advance when you'll sell, so you're not improvising on listing day.

Fees count too. Between buying stablecoins, withdrawing to your wallet and network gas, a USD 25 ticket can lose a noticeable slice before it starts. Compare costs in our crypto fees guide.

If you're still finding your feet, the beginner's guide walks you through it step by step, with no hype and no promises.