Nearly Half of 2017's Cryptocurrencies Have Already Failed

An anonymous reader shares an Engadget report: The surging price of bitcoin (among others) in 2017 led more than a few companies to hop on the cryptocurrency bandwagon with hopes of striking it rich almost overnight. Many of their initial coin offerings seemed dodgy from the outset... and it turns out they were. Bitcoin.com has conducted a study of ICOs tracked by Tokendata, and a whopping 46 percent of the 902 crowdsale-based virtual currencies have already failed. Of these, 142 never got enough funding; another 276 have either slowly faded away or were out scams.

Is it really that surprising?

[alvinrod]

Is it really that surprising to see these kind of results? You have something that has both seen incredible growth in terms of raw percentage increases and is ill-understood at best by most people. This makes it an incredibly good target for Ponzi schemes and other common financial scams because people see the big returns and get greedy and have no idea if they're being fed a line of complete bullshit when it comes to the technology itself.

Even my father has heard about crytocurrencies and has asked me questions about them and he's generally not interested in technology in the slightest. I'm reminded of the old quote about someone realizing they needed to get out of the market when their shoeshiner was giving out stock tips.

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[jeremyp]

It's surprising to me. I would have expected nearly all of them to fail pretty much straight away.

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[mentil]

Indeed. There are only enough novel cryptocoin features that come out each year to prop up a few new ones. Expect more forks (a la Bitcoin Cash) of various cryptocoins with increasingly dubious 'improvements' to come.

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[fedos]

Yep. Just because the Bitcoin ponzi scheme has successfully scammed so many people doesn't mean that everyone will be repilicate that success.

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[BadTuna]

Enlighten the world with links to substantiate these 'governmental forces' . Other wise your vitriol is a combination of the sky is falling and the earth is flat.

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[jd]

The OP has yet to figure out how news aggregators and op-eds work. I doubt they've discovered anything as high tech as "flat" or "the sky". Based on the complete absence of spelling and reality, it was probably written by one of Trump's friends.

Should be cup is mostly empty...

[Excelcia]

Nearly all of the other half of 2017's cryptocurrencies should fail.

The currency cryptocopia needs draining. They are almost universally used primarily for investment rather than actual trading. That makes them worthless. Something that is inherently valueless (like bits in a virtual wallet) is only valuable insomuch as it is agreed upon that it can represent actual value. Saying a cryptocurrency is valuable because it means something according to this other thing that is also inherently valueless (regu

Bitcoin.com SCAM

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh this coming from the mouth of bitcoin.com who itself runs the Bitcoin Cash scam coin?

They couldn't come up with a good name for their forked coin so just stole the Bitcoin name to confuse newbies.

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[obmisnif]

Indeed, this is a FUD article to promote his own scammed coin........ Roger Ver CEO Bitcoin.com Do a simple search through Reddit and se how well respected this guy is....not at all

Log in problems

[Teun]

/. is possibly paying their IT in a failed cryptocurrency?
I mean, authentication problems are giving the AC's free reign :)

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[jd]

How much would my UID sell for?

(Ok, ok, given that I absolutely infuriate the bigots, about $2.50. As in, that's what I'd have to pay them.)

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[jd]

The ACs have always had free reign. Sometimes that's good, such as the one time they nearly caused an all-out religious civil war in the States. Most of the time, they're batshit crazy nutters who got thrown off Murdoch's writing team for lack of believability.

slashdot.fud

[weedjams]

could you switch over to slashdot.fomo mode for a few months, please?

Half Have Failed

[mentil]

And the other half WILL fail.
Thanks, I'll be here all week.

No shit.

[Qbertino]

Creating a cryptocoin is just about as easy as creating a website or something. Big deal. Expecting your particular bitcoin ripp to take off would be silly either way.

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[jd]

Creating one that's secure is the hard part. Creating one that has secure exchanges is even harder. Creating one that actually works AND anyone wants is impossible, as most investors are there solely to defraud.

Wrong title

[OneSizeFitsNoone]

It's not 46% of the cryptocurrencies that failed, it's the 46% of ICOs, ie the funding to launch new cryptocurrencies, that failed.

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[OneSizeFitsNoone]

A cryptocoin is an instrument for a transfer of propriety, of a good. Those that are there already survived the fall in their trading value that begun in late December. That means they do have a value that goes beyond the obviously present speculation. The fact that 46% of ICO failed just means that there are more than enough cryptocoins already available (well over a thousand), and that there is little room for more. That's a very different thing from stating that "almost half of cryptocurrencies failed",