Nearly Half of 2017's Cryptocurrencies Have Already Failed (engadget.com)

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.

Comments

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.

Re:Is it really that surprising?

[jeremyp]

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

Re: Is it really that surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, that's a good rate of survival.
9 out of 10 new businesses fail the first year.
How did crypto get so robust?

Re: Is it really that surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an awesome rate of survival.

Re:Is it really that surprising?

[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.

Re: Is it really that surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

9 out of 10 new businesses fail the first year.

False. As you provided no source, neither will I. It's not that hard to google.

How did crypto get so robust?

Nearly half of these long-term projects failed in the first year. That is not particularly robust. You must be using some definition of "robust" that I am not familiar with.

Re:Is it really that surprising?

[fedos]

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

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.

Re:Bitcoin.com SCAM

[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 :)

Re:Log in problems

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we just know a scam when we see one. Only a very few early adopters got the lucrative two and three digits SlashID's. The rest of us are offered worthless six and even seven digit SlashID's. We AC's saw this coming and decided the only winning move was not to play.

Checkmate, login owners.

Re:Log in problems

[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.

Re:Log in problems

[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.)

Finally, an unbiased survey

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks bitcoin.com, we know we can trust you. Keep up the good work!

Re:Cup half empty

[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.

slashdot.fud

[weedjams]

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

Re:Cup half empty

[Anonymous Coward]

You want a good example of WEAK personal psychology ? Believing a known con-man when he promises you that he will build a wall a make Mexico pay for it, or that a man that has spent his entire carreer screewing over little people like you will actually fight for people like you.

God I wish you're a troll, a troll with a lot of time to waste. Because if you're not a troll, if you're for real, then you're not only a perfect example of what's wrong with America, you're a perfect example of what's wrong with humanity.

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 (regular currency) but which we interpret as being valuable is just an exercise in meta-thinking and hurting brains. Cryptocurrency is valuable because it can trade for currency which is valuable because we can trade it for something real. When you actually put it to words it sounds pretty dumb.

Let them fail. Take their bits and slow roast them over a spit so no other bits will get it in their heads that they want to be part of cryptocurrencies too. Then let's all enjoy five years of not having to worry about growing the world's electrical grid because of all the lovely extra headroom in capacity that we suddenly have.

Re: Cup half empty

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing wrong with the world, you're just new to it, young soul. Us, older beings, know what makes it tick and let me tell you, it is doing fine and nothing has changed in many thousands of years. Ah, I miss the plains of Uruk, how we frollicked in the soothing sun protected by the motherland. You kids know nothing.

Re: Cup half empty

[Anonymous Coward]

god damn you are a fucking retard

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.

Re:No shit.

[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.

Re:Wrong title

[Anonymous Coward]

A distinction without a difference, I would say. What good is a cryptocurrency that fails it's Initial Coin Offering? And yeah, there could be secondary offering rounds, but without a different value proposition from the ICO, that seems pointless.

"The beatings of all you idiots will continue until you understand the munificent nature of DirtCoin! Also, we have no money to finance either sticks or enforcers because our ICO failed. Therefore we ask that you cooperate by beating yourself until DirtCoin has a sound financial basis."

Money that cannot raise money is pretty much the definition of a failure.

Re:Wrong title

[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", which is just an exercise of fake news.

Re:Cup half empty

[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.