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

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the closer-look dept.

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.

28 comments

  1. Is it really that surprising? by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Is it really that surprising? by jeremyp · · Score: 1

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

      --
      All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
    2. Re: Is it really that surprising? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

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

    3. Re: Is it really that surprising? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's an awesome rate of survival.

    4. Re:Is it really that surprising? by mentil · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    5. Re: Is it really that surprising? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

    6. Re:Is it really that surprising? by fedos · · Score: 1

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

  2. Cup half empty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Slashdot's FAKE NEWS propaganda method as always. The only remarkable thing with these new crypto-currencies is the number of them that did NOT fail immediately. In other words, the only sane way to examine the issue is "cup half full".

    To make it easier for you dribblers who think outlets like Slashdot ar honest. Imagine a cheat goes to a casino. Uses his system at roulette. Only gets the exact fall of the ball 50% of the time. And Slashdot writes an article calling him a "failure" cos 50% of the time his 'guess' is wrong.

    Fake news outlets like Slashdot use standard psy-op methods on carefully written headlines, knowing you Clinton-voting dribblers, fooled by the mainstream media backing Clinton at the election 100%, read into headlines ideas your WEAK personal psychology makes you want to believe in the first place.

    You want to believe crypto-currencies are "failing" so you grasp at any straw, and the master manipulators know this.

    Logically, the fail rate of out-of-nowhere new crypto-currencies should be 100%. But the very opposite is true- and any new launch that is even half way competent currently succeeds,and worse the new currency enters lockstep with the value of Bitcoin, going up and down in perfect sync.

    Bitcoin is NOT a 'bubble' (mathematically it is the very opposite). But the explosion of 'new' cryptocurrencies IS a bubble- as so many in the field warn. Sometime soon the phoney wannabees will all collapse- but the collapse of the "never should have suceeded in the first place" coin cons will have only a temp effect on the value of the proper crypto-currencies- tho the usual suspects will cry the the sky is falling for the first few months.

    If you knew the governmental forces behind the main crypto-currencies, your concern would switch from their viability to the future such currencies threaten to bring to Mankind.

    1. Re:Cup half empty by BadTuna · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      Your sig here!
    2. Re:Cup half empty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

    3. Re: Cup half empty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

    4. Re: Cup half empty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      god damn you are a fucking retard

    5. Re:Cup half empty by jd · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  3. Bitcoin.com SCAM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:Bitcoin.com SCAM by obmisnif · · Score: 1

      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

  4. Log in problems by Teun · · Score: 2

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

    --
    "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
    1. Re:Log in problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

    2. Re:Log in problems by jd · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    3. Re:Log in problems by jd · · Score: 1

      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.)

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  5. Finally, an unbiased survey by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

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

  6. slashdot.fud by weedjams · · Score: 1

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

  7. Should be cup is mostly empty... by Excelcia · · Score: 1

    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.

  8. Half Have Failed by mentil · · Score: 1

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

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  9. No shit. by Qbertino · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
    1. Re:No shit. by jd · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  10. Wrong title by OneSizeFitsNoone · · Score: 1

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

    1. Re:Wrong title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

    2. Re:Wrong title by OneSizeFitsNoone · · Score: 1

      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.