7 ms·

Crypto Coin Graveyard Fills Up Fast as ICOs Meet Their Demise

130 points by elsewhen 8y ago

newtothisstuff 8y ago
There is too many shitcoins. Which means too much speculation. One day it will all hit a brick wall. coingecko.com has a good list with a little amount of shitcoins. But when the shit storm starts and people move their money to cryptocurrencies they will probably go to VDA which I'm guessing institutional investors use which is on cryptonaire.com When it happens, it will be good and bad for the market. Real value in good places but a bad time in history. Due diligence everyone, due diligence.
empath75 8y ago
This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone since most of them were pump and dump schemes or Ponzi schemes.
- Drdrdrq 8y ago
  True. And the others mostly couldn't deliver. Also not surprising is that one of the few news on HN about ICOs compares them disfavorably to VC founding. A bit predictable, that's all.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
deltateam 8y ago
This article is a PR piece about an activist investment firm that buys up and revives dead coins with a new dev team and rebranding. It is masquarading as the "I told you so" article that you already wanted to read. But thats not what it is at all As someone that has led zombie coin revivals multiple times over the last several years (after spending months buying up a coin from bagholders), hit me up just respond to this message and put your email in your hackernews profile This new firm has got one thing right: Bull market or bear market it doesn't matter, you can get hockey stick growth.
- deft 8y ago
  Could you bring back flurbo? http://flurbo.cc http://flurbo.cc
  - sosuke 8y ago
    If this project is accepted can I be on the mailing list as well?
  - Zpalmtree 8y ago
    Hindu translation reserved
- devereaux 8y ago
  That seems like an interesting thing to you! A bit like a modern corporate raider, except you are doing the opposite- reviving dead things! Can you tell us more? Give some old examples of what you did?
  - rspeer 8y ago
    It sounds to me like this poster is straightforwardly asking for coins that can be pumped and dumped one last time.
    - devereaux 8y ago
      not sure about that. the profit incentives are not aligned with a simple "pump and dump" If a listed coin is revived, it should only take some minimal infrastructure spending to keep it alive. Doing a simple pump and dump would be a waste.
      - rspeer 8y ago
        To keep it alive and do what with it?
- coinpro 8y ago
  thanks!
chrisco255 8y ago
This is disappointing level of journalism by Bloomberg. When did it become journalistic "research" to just quote a bunch of Medium blog posts on the web? For one, the "research" quoted by this article is conflating market cap with actual realized losses. A coin's market cap tells you absolutely nothing about how much was actually raised in an ICO. If I issue 1 trillion tokens and sell one for $1, all of a sudden I'm a $1 trillion market cap. Article's primary source found here: https://medium.com/satis-group/ico-quality-development-trading-e4fef28df04f https://medium.com/satis-group/ico-quality-development-tradi... It claims 81% of coins with $50M+ market cap were scams...but the only data it shows is a bar chart, with no links to actual data tables driving the chart.
- olivermarks 8y ago
  I agree. I think it's the end of the beginning and putting aside all the scammy hype stuff Bloomberg and others have been happy to promote, we are now entering a period where credible crypto business logic will start having an impact in mainstream financial markets, exchanges and MTF's as the space matures...
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    > where credible crypto business logic will start having an impact in mainstream financial markets, exchanges and MTF's as the space matures Yeah, the only missing part is the "credible crypto business logic". Everyone is waiting for it...
    - tardo99 8y ago
      Agreed. Can grandparent give a couple examples?
brighton36 8y ago
A token is a receipt for your donation. :)
- arkis22 8y ago
  Ahem, it's a decentralized donation.
  - tonysdg 8y ago
    Ahem I believe you mean to say that it's a decentralized donation that uses cutting-edge, game-changing BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGIES that will REVOLUTIONIZE the world as we know it. /s
    - vignesh_m 8y ago
      Using blazing fast JavaScript deep learning techniques of course.
- Kinnard 8y ago
  Which a lot of donors are actually completely ok with. The insistance on seeing this new technology and the opportunities it offers through the lens of traditional equity/securities is strange.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Because that's what most of these offerings are offered in terms of?
  - pembrook 8y ago
    It's not strange at all, since unfortunately the average person who bought into these ICO's thought they were similar to IPOs (and that was the dubious intention behind calling them "ICO's"). You can look through thousands of reddit posts of people thinking they were "getting in early" on some hot new tech company. You're living in a fantasy world if you think even a sizable minority gave money to ICOs knowing it was basically a donation.
Animats 8y ago
From the article: Crypto coins with market cap > $50M - Scams: 81% - Failed: 6% - Gone dead: 5% - Dwindling: 2.8% - Promising: 1.8% - Successful: 3.8% There's a tracking site for dead coins: https://deadcoins.com https://deadcoins.com
- sharkmerry 8y ago
  whats the rate of failing for startups with >$50m valuation? Is there a tracker for that as well?
  - Animats 8y ago
    Yes. About 75% of venture-backed companies fail to return cash to investors.[1] Many of those failures are zombies - the company continues to operate, can cover its running expenses, but can't pay back its startup costs. In the ICO world, that would be considered a success. [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3003827/why-most-venture-backed-companies-fail https://www.fastcompany.com/3003827/why-most-venture-backed-...
    - seattle_spring 8y ago
      So many of them are paying people living wages, or at least had been during their lifetime. Compare that to failed or scam ICOs, which do literally 0 people any good except maybe the "founder."
      - munk-a 8y ago
        Well let's not forget about all the productive hosting business this is drumming up, some poor megacorporation is barely holding on by offering their cloud hosting services to all these ICOs. (there isn't a window fallacy we can't broken here :D)
  - cremp 8y ago
    Valuation is different than market cap. As stated in another comment, a coin only needs to sell one unit, and because of the supply; they have a large market cap.
arisAlexis 8y ago
not much different than SV startups with 90% fail rates
- seattle_spring 8y ago
  Oh, do ICOs give people jobs and living wages? I'm sure you're going to come up with some esoteric edgecase, but no: it's not comparable.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    I mean, they put people to work. Considering many startups, "living wages" can be quite a stretch.
    - seattle_spring 8y ago
      Poor startup employees making $150k+, they can barely afford to eat at Marlowe 3 times a week and take 3 Napa vacations a year :*(
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
        Early startups aren't paying that well, and they're usually in very high cost of living areas.
  - arisAlexis 8y ago
    jobs and living wages? yes they are normal startup projects with funding. do you think they just drink beers on a beach? that's what the media wants you to see. have some critical thinking.
coinpro 8y ago
f
RenderToCeaser 8y ago
A quick alternate analysis of ICO liveness is found by simply checking the number of tokens currently being traded with volume on idex.market: total of 291 as of todays figures, with 195 over 1 Ether/day, 80 over 10 Ether/day and 22 over 100 Ether/day. This amounts to 35%, 23%, 9.75% and 2.6% rexpectively of the 821 reported by deadcoins.com. Further to this deadcoins.com only labels 121 of these as scam coins with the majority (633) being labelled deceased. Also, a large number of the listed coins have no references to back up the given assessment. Seems Bloomberg's reporter neglected solid research in her haste to play the funeral drum.

130 points by elsewhen 8y ago

There is too many shitcoins. Which means too much speculation. One day it will all hit a brick wall. coingecko.com has a good list with a little amount of shitcoins. But when the shit storm starts and people move their money to cryptocurrencies they will probably go to VDA which I'm guessing institutional investors use which is on cryptonaire.com When it happens, it will be good and bad for the market. Real value in good places but a bad time in history. Due diligence everyone, due diligence.

empath75 8y ago

This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone since most of them were pump and dump schemes or Ponzi schemes.

Drdrdrq 8y ago
True. And the others mostly couldn't deliver. Also not surprising is that one of the few news on HN about ICOs compares them disfavorably to VC founding. A bit predictable, that's all.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

deltateam 8y ago

This article is a PR piece about an activist investment firm that buys up and revives dead coins with a new dev team and rebranding. It is masquarading as the "I told you so" article that you already wanted to read. But thats not what it is at all As someone that has led zombie coin revivals multiple times over the last several years (after spending months buying up a coin from bagholders), hit me up just respond to this message and put your email in your hackernews profile This new firm has got one thing right: Bull market or bear market it doesn't matter, you can get hockey stick growth.

deft 8y ago
Could you bring back flurbo? http://flurbo.cc http://flurbo.cc
- sosuke 8y ago
  If this project is accepted can I be on the mailing list as well?
- Zpalmtree 8y ago
  Hindu translation reserved
devereaux 8y ago
That seems like an interesting thing to you! A bit like a modern corporate raider, except you are doing the opposite- reviving dead things! Can you tell us more? Give some old examples of what you did?
- rspeer 8y ago
  It sounds to me like this poster is straightforwardly asking for coins that can be pumped and dumped one last time.
  - devereaux 8y ago
    not sure about that. the profit incentives are not aligned with a simple "pump and dump" If a listed coin is revived, it should only take some minimal infrastructure spending to keep it alive. Doing a simple pump and dump would be a waste.
    - rspeer 8y ago
      To keep it alive and do what with it?
coinpro 8y ago
thanks!

chrisco255 8y ago

This is disappointing level of journalism by Bloomberg. When did it become journalistic "research" to just quote a bunch of Medium blog posts on the web? For one, the "research" quoted by this article is conflating market cap with actual realized losses. A coin's market cap tells you absolutely nothing about how much was actually raised in an ICO. If I issue 1 trillion tokens and sell one for $1, all of a sudden I'm a $1 trillion market cap. Article's primary source found here: https://medium.com/satis-group/ico-quality-development-trading-e4fef28df04f https://medium.com/satis-group/ico-quality-development-tradi... It claims 81% of coins with $50M+ market cap were scams...but the only data it shows is a bar chart, with no links to actual data tables driving the chart.

olivermarks 8y ago
I agree. I think it's the end of the beginning and putting aside all the scammy hype stuff Bloomberg and others have been happy to promote, we are now entering a period where credible crypto business logic will start having an impact in mainstream financial markets, exchanges and MTF's as the space matures...
- ucaetano 8y ago
  > where credible crypto business logic will start having an impact in mainstream financial markets, exchanges and MTF's as the space matures Yeah, the only missing part is the "credible crypto business logic". Everyone is waiting for it...
  - tardo99 8y ago
    Agreed. Can grandparent give a couple examples?

brighton36 8y ago

A token is a receipt for your donation. :)

arkis22 8y ago
Ahem, it's a decentralized donation.
- tonysdg 8y ago
  Ahem I believe you mean to say that it's a decentralized donation that uses cutting-edge, game-changing BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGIES that will REVOLUTIONIZE the world as we know it. /s
  - vignesh_m 8y ago
    Using blazing fast JavaScript deep learning techniques of course.
Kinnard 8y ago
Which a lot of donors are actually completely ok with. The insistance on seeing this new technology and the opportunities it offers through the lens of traditional equity/securities is strange.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Because that's what most of these offerings are offered in terms of?
- pembrook 8y ago
  It's not strange at all, since unfortunately the average person who bought into these ICO's thought they were similar to IPOs (and that was the dubious intention behind calling them "ICO's"). You can look through thousands of reddit posts of people thinking they were "getting in early" on some hot new tech company. You're living in a fantasy world if you think even a sizable minority gave money to ICOs knowing it was basically a donation.

Animats 8y ago

From the article: Crypto coins with market cap > $50M - Scams: 81% - Failed: 6% - Gone dead: 5% - Dwindling: 2.8% - Promising: 1.8% - Successful: 3.8% There's a tracking site for dead coins: https://deadcoins.com https://deadcoins.com

sharkmerry 8y ago
whats the rate of failing for startups with >$50m valuation? Is there a tracker for that as well?
- Animats 8y ago
  Yes. About 75% of venture-backed companies fail to return cash to investors.[1] Many of those failures are zombies - the company continues to operate, can cover its running expenses, but can't pay back its startup costs. In the ICO world, that would be considered a success. [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3003827/why-most-venture-backed-companies-fail https://www.fastcompany.com/3003827/why-most-venture-backed-...
  - seattle_spring 8y ago
    So many of them are paying people living wages, or at least had been during their lifetime. Compare that to failed or scam ICOs, which do literally 0 people any good except maybe the "founder."
    - munk-a 8y ago
      Well let's not forget about all the productive hosting business this is drumming up, some poor megacorporation is barely holding on by offering their cloud hosting services to all these ICOs. (there isn't a window fallacy we can't broken here :D)
- cremp 8y ago
  Valuation is different than market cap. As stated in another comment, a coin only needs to sell one unit, and because of the supply; they have a large market cap.

arisAlexis 8y ago

not much different than SV startups with 90% fail rates

seattle_spring 8y ago
Oh, do ICOs give people jobs and living wages? I'm sure you're going to come up with some esoteric edgecase, but no: it's not comparable.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  I mean, they put people to work. Considering many startups, "living wages" can be quite a stretch.
  - seattle_spring 8y ago
    Poor startup employees making $150k+, they can barely afford to eat at Marlowe 3 times a week and take 3 Napa vacations a year :*(
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      Early startups aren't paying that well, and they're usually in very high cost of living areas.
- arisAlexis 8y ago
  jobs and living wages? yes they are normal startup projects with funding. do you think they just drink beers on a beach? that's what the media wants you to see. have some critical thinking.

coinpro 8y ago

RenderToCeaser 8y ago

A quick alternate analysis of ICO liveness is found by simply checking the number of tokens currently being traded with volume on idex.market: total of 291 as of todays figures, with 195 over 1 Ether/day, 80 over 10 Ether/day and 22 over 100 Ether/day. This amounts to 35%, 23%, 9.75% and 2.6% rexpectively of the 821 reported by deadcoins.com. Further to this deadcoins.com only labels 121 of these as scam coins with the majority (633) being labelled deceased. Also, a large number of the listed coins have no references to back up the given assessment. Seems Bloomberg's reporter neglected solid research in her haste to play the funeral drum.