The struggles of BTC coin have been plain for all to see over the last few months, after shedding as much as 70% off the record highs set in late 2017. And now, according to reports emerging from CNBC, more than 800 different cryptocurrencies have already met their end.
The term “dead coins” refers to tokens that have been abandoned—no nodes, no social updates, dead website, have low volumes, or have seen its developers walked away from the project. On its website, Dead Coins listed over 800 crypto tokens that were either extinct or now worth less than a cent, which, when combined with the failures of BTC, painted a bleak picture for initial coin offerings (ICOs).
Much of the growth in the crypto space in 2017 came from ICOs, where companies would issue tokens to investors, in some cases as a proxy for equity. In return, investors could use the coins within the issuing company’s platform, or sell their investment for a profit once demand for the tokens increased.
However, majority of these projects now languishing as effectively worthless, often because the product failed or the platform was always intended as a scam.
While an unsurprising development to many in the Bitcoin BCH community, which had long forecast the difficulties with token crowdsales, the apparent failure of so many ICOs coincided with poor trading results for BTC. At the time of writing, BTC was sitting at just $6,600.
Scams and frauds in the ICO space have attracted the attention of regulators, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange amongst the most proactive in claiming its regulatory ground. However, this could result in further investigations into existing and future ICOs, and it’s far from certain that these projects would be considered an asset other than securities.
This definition matters, because securities are regulated, meaning any company promoting an ICO deemed a security is potentially open to prosecution.
While the story paints a less optimistic picture of ICOs and BTC, there are still some with a more optimistic outlook. While it looks like the writing is on the wall for ICOs, it remains to be seen whether BTC can ever overcome its technical hurdles to become relevant again.
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