Numerous cryptocurrency projects have emerged over the past 18 months, but more than 800 of them are now dead, drawing comparisons between the current digital coin market and the 2000 dot-com bubble.
New digital tokens are created through an initial coin offering (ICO), through which a startup can issue a new coin that investors buy. The investor does not receive a stake in the company, but can use these tokens to purchase the company's products. Coins sold at the ICO stage are cheap and can bring big profits in the future. However, the project may also turn out to be unreal, and then the investor loses everything. For example, earlier this year CNBC reported on a case of an ICO scam called Giza. A fake startup stole $2 million from investors. Although investing in ICOs is very risky, some still see ICOs as an alternative to initial public offerings and venture capital funding.
ICOs have revolutionized the market this year, raising $11.98 billion in funds, compared to just $3.8 billion raised last year. However, hundreds of these projects either turned out to be fake or represented a product that was never launched. The Dead Coins website lists all types of coins that fall under these categories. It currently lists 800 types of worthless digital tokens that trade at one cent.
Bitcoin, the coin with the largest market capitalization, has also had a rough year. Bitcoin's price has fallen about 70 percent from its record high of $20,000 reached last year, according to CoinDesk. The significant fall in the price of bitcoin has been compared to the sharp decline on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2000, and the failure of many types of cryptocurrencies has been compared to the companies that failed during the dot-com boom.
Some of the recent bearish sentiment has emerged after two South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges were hacked, which negatively affects the industry as a whole, but the hope is that regulators will become more favorable to cryptocurrencies and then market sentiment will change for the better. Arthur Hayes, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, for example, believes that Bitcoin could rise to $50,000 by the end of this year.
According to cnbc.com
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