Bitcoin Forum

The founder of the second most popular cryptocurrency in the world has always been skeptical about initial coin offerings, or when companies issue digital tokens to attract investment. Those digital tokens’ price is based only on the desire of people to have them, Mr. Buterin noted on the ETHWaterloo hackathon, dedicated, as one can guess from the title, to the structure of Ethereum.

As Vitalik Buterin believes, 90% of current ICO projects, even based on trusted ERC20 standard and even those listed on Coinmarketcap, will eventually crash. What we see right now is only the first version or first practical implementation of tokens, and “tokens 2.0” that will emerge somewhere between 2018 and 2019 will be much better. The hype around current token projects is doomed to fall, and after that, Buterin thinks, we all will finally understand which projects are worth investing and which are not. The ICO rating system is, indeed, one of the most serious problems the market is currently facing. But the market will mature, Ethereum founder assures.

Previously, when it became known to Buterin that independent Ethereum upgrade developers had launched an ICO, he immediately told this is not what he wants to see with his currency development and swiftly established a private fund that invests in decent Ethereum development projects.

Read more (https://bitnewstoday.com/news/ethereum/vitalik-buterin-90-of-token-startups-will-fall/)

I participated in many signature campaigns and can confirm that the prices for most of the coins created as a result of ICO immediately fall much as soon as they enter the exchange and start bargaining there. However, it is encouraging that in 2018-2019 a second version of the original coins will be created, which will be much better than now. Perhaps ICO will not be so much, but they will differ in functionality and quality. The news from Vitalik Buterina is encouraging.

I doubt that Buterin has ever had that much faith in cryptocurrencies in general, never mind in the exact things that he's doing.  It's just a bit of an experiment which also brings an interesting method of fundraising and interesting future prospects.

It's surprising that he's stepping in to be the voice of reason during this general ICO bubble, considering that he stands to hugely financially benefit from having loads of ETH.

Perhaps that could even suggest that he expects the ETH price to become higher once the majority of projects are legitimate.

He's right in a way. The number of people willing to invest in ICOs is limited, which means the money is limited. There's so many ICOs coming up within a short period it's overwhelming when compared to the general interest in cryptocurrencies.
After some gov statements about ICOs and the issued bans people are weary and will choose established coins instead of new ones. I bet most of them will fail. They can be listed and they can be traded, but the amount of users will be insignificant.

Four out of five startups fail.
If we're talking about the market maturing to a point where people judge well what to invest in then I think we are aspiring to similar to the 20%.
I believe in cryptocurrency and ICO as a mechanism but based on that I think 90 is way too generous at this point.

I don't need any Buterin to say that the biggest Proventil of ICOs will never have success and the biggest percent was created for one reason - to take money from people and to close. I'm not surprised about China's banning of ICOs, I suppose that those unsuccessful end of ICOs was the exactly reason of why they took such decision.

Does not take a genius to get that. I don't even know why are people still investing in ICOs. I get that It may be profitable when it hit exchange (for 15 minutes until it crash) but its a scam long term.

I am agree with you. All those projects just like a trash around us and it is really hard to find a good one. I believe there are perspective projects and it will appear many new one, but the biggest number of ICO are really just scam or simply not successful startups. Mr. Buterin didn't say us something new indeed.

Indeed. I can't understand why people are putting money on ICOs and then cry later on that they have been scammed. Experienced tells that most of the ICOs out there did not add value but instead just copy one another. How can you put your money if those projects are like that? Mr. Vitalik does make sense. I think he has seen enough of ICOs that he can safely concluded that almost all of them will fall. Good job Vitalik for giving us a fair warning.

ERC20 tokens "2.0" means that people will have better tools, convincing more people to join on their ICOs and collect more money because of the new

Features, no one has the ability to change this game of coins because every one is their own authority in a decentralized network. they will eventually

Run out of fuel, if a project has a roadmap to reach a goal in a predetermined date and it fails to deliver, they will be considered failure and will crash.

Eth will not remain the #1 for ICOs, others will take it's place mate. his currency is not really his, make a wrong move to see what happens.

As always Vit is right. Fortunately most of the ico`s will not bring real value to their investors. It is very difficult today to weed out the good from the fade, but we must do our own due diligence, nobody will care about your money, only you.

I think that Vitalik's 90% is a conservative estimate. I put it at 99%.

90% of the ICOs are failures from the start or outright scams, and 90% of the rest will never go anywhere.

ICO's will fail not because ERC20 is bad, the problem is not the tokens themselves but the networks that they represent. Most of them are not able to deliver their promises for many reasons, like lack of skill, unrealistic goals or just being plain scams - and the situation is quite similar with real world startups. So, this suggested token 2.0 system might not necessarily solve the problems with current ICO's. What is really needed is community effort for filtering obviously bad projects on early stage, so investors will have to spend less time looking for good projects. Also, ICO's are in bubble because people are speculating on them - they are not buying tokens because they believe in projects, they buy them to sell a few weeks later after expected pump.

I think things will happen naturally. There will be regulation brought in and standards will be established. There's already other blockchains better than ethereum out there.

A statement from an alt coin creator stating that 90% of alt coin will fall.

That only means that even the coin that he develop has a chance of falling in the future.
How can we be sure that the one that he created will be strong enough not to be included in that 90%?
Ethereum might have a value right now but who knows what will happen in the future.

Is he trying to say that it will be better just to invest on bitcoin?

Maybe it could be 99%. If you noticed, there are many ICO that have the same qualities and they are just competing with each other to stay longer and be the best.

I saw a comment from Lopp not to believe in any token that has a limited use case.
As in the only place to spend the token is in the intended ICO system.
I get the comment but this also feels against the basics of tokenomics.
And If we agree that payments is not the only use case for cryptocurrency then this seems kind of counter productive.
I love Bitcoin but I think other tokens and use cases need to develop.
Thoughts?

just this.

the problem also lies in some sort of pyramid scheme via mass media attention

coinmarketcap systematically keeps a pyramid style structure alive, people that have created altcoins will have to create their own information channels and depictions where the odds are complete vice versa,

that is the only way they can create a new reality, because the established coins will systematically keep attention away from others in order to continue to grow themselves.

there are in the meantime also alternative smaller ethereum lots of alternative bitcoins etc. as i said media attention is the issue, if the coinstartups are smart they simply will stop participating in the established market and found an own market on themselves.

pretended simulated facts this way can quickly become true facts that can be measured.

regards

Crypto is still an emerging market and i agree that we will mature and thats why governments have been banning the use of ICO to fill their pockets and most of this ICO they dont have any idea about blockchain etc.

I am quite sure a lot of the startups will fail, but i think that should be a fact that everyone who is investing in alts or better said icos should be aware off.

Either you buy them for short term profit or you go with it. Then it will be decided, if you are in the 90% you will loose it all, but if you also have one coin of the 10% i am quite sure it will compensate your loss of the others. For me this works pretty fine at the moment.

right now, i would say its more like 99%, meaningless token shit everywhere. those are not evenstartups, they are just creating token because they can..

Yes that is true and not interesting. 80% of the projects will be successful, seriously? They most are already same and most are trash. I bet 95% will fail.

I think  you have a good point here. As what I observed, there is an Aidrop explosion even on Ethereum tokens.  There are  new airdrop daily and most are on Ethereum network. Though airdrop is a good way to distribute a token but mostly,they are from newbies.

I think 90 percent is fair enough. Given real life startups which is expected to have positive cashflow even sooner has quite a high fail ratio I expect even more in the altcoin business. As soon as the ICO Money is gone development will halt and the Project will be forgotten.

Projects will evolve as the tech, the future is Bright but I would not bet my Money on the everyday ico schemes....

I agree that most of the current ICO's won't have any value in time, but those who really develop their projects can be very profitable. To secure your investment, just do a deep analysis of a project where you wanna deposit your money. Really worthy projects appear 1 of 50 approximately now.

It is not necessary to be the founder of the second most cryptocurrency, Vitalik Buterin to say that most ICOs will fail eventually. Of course most of them will. How come all those hyped project be succesful in the end? Most of them are scammers in the beginning. The rest are some exciting guys abouth crypto future without any entrepreneur experience.
Only ICOs you should invest are the most realistic things like Waves ICO, or Tezos ICO or any working concept such as casino ICOs or realistic market ICOs. Rest of them are way too risky.

Well and if you look away from blockchain also 9 / 10 classic startups will fail also. So thats nothing new, thats just normal.

You have to do your normal due diligence before buying anything. And if you do good research and invest also in future projects, i am quite sure you ll make profit out of it.

I think he is right (a lot of startups fail too). But we are at the early stages, a lot of money will come in and  i think we will se  the fail of some tokens in the end if 2018. but like in the internet age some comapnys survied and got big.the ones you at real value for people to use. We will see

Cheers

Very interesting news and I am really curious how he had counted the ratio of 90%.. I would say 50%.
So he thinks in 1-2 years time all ICO projects will fail, it means ETH will fall as well. Thus, pretty smart would be for him to regulate altcoin market somehow..

This is simply common sense even if I believe 90% is a bit too high.
It is probably very similar with Startups. So many are created and only a very few of them are succesful in the long term.

if they really have good plan and idea, it's easy to success here. It's easy to get fund even with just weird coin name.

Funny he noticed after all this time and after all the money he made that.. they made ETH look bad  :D
Where was he before during the high point ?
..counting his cash.

Doesn't need a genuis to tell us about the era of ICOs but every investor is responsible about his own money and has the ability to put them wherever he wants. So we can't blame scammers which they are always playing arround with or without ethereum. New startups will never stop appearing and no one can deny that there are great potentials in the market and everyday we see real solutions that may correctly affect our lives.

But even vitalik was partener in some projects started with ICO !!!
Keep in mind that scammers are not just using erc20 tokens which will be updated with new version soon, but there does exist many other options.

ASSETRON ENERGY - https://assetron.energy

Is currently in presale - 40% of final ico price.

They are developing Blockchain P2P Investment Platform for Renewable Energy - basically revolutions the concept of "Community Solar" and building a global crowdfunding platform for renewable energy assets.

The coolest thing tho is that they are the FIRST (research yourself if you don't believe me) company that will utilise the ICO funds to build a solar pv power plant in Australia -so that they also get revenue from a money producing asset and not fail.

You will see, as Vitalik from Ethereum said - 90% of icos will fail - well they will fail because they will run out of money before they get customers.

ASSETRON ENERGY can't fail for at least 30 years - a fact,   this is how long a solar plant will produce income within warranty.

So that's why its underrated - what other ico you can think of, that has a guaranteed income for 30 years (and income they will share with Token holders through rewards), that will allow them to continue developing and outlive any competition.

I really like the honesty of vitalik's statement, it takes balls to be able to speak freely and honest about
this problem that most "products" (icos) on his platform are basically vaporware.
Other Developers would probably never speak about a topic like this for publicity reasons, or when really asked about
it would just lie to the public and shut their eyes to the facts at least on a public level.

This is expected and should be the utmost priority of the market right now. ICO's should have a more trustworthy standards where people can gauge it if it worth it to invest into it. We don't want to have a very big ICO-based market that don't have any practical use, be it in technological or financial terms. I'm excited to see the evolution of ICO (will happen between 2018 and 2019) as Vitalik stated. The quality of the ICO should be the first thing to be considered and else will follow.

The fact that most of the tokens created by the ICO fall in price or cease to exist at all, we already see in practice. I would like to learn more about the second wave, or the version of ICO, which, according to Buterin, will appear in late 2018, early 2019. Than these ICOs will differ from the former, that will become more reliable.

I agree.. every "investor" in "coins" is free to participate in any MLM / scheme coin "fuel token" app's platform smart contract coin cloning platform gimmick for ROI's they wish.. such as ? LEO COIN.

You guys are fucking blind and / or scammy and dumb.

Oh and utterly exhausting with your justifying bad.

the main issue why this other altcoins would crash would be because the lack of investors or miners. Because it cant run without anyone maintaining the coin in the market. Even if there blocks made everyday from other altcoins, but if no one is acquiring or mining them, it cant really be called as a success. That is why i think their are many free coins or airdrops given to some users to at least maintain it in the market

I will said this is truth because many of the token has been delisted from the major exchangers sites and some of them also are scams projects using ethereum to actract investors. If we analyze most of this token and even new projects, we can see how some of them are pump from the beginning and get dump the following days and this is not healthy for the market. The market needs token and ico projects that gives confident to the investors and if things will be improve in years to come then good for all of us.

Vitalik is right, the vast majority of ICO's are ridiculously thin on actual tech - eventually people have to start realizing that what they invested in has no value, right?

It's true. There are a lot of startups going for a token ICO as it's now easier and hasslefree.
Even they are true to their intentions, there no market for all those startup to success in their fields.

I completely agree with Vitalik. Most startups do not carry any real value, most of them are just a bubble that is inflated by advertising and beautiful ideas. I think with time, only strong and sustainable products will remain on the market, which bear real value in the development of blockchain technology.

I agree with Vitalik too but some ICOs are genuine and have good objectives with a well thought roadmap.

I think blindly signing up to ICOs is idiotic and most are scams.

Considering the fact that 99% of all tokens that are trying to start themselves up in bitcointalk alone are completely clones of previous projects or just a ERC20 token with no apparent uses outside of a speculative token, 90% is an underestimate.

But generally, it's going to be along the lines of what Vitalik said.

People still going for these useless airdrops somehow, though.

 I think, Mr Butterin is right. His statement maybe based on current token condition. There are many ERC20 token right now which potentially become a scam.

10% of token startup won't fall ?!
This would be awesome but I can't believe it. 1 or 2 %.

Finally someone came up and told the truth to public. YES. Most of the coins with shiny labels will fail. It doesn't matter how great they advertise. But looks like Vitalik forgot to say one thing, successful startups will go to moon. After this ico madness. So there are still gold to be mined, symbolically.

Too much ICO involves fraud
Just to meet personal money :o :o :o

90% of icos are business plans that failed to raise investment outside of the crypto realm. They see people here as easy targets and they are right.
Most will come to nothing and do not even have experienced cryptographers as part of their team.

The older projects that have skilled conceptual designers/cryptographers and coders will be the sole survivors.

The projects that also have consistent income, not just from cryptocurrency will survive as well. Take Assetron Energy for example, they will have their own solar plant. Real - they will own property.