Bitcoin Forum

The ICO craze of 2017-2018 was a wild ride that left an indelible mark on the crypto landscape. While some projects like Cardano (ADA) emerged as giants, many others faded into obscurity, or worse^[1], were exposed as scams^[2].

Unfortunately, I was among those who experienced the sting of losses, having invested in the Credits (CS) project. Despite its promising initial promise, the CS token price plummeted over the years, dropped 266 times from its ATH price (https://www.tradingview.com/x/NX6DxDb7/). The experience was disheartening, and I've largely tried to put it behind me, focusing on my current work in translation.

I'm curious to hear your experiences during that era:

• Did you participate in any ICOs during 2017-2018?
• If participated, which one left the most lasting impression on you?
• That ICO turned out to be a success or a failure?
• That ICO brought you profit or loss?

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References:
[1] Nearly Half of 2017’s Cryptocurrency 'ICO' Projects Have Already Died (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nearly-half-2017-cryptocurrency-apos-194143739.html)
[2] Over 80% ICO projects in 2017 are ‘identified scams,’ Statis study finds (https://coingeek.com/80-ico-projects-2017-identified-scams-statis-study-finds/)

everyone during that time who invested in BTC and invested in the altcoins doing ICO profited from the bull market.
i have gained a lot also even when i was just participating in bounty campaigns. the ICOs was a success since there are still tokens from that time that are still alive today.

i participated in some ICOs some of those tokens are left in my old account after buying back and then the token end up dead or the team migrated to another contract and some of us who weren't aware of the migration ended up holding those tokens still.  i still have my useless ICONOMI (ICN).

1. Yes, but I didnt remember all of it.
2. ETHlend or we call it AAVE now, Atomic, Atlant, Tokpie, Centra, Auctus and many more.
3. I joined many ICO's in the past, usually I bought it at the end of the sale and dump it when the token listed on EtherDelta.
4. Some are profits and some worth nothing in the end.

Some part of myself still regret why did I dump some of the tokens too early, however in reality it will be impossible either for me to buy many different tokens without dump the previous tokens.

Not a lot with them and I can't recall on which were the good ones or bad ones or did I really got into it. But the whole era, I still remember when there have been successful ICOs left and right and it's like a craze that will never be stopped. But from there, it has taught us a lot of lessons that everything on this market aside from Bitcoin are played to get on hype and craze and once it's done, you're also done if you don't do the right thing. I think the most successful ones and if the investor has been patient are literally sitting down in a lot of money now, with Ethereum and BNB.

This side of the Forum have different coins introduced every day. And 98% of this coins are unfamiliar to me. And today again new projects which have been in the cryptocurrency ecosystem from 2017 and at that that I have not join the system. I even make some to know more about the project, I could not find it and from link you provided. The price.is very low. But the name is not seen and only the price.

And when I checked coinmarketcap the ICO names was changed to Dai and I don't know if that is the latest name of the project I don't know. The altcoins are too many in the world. Everyone want to create coin and every country wants nto create e-currency.

None.  Seriously I think the start of ICOs and having people pay up front just brought in a ton of scammers and gave them a platform.  All you had to do was have enough people who could be good and long enough and it could net you millions.  It's a disease that hasn't gone away yet.  None of them are fair and are only designed to enrich a small few.  I stayed clear of every one of them

I made money with several icos and their signature bounties, but i doubt any of them are alive anymore. Many of them pumped and every fiber in me told to sell, and i am so happy i did. Even though i sold eth too when it was $12. That was a mistake. That and not seeing what sol is going to be.

I can remember few that i lose money with. Those were Infamous scam called Rise, then there were Decent and Deep Brain. To this day i am still not able to understand why i poured money into them, even though everything in my core told me they were a scam. At least with Rise i made money by trading the swings of the chart, but scam was just too obvious and i coun't kept quiet about it.

With Decent it was most likely the fact that i didn't understand it deeply enough. So i couldn't tell if fundamentals were pointless or not. What ever was the reason, it slowly faded away and died. As for Deep Brain, it was china fomo. NEO happened and china was hot. No one seemed to question that you don't really need a blockchain AI of any kind.

I didn't follow ICO but the project I followed for the bounty campaign at that time rose very high, but I didn't know that 2018 would be a bear market, because at that time I was very confident in the coin I was holding, I finally sold when the value of the token had reached 1000$ from the start of about 5000$ more.
The experience I have is that no matter how good the project is, if market conditions are bad/down then everything will follow.

I followed a project called oyster pearl if I'm not mistaken, and when the bull year started, the estimates I got increased hundreds or even thousands of times.
i got around 40$ for my payout and when it reached ATH it changed to 24000$.
but I sold it first, that was my first experience when I saw the coins I had rise very high when I sold them.

not exactly 2017-2018
but 2016 - 2017 ico was really busy and many had great success. including the altcoin ico bounty campaign there are also many. just joining the bounty campaign the results are already a lot.

I don't know why, but I'm so happy when I read "etherdelta" in your reply, probably because it brings back memories. I feel so happy when I trade in EtherDelta, because first, I don't need to do KYC; second, I just need to connect my wallet there, deposit into the trade wallet, and voila, I can trade immediately.


I think your decision to sell your tokens immediately is smart, as long as you still gain profits, because at that time, who knows what will happen in the future since these are new projects and not a few of them actually have the intention to scam from the beginning? So, you're still winning, and congratulations for that.


Back to the topic: Which ICO in 2017–2018 left the strongest impression on me? I'll answer TRON (TRX) because of the figure behind it, which was its founder, Justin Sun, since he's one of the most prominent figures in the crypto space at the time, and for sure it brings me some profits too.

YES I participated in many ICOs in 2017 to early 2018, after that ICOs became less attractive because there were so many scams that occurred in addition to entering a bear market when the bitcoin price was $3600.
Forgot the impression of which project is the most profound, but there are several names, but I don't know how much profit was made back then because I can't remember.
2017 was a successful year for ICOs.
What I felt was more losses due to overconfidence in a project that eventually failed as well.

IBO of Blacknet (https://blacknet.ninja/posts/2018-09-06-ibo-announcement.html). Note the letter B in place of C. Funds weren't moved from a left pocket into the right one, instead these precious were burnt. I organized and participated in it. ;D

I wasn't active and never knew about Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies till 2021. I won't be able to comment on the topic but I would like to share the fact that ICOs were still active at that time, which was 2019. I have never invested in ICOs as by that time they had that impression of scam. It still exist today and there are a very few who go for ICO thinking that it will give them a good profit whereas they do not.

I had an experience that might be the same as you, I joined the ico hype, and yes I fell into poverty lol, I was really destroyed at that time, all the projects I participated in were all exit scams. Maybe my mistake in joining something like that was just based on hype and YouTube influencers, without analyzing it myself, so that's how it is, this is a very valuable lesson for me to be more careful in the future. If asked what projects I was involved in, there were many such as roads, raca and others, I don't know if I've forgotten a long time ago.

I heard about crypto market long ago. In 2017, i mostly followed bounty related projects rather than joining ico. huge numbers of project cheated with investors and took away huge amount of money. There are lot of project to mention. But some project also gave people good return. I can remember i invested a healthy amount in WAVES and my money was turned into more than 3x during bull run which was huge profit. Now this coin become so popular, comes into top100 rank in coingecko and available for trade in top exchange like binance

Those who were active here at that time mostly followed ICO projects that had bounties. I have heard that bounties were a good source of earnings at that time as most of them used to get listed on exchanges. They allowed hunters to cash out their set of tokens but now they do not allow and rarely there are good bounties for hunters. I was not aware of cryptocurrencies at that time so missed the chance and missed the opportunity to participate in some good ICO from 2017 to 2018. I came to know about that time when I read this thread and others that were discussing ICO.

Many say that when the ICO craze started many people were profitable during the period but after the hype had started to die down while many ICOs continued to run until 2018 which resulted in many failures where investors made varied investments but they failed to sell because in the end the project could not survive in the market.

I don't remember which ICOs I successfully participated in and invested in but honestly there were more losses than gains although I never compared whether this was balanced or not but as I remember myself the losses were the big ones.

After the ICO then the IEO came out and now this hype has ended too, but if you think about it, trends always have their time from time to time.

Each cycle has its own story: 2017 is ICO, 2021 is IEO and IDO. We always have new ways to attract new investors and new cash flows into the crypto market. Opportunities are always available to all, and so are risks.

We have to accept the fact that most projects will fail and disappear, only a few really good projects will survive and dominate the market. Similarly, most investors will lose money, only a few will profit  ::)

Yes I did participant in many ICOs project during 2017 to 2018 but not remember yet with how many ICOs participating, actually that time have many ICOs success sold out from soft cap until hard cap but not guarantee all ICOs are success raise higher price after listing on the market.
But I have remember with one ICOs project success raise up drastically after listing on the market exactly listed on many top exchange market, I joined CENTRA coins ICOs and earned much profitable and lucky because sell that coins before delisting from the exchange and become scam coins right now after investigating by SEC Commission.

That's why you have to be someone who is wise in making decisions. This industry is filled with unscrupulous people who have their own bottom lines and pockets - so be careful of anything that could harm you. Don't believe the hype - neither does the roadmap presented, meaning you should do your due diligence before investing in it.

Of course, to be a successful person you need to consider risks - but not by committing suicide by investing blindly in any project that promises returns. As you said ''We have to accept the fact that most projects will fail and disappear, only a few really good projects will survive and dominate the market." - that's true.

My best ICO at that time is the Wanchain ICO — IIRC, Wanchain was all about creating a sidechain or an EVM chat is now known as a layer2 network. I was lucky enough to get into their private sale and to cut the long story short, that was the only time I invested thousands of $ in a crypto project ans Wanchain did right for me with a 5x price increase before the price when on a permanent drop basis. I'm glad I got out when I did.

With the growth of the crypto community, more carefully analyzed projects, more experienced investors, useful and free information available everywhere, I hope fraudulent or weak projects will no longer exist and money will only flow to projects that are truly good and valuable to the market.

Gone are the days when just a few pages WhitePaper could raise tens of millions of dollars!

At least, Wanchain is still active so far and although the WAN token has not made an ATH in 2021, its price has recovered impressively from the bottom. In 2022-2023 it will not create a new deeper bottom, anyway this is no longer important to you. Congratulations on your success and profit from WAN token  ;)

Lots of questions. Yeah i did participate but in less projects ICOs. I just divided my budget and invested small money in some ICOs. But most of ICOs were scam. I can remember a token name EarthBook maybe. Team collected a lots of money from token sale. They could develop that project as they had enough fund but they vanished without any reason lol. And there are many projects, did same thing. I mean turned out to be scam

While Ethereum certainly made a significant impact during that time, another ICO that left a strong impression on me was EOS.IO. Their ambitious goal of creating a scalable and user-friendly blockchain platform for decentralized applications (dApps) caught my attention. EOS.IO aimed to address some of the scalability issues faced by Ethereum, offering faster transaction speeds and lower fees. The project's innovative consensus mechanism, Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), also intrigued me with its potential to improve scalability and governance. EOS.IO's successful ICO and subsequent development efforts demonstrated the growing demand for scalable blockchain solutions and the potential for real-world impact. It was truly fascinating to witness the evolution of the project and its contributions to the blockchain ecosystem.

I remember that the ICOs of 2017-2018 had softcap (minimum capital) and hardcap (maximum capital). The ICO will end when the amount raised reaches the hardcap, meaning all tokens are sold. The ICO will be considered a failure and the project cannot operate if the amount raised does not reach the softcap, or the team has to change its development strategy.

A lot of ICOs reach softcap or hardcap but the project disappears because they were created as a scam in the first place. Another possibility is that after having so much money, tens of millions of dollars, many teams no longer have the motivation to develop products, they need time to rest and enjoy. I'm not sure what EarthBook's capabilities are, but I condolences to you for your unhappy memories in the crypto market.

I have also followed EOS since 2017 and its ICO 4B USD, currently I am still a translator for EOS Vietnam to update the latest information from the EOS ecosystem. I think EOS is the project with the best and most innovative technology in the blockchain market, many features that Dan introduced 7 years ago are still being learned by many other blockchains. Unfortunately, EOS was abandoned by BlockOne and has had many financial problems over the years. The project is not promoted effectively to reach users and investors. I hope the new proposals regarding RAM and Bitcoin Layer-2 can help EOS get back into the race.

I participated in several ICOs at that time, but I don't remember too much, because I only thought about transactions and strategies to make a profit at the time I had coins from the project, and at that time I think I had quite a lot of coins from the ICO.
However, I once owned Centra, a coin that was initially really successful and had a very good price. I held it for quite a long time and made a big profit. Unfortunately, Centra turned out to be a scam, and the price dropped quickly, so I immediately sold the coins. Currently, it looks like the coin no longer exists.

No, none.
But it was the time when most of the projects that were being launched became the hot topic for most investors. And we are just seeing the logic now with the new launches that we're having. I honestly think that many became rich during that time, especially those that were wise and didn't keep their profits on any alt but moved it to Bitcoin. That was the craze before and from there, the bear market came and that trend declined which made significant impact to the market and community that many have thought this market and space is totally gone and dead for sure. But little did they know that it is essential for a market that have gone up to start going down and go through a cycle that it has to go on. 2018 was crucial and it's like a total dead year for the crypto market. But those that are patient and have a long term goal never left the market and just held whatever they by that time and kept it until the market recovered and shown some signs of its regained health.

most projects that Dan started, he also left and then the project died. almost all his projects, It is surprising Bitshares is still in the market but the STEEM continues to be traded in the best exchanges.

i still have EOS left staking RAM and CPU, i think there are only a few of the investors anymore who are trying on this token. there are popular dapps on EOS that users are enjoying still to this day. i still am getting some EOS now and then. the token is accepted in many casinos too.

I wonder how many ICOs failed and those projects died.

How Many Cryptocurrencies Have Failed? (https://www.hedgewithcrypto.com/how-many-cryptos-have-failed/)

They have incapable teams to develop products, use cases, utility and bad management for their project operation. Cost its up total fund they raised and they abandoned those projects.

1: I can't remember if any them were called actual ICOs as the acronyms changed after icos started failing a lot. But yes, i participated to many of them.
2: I can't recall if these were in 2018 or soon after, but Dusk Network had a private sale and that left me sunned because i never faced that level of their professionality. Everything else compared to it seemed like scams and dusk team was only intelligent adults in the house. And 2 mining companies that were straight up scams. Another one was raised enough money to get legal consiquences for their scam. Other one got away.

3-4. All of them except dusk were rug pulls, but i managed to swing 12 eth profit with other one before it died and ended up to be in profit. Sadly i didn't just leave it totally after it but invested some of the profits.

There were scam icos in 2014 that left more lasting impression then these hypes. In 2017 everything just went stupid. I should write another topic about that.

Dan is a tech genius and he has great vision and solutions, but he is not a businessman. Dan doesn't know how to make the project attractive to users through profits. Ultimately, when Dan's vision conflicts with the project's interests, Dan will leave, as happened with BTS, STEEM, and EOS.

Currently Eos is going through the most difficult times when many technological advances cannot support the EOS token price. ENF has tried many ways but it doesn't seem to be effective, even the investment from DWF Labs has not created significant momentum on the price chart. I really love the Eos project but there is no reason to hold EOS.

2017 had so many ICOs and I didn't even know about the Dusk Network project. I hope you are still profitable from 12 ETH, that is a huge fortune if you are still holding.

In 2014 I did not participate in the crypto market, maybe at that time there were only BTC, LTC, DASH, DOGE, XRP, BTS. I hope to hear your stories about this period.

I wasn't a fan of ICO back then to be honest and was mainly focused on bitcoin and its products. There was some opportunity to invest in some of the projects that are major cap altcoin projects right now so if i knew the future back then, i would invest in those projects for sure. But i have participated in some of the token sale though most of them were not very successful and only gave me losses so i keep avoiding any token sale and instead i directly bought from the market after listing.

ICOs often generate larger profits because investors can buy tokens at the seed price, but they come with huge risks. Investing in tokens on major exchanges is a safer choice because the tokens and projects have been evaluated and confirmed for safety by the exchange's team.

We cannot turn back time, we just need to focus on investment strategies in the present to generate maximum profits. Currently, the ICO is still taking place on launchpads, you can spend a part of the profits to participate if you like and believe in a potential project.

I was new that time. I was mainly join crypto for airdrop and that's why i was keep articipating lots of project. Buying token wasn't my goal but i can emember i joined two or three ico. Probably "CarTexi" something was the one i bought and make some profit. As i was afraid of dump or scam, i just sold that altcoin sooner with few profit. But weeks later, it pumped hardly. Cause that time Bull was already enter in the market, which was cause many altcoins started pumping randomly

Congratulations on your profit from the 2017-2018 ICO from the CarTexi project. Right now, I can't find any information about the project on Coinmarketcap, which means that the project may have failed and disappeared from the crypto market. It's better to have a little profit than to lose money.

ICOs in 2017-2018 were a crazy wave when we were convinced that ICOs would replace IPOs in the traditional market and that the crypto market cap would surpass the traditional market cap. What's even crazier is that we believed that crazy story!

I never bought into any ICO.  They were mostly all scams.  These "developers" fired up a new coin, made a web page with fancy designs on them along with a zillion empty promises.  I know some were very successful but probably a needle in a haystack, the rest all proven out to be scams.

It was a time of chaos when FOMO made investors willing to put money into new projects without knowing the development team, even though this was once praised for its anonymity, the potential of the solution, or the backing of the investment fund. As you said, all that most ICOs had was a copy/paste whitepaper and an impressive website with optimistic statements about a new era for the economy... It was fortunate for those who did not participate in ICOs in 2017-2018 because most investors lost money.

Currently, ICOs have become more reliable by providing full information to investors. Many ICO projects hosted on Coinlist are still developing well today and bringing profits to users. You can refer to and invest if you believe in their potential.

• Coinlist Launchpad (https://cryptorank.io/fundraising-platforms/coinlist)

That time, i was busy doing more and more bounties at this forum. I hadn't much idea about how to join ICOs even i saw most of projects were failed after their ICOs. Many projects declared they are closing cause they were fail to fulfill their selling target but they hadn't gave any investor's money back. But our friends group risked buying 2/3 altcoins from ICOs, i gave them money as i had knew less but those ICOs were failed. I forget names, maybe smokeFi or something. Then JsToken or I can't remember now. Cause later i hadn't showed any interest about those scam projects. Rather i stopped investing and focus on airdrop and free money lol