Bitcoin Forum

You probably know that quite a number of ICOs fail every year, most of them after collecting a few million dollars from investors. However, according to a new report, the number is much higher than one would think, and it’s those that live up to expectations that are the rare breed. The failed projects are diverse, with some turning out to be outright scams, others being abandoned after little or no progress, and others being shut down by regulatory authorities such as the SEC. Using data from two websites that track crypto projects that have met their demise a little too soon, the report revealed that in 2017, $1 billion was lost to scam and dead ICOs.
Dead Too Soon

The report was compiled by TechCrunch and used data from Coinopsy and DeadCoins. The former defines a dead coin as one that has no social updates or nodes, whose website is dead, which has turned out to be a scam, or which has been abandoned by its developers. It has 247 projects which it lists as dead. DeadCoins has an even bigger number of projects that it categorizes as dead coins, with its total standing at 830.

The report attributes the high failure rate of crypto projects to the nascence of the industry as well as the high amount of money that’s being thrown at these new projects. With the industry not even mature enough for well planned-out policies, investors have continued to pump huge amounts of money into the sector, and this has overwhelmed the founders of various startups.

While the ICO concept was designed to circumvent the traditional crowdfunding model, the report suggests that ICO issuers can learn a thing or two from Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Through their high integrity and ethical standards, these companies “have made trust an art.” Unfortunately for crypto-based projects, the ICO model has inspired greed by unscrupulous founders who are in it to make some money and leave. This is counterproductive for the industry as it leads to a loss of faith in genuine projects.

The report corroborates the findings of research carried out in March by the Satis Group which indicated that 81% of ICOs were scams. The research only considered ICOs that had raised at least $50 million and indicated that a further 6% had failed while 5% had raised funds and begun the development process before they were quietly abandoned by the founders. Only 8% had gone on to successfully trade on an exchange and deliver most of the promises they had given to their investors.

The failure rate of crypto projects having raised funds has become a great concern to many industry experts as well as the overall crypto universe. With the industry already being shunned for many other reasons including its connection to criminal activities, failed ICO projects are the last thing it needs. Nevertheless, contrary to expectations, investors have remained upbeat and continued to invest in the ever-increasing number of ICOs. According to ICO tracking site CoinSchedule, ICOs have raised close to $12 billion in 2018, three times as high as the amount raised in all of 2017.



Source: https://cryptoyum.com/news/over-1000-icos-have-failed-in-2018-new-report-claims/

It's a too high rate. Because of these type of scam ICOs, confidence in cryptos is severely compromised. Governments need to take deterrent measures. It has to be very serious to fight with fraud, otherwise situation is going to get worse.

Well, many icos are created by people who only make false promises, when I say false promises I am referring to the fact that those people who create ICO only have ideas and have no concept of practice, you can have idea of creating a production company of bananas, but if you have never made bananas, then you will have a great chance of failing ... and this has happened in the world of ICO. People who have ideas, have no idea of the reality of the real world and after collecting investor money and putting the idea into practice, are faced with the harsh reality of the real world and with that the project fails.

then there are cases of scammers, this ICO market has become the gold mine of many scammers and with the constant loss of money investors are losing, and allied to the fact that governments intervene with very strict regulations, it will be even more difficult for any Ico achieve success.

These cycle cant really be stopped if investors do continue do fill out their bags with their money and repeat the process all over again.Nothing to be surprised of that most of projects in the market do have an unrealistic goals or plans.Some might be achievable but would really require too much work or funding and most of them do still fail even on the early phase. This is why its important to see on how dedicated the team behind on the project you are investing and whitepaper or roadmap should really be realistic.

It can't be really avoided when these ICO investors and project/ICO developers collaborate just to gain profit. These ICOs are made even when there's no actual intention to implement what has been stated in their whitepaper or road map because there's big money in it. What's sad is when actual ICOs (and are not scams) which have potential and the actual intention to facilitate change for the world fails to raise enough funds. This sometimes happen when the team poorly plans or markets their project.

OP has surprising statistics as I wouldn't think that it would be possible to measure such data. With the great number of ICOs, I didn't figure that a great majority would be scams. 81% is significantly large so that would mean if it so happens that the ICO you invested in is successful and legit then you are some lucky guy who found a diamond among rocks.

I believe the huge percentage of ICO funds come from the scammers themselves who put their own ETH into contracts to create an illusion of confidence and induce FOMO in potential victims. So, the actual amount of coins invested in ICO's might be going down, despite the seeming popularity of ICO's, but it's still way higher than it should be, people should be treatening all ICO's as scams, and in cases when they are conducted by some big and established entities, they are still insanely high risk investments, because there's no successful ICO's that have delivered a full working product.

The title is misleading. Not every coin is an ICO. The list includes hundreds of coins that are not ICOs.

It isn't a large one but just really a right percentage to presume or even higher. Basing on projects as of now and the ones who do succeed are just really small in numbers. Marketing do always really play a big role on projects success and I agree that potential or good ones do failed out due of such lack of support which is opposite into the situation of those scam projects instead.They do rather get the funds and support.

This is very very possible or do really happen where statistics shown on how much is being accumulated will really be a strong convincing factor for those potential investors specially when they do saw on pre-sale it was sold out in a matter either minutes,seconds or few days. If you are seeking for investment you will most likely to go with these things because you do blindly believe that this is already a good investment without doing deep further research behind.