Yes. To be honest, now I just wish that all these regulations finalize, and the authorities clamp down and jail all these rubbish project owners, teach them a lesson. And I hope all investors who just run in and dump tokens for profits also just get caught out with bags of zero satoshi coins. Then maybe we will see the end of this ponzi scheme ICOs, and real projects can take the forefront.

Alas, this is a dream at the moment. People still want instant riches and everybody knows this even though they cry later when tokens get listed and they miss the dumping.

Thought I would drop a few comments.

1) I do not understand the very first Problem Statement. There is a spread of 10% to 70% of cryptocurrency in emerging markets of $1.3 trillion consumer spending in Africa - what does this mean in the first place?

2) The Solution is to give emerging market massive access to the cryptocurrencies economy with significant low spread of  1% to 1.5%. OK, so you want to give Africans access to crypto at 1% spread?

3) Your next statement is about millenials.

So is it Africans who do not have crypto access or millenials? Which is it?

I do not like all these statements that seem to be based on some random snapshot of what you are viewing from day to day. ICOs are not dying at all, if they were, they would not be so many ICO related services cropping up, whether it is legal advice, promotion, marketing or even hosting (on networks like Bancor). It is like there is a second market now thanks to ICOs.

What seems to be "dead" or dying is 100 millions in ICOs. Money is spread around hundreds of projects so now I think even 10 million dollars is a huge achievement for the biggest ICOs. To me, that is good development.

Actually, it did not stand its ground during the "bloodbath" at various times of the year, it rose and fell with other alts. Just look around. ETH new ATH, but so are Dash, Monero, Zencash, Litecoin etc,,, NOT to mention Bitcoin! Meaning it has not really stood on its own properly yet. If Bitcoin and others languish, and ETH keeps shooting for the moon,,, then yes maybe it is finally independent.

But anyway, ETH has to be respected for managing to endure this difficult two years and I think it is good news all around for alt holders. Eth will always be a good product even if we cannot call it a true leader of crypto, it is a true leader for corporate governance.

Without looking at the details, why would you need "proof of hold" when on the blockchain, you can easily see any holdings of any account yourself? Or, if you mean holding a balance to secure the network, then we already have proof of stake. So what exactly is new?

BTW if you search Quanstamp you get results "proof of care" and "proof of audit". And the announcement was about how proof of caring worked, now they want proof of HODL (not hold). Now I know for sure they do not know what they are talking about. Proof of nonsense alt :p

Bitcoin Cash people will show off the price now, saying see, we got back our ATH, we are rising again. But this is ignorant of the fact that Bitcoin (the BTC, the real Bitcoin) has now an even higher ATH. Just like when ETH thought "see, we are at a new ATH again", it pretends it is doing well, but these alts are all piggy backing the success brought by Bitcoin.

Lesson of the year is, never bet against Bitcoin. It has won again and again. It will continue, in fact, get stronger every time it is challenged.

Actually, the current scenario fits me fine, I have no issues with a coin that doesn't jump and hop all over the place without any actual development pushing it. Waves is one of those projects you just have to be patient with. It is not getting it chance to pump simply because it's patiently developing. For me, 2018 and even 2019 can take its time. Price is not an issue at all.

What I would REALLY like to see is the volume growing on the dex. And I believe that is already happening, slowly but surely. When that happens, you'll see steady value upwards for sure.

That is pretty unfair for you to say. First of all, the OP is asking about AIRDROPS, not ICOs/investments. So there is no money to be taken from investors in airdrops.

Secondly, airdrops have been good and legitimate means for coins to promote themselves and ensure wide distribution. Look at Stellar Lumens and look at Byteball (GBYTE). Both are respectable altcoins with growing community, and not a single satoshi ever asked from their users. Of course, majority of new airdrops now are either useless or want your email or wallet address to try and do funny things with them. But do not let 99 bad apples ruin the 1 good apple

A lot of clearly ignorant people who think ICOs would have tripled or X whatever - if you had invested $10 in every ICO in 2017 thus far, you would easily have spent over $10,000... and from my own experience, only a handful have been profitable, but even those have almost all gone down below ICO price so the worst affected are poor ICO investors who held.

If you had invested $10,000 in Bitcoin at the beginning of 2017, today you would have over $80,000.

Does not take a genius to see the flaw of ICO logic.

From your statement alone it seems pretty evident that you do not fully understand geography, geopolitics and therefore should be very careful with the statements you make. You say Arabic countries (I guess you mean Middle East nations) but the biggest one of them all, Saudi Arabia, is extremely Bitcoin friendly. Dubai is trying to be one of the international hubs for blockchain, crypto, and therefore Bitcoin.

You have to understand the caution and suspicion for new tech that the banks and finance ministries are still trying to understand. Well, even here on this forum 99% of us are trying very hard to understand Bitcoin!

So we all knew that good alts like ETH can surely reach their old ATHs, it was always just a matter of time. I am sure many who bought at $200 are now very happy for this x2 of solid value. And when I say good, I do not mean I like it, I am simply saying it has good prospects. We can have all the misgivings we want but we cannot ignore the strength it has achieved this year, especially after falling against Bitcoin so often.

For me, $500 was always the new mark, if it is achieved this year, a small bonus. $1k is a long, long way away. Let us see the true effect of the fork and POS before making hasty assessments.

It is not only profitable to trade, it has been one of those altcoins that has been growing from strength to strength not just in price but in tech. So defiitely agree, once you read about it you realise this is not just another alt project, this really was one of the most different alts to hit the market. It is also one with real world practical use. Guess why all those faucet sites are asking to mine Monero? Because it is also still profitable to do so. Not any more with Bitcoin and all other alts are just too volatile or difficult to mine with computers.

Hmm. That is definitely a possibility. But we have easily seen coins like this have this pattern, creep into Top 100 because of supply and market cap against thin trading volume.... and then fall off forever. The more likely possibility is for this to happen. Let us newbies come in and buy it, then a huge whale comes in and throws down the orderbook.

Highly undervalued? Overly valued, is what I am thinking.

I guess IOTA is certainly a contender for next year, but then there are too many variables to count upon. They are not the only innovator for internet of things either, I recently am hearing big news from Hyundai DAC which will be a serious competitor since it has a LOT of products ready for testing and a very well recognized team with a lot of specialists. And IOT is already an industry Hyundai is familiar with, it will get a lot of support from their own corporate structure.

So IOTA has to move quickly - they are more flexible and more agile than Hyundai, but we will soon see exactly how much more than the South Korea giant tech firm.

Now this is a good type of airdrop, not just simply free to encourage all the spammers and bounty hunters, but an opportunity for actual interested people to support the project and at the same time promote it for even wider spread and adoption.

I really like the idea of decentralized exchanges already, but now this concept of leveraging could be that point of attraction that has been missing from many that launch and still fail.

Curious: why is Seychelles in that list? I understood the others for security and regulations but what happened with Seychelles?

It is all about regulations, my friend. The world of crypto and blockchain is still in the midst of entering mainstream adoption. Banks, financial regulators and governments are all training their focus especially on ICOs, since a lot have already scammed and they have received a lot of complaints. There are also legitimate concerns about anti money laundering that must be addressed. Utrust is trying to become compliant in this manner, so all their investors must be properly vetted, as per their regulations and terms. You have no choice and soon every ICO will become like this.

Hmm. I was so curious to see what exactly was so revolutionary about this lending system so am very disappointed to see that not only is it NOT revolutionary at all, in fact it seems even more inferior to other lending systems such as SALT.

Other concerns for me are plenty but the most important are: 1)I see 30% and more interest per month, this is very crazy and impossible to sustain. You might as well borrow to trade on Poloniex for max 5% a month at the worst offers and 2)referral up to 10%. Enter abuse, enter suspensions, enter instant devaluation.

Not saying this is a terrible idea, but please, this is not revolutionary at all.

I think the novelty effect of these tongue-in-cheek tokens have already worn off. We loved Myuselessethereum and UselessWavesTokens,,, I think we also had a bit of enjoyment with Jesus coin.

Those were ICOs. I have seen funny alts with no ICOs like Pussycoin and Shroomcoin, or something like that. So, the community can always smile now and then but like all ideas, only the originals will be remembered.

Some troll should come up with something special to end the year with a big Christmas bang!

The community, that is what! And most of you people strangely do not understand the power of a community, and keep overlooking the fact that coins like Doge have one, while all those ICO projects only have shills and bounty hunters. You keep seeing the continuous news that there is no development or future but that is your problem for not seeing what the community itself does.

No need to knock a coin without basis, friend. Doge never asked for people's money or promised to do things, yet it has done more for crypto than SO many alts.

Anyone who bought ETH with BTC since April actually will be just so frustrated with their losses, so I hope that most people bought ETH from exchanges with fiat. I hold so many alts now that have increased in dollar value but are so frustratingly low in satoshi value.

And anyone who thinks that the time for alt buys is great now, do not make the mistake I did thinking this and going all in. Bitcoin will not correct now until it is 10k, and if the sell off does not happen then, then it will continue to pop even higher. Just hold what you have and do not get more (unless again you buy with dollar).