46% of Last Year’s ICOs Have Failed Already

[alyssa85]

https://news.bitcoin.com/46-last-years-icos-failed-already/

Given enough time, everything withers and dies, from the most robust institutions to the most popular crowdsales. No one expected all of 2017’s ICOs to last the course. The pace at which they’ve withered and died may come as a surprise though. Tokendata, one of the more comprehensive ICO trackers, lists 902 crowdsales which took place last year. Of these, 142 failed at the funding stage and a further 276 have since failed, either due to taking the money and running, or slowly fading into obscurity. This means that 46% of last year’s ICOs have already failed.

The number of ICOs that are still a going concern is actually even lower. An additional 113 ICOs can be classified as “semi-failed”, either because their team has stopped communicating on social media, or because their community is so small as to mean the project has no chance of success. This means that 59% of last year’s crowdsales are either confirmed failures or failures-in-the-making.

Trawling through 900 ICOs in one sitting is a deeply depressing experience, news.Bitcoin.com can report. Abandoned Twitter accounts, empty Telegram groups, websites no longer hosted, and communities no longer tended are par for the course. A digital graveyard, complete with metaphorical tumbleweed, characterizes the crop of 2017 that decided to take the money and run. Many raised zero; some raised a couple of thousand dollars; and a handful raised over $10 million. In each case, the end result was the same though: no MVP, no alpha release, and no contribution to the decentralized web for the betterment of humanity.

Many of the dead ICOs were doomed from the start. It will come as no surprise to learn that projects such as Clitcoin, Neverdie, and Zero Traffic didn’t make it. (Update: Neverdie has since been in touch to claim that reports of its demise are premature.) Some, which fell flat at the fundraising stage, are doing it all over again this year and hoping that 2017’s failure can be written off as a trial run. Freight trucking platform Doft is one such example. Looking at the countries of origin for failed ICOs shows that developing nations – and an entire continent in the case of Africa – are over-represented. Nevertheless, every major country and continent features in the list of shame.

How many people on this board have lost money on an ICO?

[aces777]

That's pretty bad news. People have to be much more careful than before while investing in ICOs. It is like almost half of the ICOs fail. That's a huge number. I have got some failed ICOs too but it was very low compared to 46%. I guess we all need to research thoroughly before investing in an ICO.

[steadyrice]

Well no one claimed that ICOs were magical endeavors and all of them would succeed. They are pretty much no different than other, standard business: If you don't have a working product or are not addressing a specific need, you are not going to make money selling that product. Even if you succeed initially (off of hype or whatever), eventually you will fall down on your face.

The same applies to ICOs, and I'm surprised the ratio of failed ICOs is not higher, to be honest.

[steadyrice]

Well no one claimed that ICOs were magical endeavors and all of them would succeed. They are pretty much no different than other, standard business: If you don't have a working product or are not addressing a specific need, you are not going to make money selling that product. Even if you succeed initially (off of hype or whatever), eventually you will fall down on your face.

The same applies to ICOs, and I'm surprised the ratio of failed ICOs is not higher, to be honest.

I know right? I thought the % was like 90% of ICOs fail, but like you said, If it's not usable, then why is it here?

Well they try to make money however they can. Since ICOs are not established yet, there isn't an established opinion on the part of investors as well. Most regard ICOs that will multiply their money by 50 magically, so most invest in whatever they see without looking into it. Some industrious people try to capitalize off of this by launching an ICO and trying to create hype, although their product is worthless.

[Snixer]

Honestly I'm surprised that the % is so low, I would have guessed that at least 85% or more would have failed by now or in the process of failing.
Most projects just make huge promises to get funding but end up not delivering or just making a half-assed job just to avoid being called scammers.

What impresses me the most are the people giving money to so many garbage project without even a MVP.

To answer your question I have never lost money investing in an ICO, hopefully I can keep that going for me for a bit more.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

None of this shit surprises me, and this is why I haven't ever invested in an ICO (plus it's illegal in the states).  Most of these projects are trying to crowbar a blockchain solution onto a problem that doesn't need it.  Most only exist to make the developers a shit ton of money, and every single one of them relies on a gigantic pool of suckers to finance its success.   

The little fish in that pool are usually from poor, underdeveloped countries, and they think they're going to get rich quick.   But it doesn't usually turn out that way, does it?   Glad OP posted this, and I do hope the suckers wake up and take notice that most of these scams are doomed to failure.   

I suspect most members here don't or can't read, but the results here are kinda too important to skip over.

[Leona Lewis]

I guessed the number is more that 46% as well.
It's always not trivial to understand if ICO is scam or not. But There are a lot of criteria to handle that.
First of all need to get maximum possible info about founders and the team.  IF they  successfully run other projects(really and you can find proves for them) in crypto/real world that should be an indicator of successful ICO.

[zenhu]

Now most ICOs strategies for me is, Buy > wait until distribution > sell immediatly. I miss the good old day when in a month only one ICO launch, not like today where you can found new ICOs almost everyday.

[BlackWidow]

A lot of ICO in the market that will die, they will cost nothing . Sorry this is so because of themselves they do not represent anything new

[CisColtz]

That is true and I have read the article myself. There are some names that I didin't eve heard before so I don't get it how you can invest in such ICO's. Always do your research good enough to make sure you invest into a project with a real chance to have success like ELLCRYS per example.

[alyssa85]

Well no one claimed that ICOs were magical endeavors and all of them would succeed. They are pretty much no different than other, standard business: If you don't have a working product or are not addressing a specific need, you are not going to make money selling that product. Even if you succeed initially (off of hype or whatever), eventually you will fall down on your face.

The same applies to ICOs, and I'm surprised the ratio of failed ICOs is not higher, to be honest.

The way they were being advertised, I wouldn't be surprised if lots of investors thought they were a sure thing to get rich.

You are right that ICOs are no different to other businesses raising money. But the savvy venture capitalists that usually invest in businesses are a world away from the guillble Joe Blogs seeing an ad for an ICO on Facebook or Twitter and thinking this is their ticket to riches.