The Majority of the Coins Listed on Deadcoins Comprised of Exit Scams or Poorly Planned Ventures
Deadcoins Launches Compendium of Deceased Cryptocurrencies
Deadcoins lists projects alphabetically, with ‘Aiden’ being one of the first coins encountered by visitors. Of Aiden, the author states “haha this brings back memories. Aiden is another LTC clone shitcoin I made which the idiots and Poloniex listed. I just changed some scrypt parameters and scammed people by calling it GPU friendly. I made so much BTC from this shitcoin it’s not even funny.” The flippant tone of the author’s comments should underline the imperative need for prospective investors to critically evaluate the claims made by the developers of new altcoins.
Deadcoins illustrates the prevalence of exit scams among obscure cryptocurrencies. Many of the exit scams described tell the familiar story of developers disappearing with investors’ funds, such as ‘Blockshares’, which “raised $250k [and] then disappeared”, ‘Crimsoncoin’, whose developors “sold their coins and ran off in less than a week”, and ‘Erosvision’, which is said to have “comprised a “scam coin ICO with [a] plagiarized white paper [that] collected around ten million US dollars before… disappearing”.
Some scams, however, elicit a far more elaborate story, such as Chancoin. Of Chancoin, Deadcoins alleges that the developer conducted a “30% premine, supposedly mistakenly [sent] 10% of the coins to a stranger on the first day, [made] big promises to the community which went unfulfilled… [told] an elaborate lie about [multiple] developers which were all alternate accounts of the same person”, and “fork[ed] the coin which accidentally caused all funds held by people on exchanges to disappear.” Deadcoins states that “[Chancoin] now has a daily volume of less than $1000 [which is] faked by the developer trading with himself.”
Many Failed Altcoins Possess Gimmicky Names
Deadcoins Launches Compendium of Deceased Cryptocurrencies
Many of the cryptocurrencies detailed on Deadcoins comprise projects with little worth that sought to ride the gimmick of a silly name. One such project is ‘Beercoin’, which sought to use a premine in order to “hold the price relative to the price of beer”. Other notably named coins include ‘Fraudcoin’, ‘Groincoin’, ‘Koindashian’, ‘Obama_bin_lotterycoin’, and ‘Asspennies’.
Although though most of the cryptocurrencies described on Deadcoins comprise lazy attempts at establishing a gimmick, or maliciously motivated scams, some projects appear to have been serious in their efforts, and failed due to comically poor execution. ‘Siliconvalleycoin’ sought to build its user base by “sending out a mailer that said ‘free money’ to people in Silicon Valley”. ‘Oilcoin’ is described as “an attempt to create a cryptocurrency for the vertical market of crude-oil shipping and dealing [that] made absolutely zero penetration into that market.” ‘Cryptometh’ is another notable example, which “after a smooth launch… couldn’t get listed on Bittrex because bittrex objected to the… name. They were listed on allcrypt, but the price collapsed and miners abandoned the coin.”