The rise and fall of the ICO and how you can buy a whole one for $60 000

in #crpyto5 years ago

As you may know the ICO craze of 2017/8 died out despite numerous success stories because there were also many scam stories. EOS and Telegram may have raised billions of dollars as top contenders, but many others failed to raise anything. One such non-starter start-up was Sponsy, run by 21 year-old Ivan Komar from Minsk Belarus. He didn’t raise millions and run off with them like some scams.

He actually raised nothing.

No one was interested in ICOs by the time he came on to the scene and nothing came of his project.

But still he is in the news, receiving coverage and you may wonder why. Well it’s because Ivan is now selling his ICO on Ebay for $60 000. Not bad for an entire ICO. In fact it sounds like a great deal. But it seems to have come to nothing. Not a problem if you’re only 21. Many millionaires have gone bankrupt more than once on their way to their first million, so Ivan is in good company.

He actually had his project ready in 2017 at the height of the ICO craze but his lawyer told him to first have a working product before launching the ICO. This is actually theoretically good advice, as many ICOs were nothing but a 30 page white paper and zero product and they still raised millions, some of them running off with the loot or failing to develop anything after raising all the sponsorship.

The ICO era really did not end very well for many on both sides of the business deal.

In Q2 2018 ICOs were still going fairly well raising an overall $8.3 billion. This fell in Q3 to a mere $1.8 billion, which is not as much as it sounds considering it was spread over 597 projects. The company ICORating reported that 57 percent of ICO projects that raised funds in Q3 were not able to secure over $100,000 each and only 4% of tokens sold made it to getting listed on exchanges thereafter.


source

Besides that around 20% of those Q3 projects have deleted their websites and social media accounts, an increase of almost double compared to the previous quarter of 2018. In total about$62.1 million or 3% of all ICO funding in Q3 was stolen by their CEOs who ran off with the money. Curiously 76% of all ICOs launched in Q3 were nothing but an idea when they launched, 18% higher than in Q2.

This shows a clear uptrend in the tendency to launch a fund-raiser on hype, hot air or outright hallucination.

So you can’t blame people for not wanting to buy into Ivan’s Sponsy ICO, despite the fact that he tried to market a genuine product to serve a specific need. And that need - ironically -was for a decentralized sponsorship platform. Ivan launched an ICO to raise sponsorship for a platform that raises sponsorship. No wonder it failed to even launch from the launch pad. Scams were hugely on the rise and of those that weren’t scams, numerous failed to even raise $1. So Sponsy was not alone in being a failed ICO.

At least Ivan had endeavoured to produce a legitimate product on the Ethereum smart contract platform.

He even had an app available for download. He had a working product. Yet still it came to nothing. His website mentions their protocol as being “proof-of-client-eligibility”. That’s another one you can add to the list. It is a product that connects those looking for sponsors with those very same sponsors looking for projects. It looks like a platform to attract VCs or angel investors so they can find viable projects to invest in.

Sounds legitimate – in theory – but it had no practical traction on the ground.

At least Ivan was honest enough, and now he is still out there marketing his ICO as a total package up for sale if you want to buy the business. He spent $50 000 building it and will sell it to you for a mere $60 000. That being said, he may have exaggerated its Twitter following and overall social presence. And it may be listed on ICO Bench, but only with a rating of 2.9, with no experts evaluating the project.

So one can only wonder if it will come to anything at all.

Such is the stuff of this new evolving blockchain and cryptocurrency industry, much like the dotcom era that introduced the internet to the world. Many attempted to climb the summit of new tech and finance and of those, several fell by the wayside…but some survived, made it to the top and thrived, only to become monopolistic dictators of the industry.

Ah well, we can at least learn from our past, and as we repeat it here in the next wave of new tech, we shouldn’t be too surprised if even in crypto and on the blockchain we find certain players dominating the entire sector, if we’re not careful, pushing out the smaller tokens.

It’s not a pretty sight, but then that is the way of our dog-eat-dog society.

We can only hope that the decentralized blockchain facilitates a distribution of power on all levels because even in the field of decentralized technology, some country (China) or corporation may end up centralizing power and control, and that would be seriously ironic.

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These days, I thinks the first thing that comes to people's minds when they hear ICO is Scam but I do believe some are destined to succeed even in 2019 and beyond!

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I am not against with ICO thing, infact this is really helpful to the thinker and innovator. However, because of greed and laziness, people didn't do research but buying into speculation.

The story of Evan is touching and as well inspiring!

Thanks for bringing it here.

Let me use this opportunity to say a very big thank to you @runicar for the 2.0 Steem you sent to my wallet for promoting Steem to be listed in coinTiger, I really appreciate.

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Thank you so much for participating in the Partiko Delegation Plan Round 1! We really appreciate your support! As part of the delegation benefits, we just gave you a 3.00% upvote! Together, let’s change the world!

Regulation also hurt the ICO market and some actually say it is what started the downfall. While I have yet to read it, the US based SEC has published their framework which at least could now signal clarity for those brave enough to try again!

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