ICO Alerts! Remember those?

Summary

The article discusses the rise and fall of ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) in the cryptocurrency market, comparing it to the dot-com bubble and highlighting the risks of investing in unknown assets.

Abstract

The article begins by discussing the author's interest in blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and the prime time of ICOs in 2017 and 2018. The author compares the ICO bubble to the dot-com bubble and warns about the risks of investing in something without a clear understanding. The article also highlights the lack of discussion about successful or finished ICOs and the high fail rate of ICOs in 2017. The author notes that the ICO bubble was built on top of the cryptocurrency bubble, which eventually burst. The article concludes with a takeaway message about the importance of learning about the subject before investing and suggests a free course on Coursera.org.

Opinions

The author believes that people often invest in something without a clear understanding of it.
The author suggests that the high fail rate of ICOs in 2017 was not widely discussed.
The author compares the ICO bubble to the dot-com bubble and warns about the risks of investing in unknown assets.
The author suggests that the ICO bubble was built on top of the cryptocurrency bubble.
The author emphasizes the importance of learning about the subject before investing and suggests a free course on Coursera.org.

ICO bubble was swinging on top of cryptocurrency bubble

For about 3 years now I have been watching, reading, studying about blockchain and cryptocurrencies on my spare time.

Years 2017 and 2018 were the prime (scam) times of ICOs, it’s only appropriate to compare it with the Dot-com bubble in the late 1990s.

I remember the best kind of warning and a wake up call came from Aleksandar Svetski who warned people in his article “We don’t need another blockchain”:

We’re all trying to run before we’ve learned to crawl.

But people are people, a lot of times caught running (like wildebeests in “The Lion King”) to invest into something that they might not have a clear understanding about. I even wonder how many of the VCs out there knew how blockchain and cryptocurrencies actually work. Unless that was the game plan all along — to move funds “around”.

OK, so there’s that.

Another interesting thing is that almost nobody cared to talk about the successful or finished ICOs after their tokensale had ended or dared to call them on their RoadMaps follow-up activity phase.

Everywhere you looked the statistics were showing only the funds raised, which made the hype around the new ICOs even more believable. The fail rate of 46% of the ICOs of 2017 was nowhere to be found.

But ICOs weren’t just done yet, and in 2018 the investments poured into this unknown market of unknown assets topped — $7,812,150,041.

And then. Everything went quiet.

Even the Medium’s publication ICO Alert’s latest story dates back to 12th of December 2018.

As it turned out the ICO bubble was built on top of cryptocurrency bubble. And as many of us have seen in real life or in history lessons, bubbles are prone to burst — every single time.

Takeaway from the story? If you have money to invest, you should also find time to learn about the subject, then act on it.

My suggestion, Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency course on Coursera.org, is to everybody who wants to know a thing or more about the subject of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. The course is free.

Also, if you have invested in a certain coin and haven’t heard about them for a while or just having any doubts, you can take a peek to DeadCoins.com.

Disclaimer: I am in no way related to the websites linked in this story, except Medium :)

LIFE LESSONS | CRYPTOCURRENCY | BLOCKCHAIN

ICO Alerts! Remember those?

ICO bubble was swinging on top of cryptocurrency bubble