According to statistics obtained by Finbold on April 20 from the dead coin analytics portal 99Bitcoins, there were 1,705 dead coins as of April 6, 2022. Dead coins are digital currencies that have been exposed as scams, abandoned by their teams, failed due to a lack of financing, or failed for any other reason, and are thus no longer functional or operational. In rare instances, some of these coins may come to life and increase in value if enough people are interested in them. Among the prominent dead coins are BitConnect (BCC), VegasCoin (VEGCOIN), and Storeum (STO).
Scams are rife, and they are robbing people of their money. Some of the names of deceased coins may sound familiar, and for good reason. For example, the BitConnect team spent a lot of money on marketing only to discover that it was a giant Ponzi scam that garnered over $2 billion from investors. In addition to the 1,700 names on the list of dead coins, several have demonstrated the potential to join them owing to the same circumstances that killed others.
One of them is the Squid Game (SQUID) cryptocurrency, which was inspired by the well-known Korean Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) programme but whose value plummeted to nearly zero six months ago when the project was shut down. According to the announcement on SQUID’s CoinMarketCap page, “the project is now ostensibly governed by the community” after the creators stole millions.”
Unfortunately, SQUID investors are far from the only ones who have been taken by surprise by crypto fraudsters in so-called “rug pulls”—a colloquial term for this form of crypto scam. In 2021, about $2.8 billion in assets were stolen as a result of such scams, an average of more than $7 million per day.
Another one is SafeMoon, as numerous crypto pundits have long warned that it is a pump-and-dump currency. Ben Philips, the company’s former marketing head, was recently caught in a typical $12 million pump and dump fraud, in which he used his position to ‘pump’ the token’s price, only to sell it at inflated rates.
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