Hype coins occupy the brightest, most speculative part of the cryptocurrency business. But very few of them have real value. Don’t believe us? Try buying lunch with one. It’s hard to imagine a more chaotic situation in which so many people have invested so much in startups with such little intrinsic value. One big name (like Ethereum) can make a coin look promising. Yet promising doesn’t mean successful.

We have compiled a list of seven of the best crypto projects that showed great promise at the beginning of their life but have all failed for one reason or another.

7 Once Promising Coins That Are Now Dead

Ruminating over failed cryptos, we can't help but mention the coins that so cleverly exploited the popularity of the Ethereum name. Ethereum Plus appeared as a response to the shocking 2016 hacker attack of ETC. However, after a while, it was clear that Ethereum Plus was just a scam. Failing to keep any of its big promises, it eventually faded away.

Another Ethereum project that seems to have been forgotten is DAO. We can’t help feeling sorry for it because it was the victim of one of the biggest blockchain hacker attacks ever. Due to a fatal developer mistake, the project went public with a wallet bug that wasn’t fixed. The hacker took advantage of the error to withdraw DAO tokens from the liquidity wallet. The hack led to the forking over of dozens of tokens from the ETC protocol, such as ETC Plus and ETC Classic.

The next coin on our list - Nyancoin was doomed to fail from the very beginning. Nyancoin drew its inspiration from one of the Internet's favorite things to click on: the famous Nyan Cat meme floating on a rainbow. However, because meme culture moves so fast, it was clear from the start that the coin would only exist briefly. The coin is not even listed on any exchange, but if you head to the project's official page now, you'll see that the 8-bit space cat has currently been swapped out for a coin.

Substratum entered the cryptosphere in 2017 with a great idea to bring back the "free and fair Internet.” After draining its coffers of the nearly $14 million raised in an ICO, it went broke in 2019. The crypto is still active but it’s a shell of its former self. The cost of the SUB token has dropped from $3 to a fraction of a cent.

Let’s talk about Bitconnect now. This scam was so huge it ultimately turned into an internet meme. The crypto exchange allowed investors to swap Bitcoin for Bitconnect coins claiming to bring returns of up to 120% per year. After long standing accusations of being a ponzi scheme, it was abruptly closed and Bitconnect coins fell 96% in value.

GetGems was launched back in 2014 with the promise of strengthening the online media domain. The project managed to raise $111,000 from partners for development. However,

GetGems's developers neglected to meet white paper goals and ended up ceasing operations in 2017.

According to its founders, the goal of the Fairmoon cryptocurrency was to resist scams and fraudulent schemes. Ironically, it turned out to be the “anti-rug” influencer that simply pulled the rug on a hyper-volatile token. After someone sold off thousands of Binance from the FAIR token’s liquidity pool, the value of FAIR fell, and the scammer simply disappeared. So, before pouring money into such “moonshot” tokens, please make sure to do your research first.

The Right Way to Go

Want to avoid the sad fate of the above-listed projects? To make your coin successful, you need to adhere to a few simple rules: have a great idea, find the market fit for your product, create a team of enthusiastic partners, and work hard on your startup. By choosing the right tools, you can make the most use of the roadmap, plan the scope of work, develop the marketing and sales strategy. milestoneBased provides the perfect tool to help crypto startups with fundraising, project management, and building your VC network.