Dead Coin

A Dead Coin refers to any coin or token that is no longer in use.

Various reasons exist why a coin is no longer viable, including:

Being an outright scam, which was later revealed to the users and crypto public
Developers abandoned the project, ultimately getting it delisted from exchanges
The coin started out as a legitimate coin with a legitimate use case and gained a following and users, but then the mission or developmental milestones of the project weren’t met, and no benefit was deemed possible if the project continued
The official website of a coin is offline or unreachable
Funding for the development team has dried up
The coin was started as a joke but still obtained a sizeable investment that wasn’t expected

ICOs, or initial coin offerings, helped to fuel the number of active projects in 2017 from under 50 to almost 1000.

By 2020, that number reached 8,000 cryptocurrencies, many of which didn’t survive due to the points outlined above.

A post-mortem analysis of all 2017 ICOs has determined that 80% of all ICOs that took place that year were scams totaling more than USD $1 billion.

Related Terms

Alameda Research

A crypto hedge fund trading firm started by FTX exchange founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) that was known for making huge bets on other crypto companies and businesses. Alamada Research was at the heart of the FTX liquidity crisis that resulted in both FTX and Alameda filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November of 2022.

Initial Coin Offering (ICO)

A token sale or crowdfunding event offered by cryptocurrency startups, existing projects, and blockchains, looking to raise money from investors to fund new and ongoing development. It’s very similar to initial public offerings (IPO) that take place in the traditional finance world of stocks. ICOs sometimes offer pre-sale or discounted token prices in exchange for capital investment.

Shill

Crypto slang for promoting bitcoin or an altcoin for your own benefit. A person who does the shilling can be called a shill (and other things, too!).

Cardano (ADA)

Cardano is a decentralized open-source blockchain platform built with proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus, offering smart contract capabilities, and using the native cryptocurrency ADA.

Changpeng Zhao (CZ)

Changpeng Zhao, also known simply as CZ, is a Chinese-Canadian entrepreneur most well known as the founder and CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. After the collapse of FTX, and after committing $2b BUSD to a recovery fund to help distressed crypto assets, CZ is seen by some as the new savior or white knight of rypto.