Top 5 crypto fail

2018 has definitely had its hardships in the cryptocurrency world with many of the coins suffering losses and destroying their reputation in the eyes of the public. In spite of everything, there are a few cases that over-shined all other incidents in the first quarter of 2018

Verge (XVG): The Wraith Protocol

Verge announced that they will be releasing their Wraith protocol at the end of 2017 the official date moved a few days up to the beginning of January 2018. Fans and observers waited in anticipation to the see the benefits of wraith only to be disappointed by the product that was released by the company.

However, Wraith does offer a very interesting feature /optional privacy/ but, this is still a questionable choice regarding the customers privacy.

Speaking of fails, it has also come to my attention that some of Verges codes have been stolen from 14-year bitcoin kid æwhit jack.

Since early January XVG dropped 70 percent.

Vechain

In an effort to combat astro-turfing and coordinated vote manipulation, moderators of /r/Cryptocurrency put forth a policy of suspending and banning coins involved in malicious practices on the subreddit. After evidence was provided that indicated team members behind VeChain (VEN) had been directing community members to upvote certain posts, the coin received a ban for the month of February.

This was the first ban handed out by /r/cryptocurrency, and seems to have sent a strong message to other teams enacting questionable practices. During the time of the ban, mentions of VeChain and posts regarding the cryptocurrency were removed or deleted.

Strangely enough, VEN maintained its value against BTC throughout February, instead of seeing a significant decline during the first week of March of about 30% for its BTC pair.

Bitconnect

One the biggest stories this year came from Bitconnect with their “lending” program guaranteeing you daily dividends. In January the price went down by 90% and is still dropping. Right now they are trading 99% lower to what it was before its discontinuation of their program.

The team behind Bitconnect, as well as major supporters of the Ponzi scheme, are currently facing a class action lawsuit currently worth over US$750,000 and growing.  

Waltonchain PR fiasco

After someone behind the Waltonchain (WTC) Twitter account forgot to switch accounts when responding as a “winner” to a Valentine’s Day giveaway, the entire cryptosphere entered a frenzy as WTC outed itself for rigging a giveaway. While it has been proven that a majority of the other winners were real and only about US$50 was handed out to each winner, the implications behind the scandal are massive. WTC’s price dropped by more than 20% in the day following the tweet and continued to slide for the next several days.

Unfortunately, this was not the end of the screw-up. On March 6, a key partnership with Chinese corporate giant Alibaba helped the price recover to a value greater than that prior to the giveaway tweet. However, after significant discussion within the community in regards to the legitimacy of the announcement, official announcements were deleted and replaced with the below tweet.

The second controversial tweet in just over a week sent the coin tumbling once more, and it’s still continuing its downward spiral.

The Hacking Of BitGrail

Last October one of the biggest leaders in nano trading BitGrail got hacked wich led to the company getting hacked and 17 million Nanos getting stolen. At the request of the “CEO”  “The Bomber” the hack was ignored. Around January this year, the company started noticing difficulties upholding there image. They stopped withdrawal and urged the Nano core team to fork its own blockchain to mitigate the hack. Sadly “the Bombers” stubbornness not to work the nano development team after the hack caused the downfall of BitGrail.

When news of the hack surfaced, the price of NANO plummeted by more than 50%. Beyond this, investors who had kept their holdings on BitGrail saw their investments vanish overnight. For many early adopters of the coin who had not yet sold, these losses amounted to life-changing amounts of money. The owner of BitGrail was anything but sympathetic, and interactions with the community and concerned onlookers regarding the hack have primarily consisted of bashing and trolling.