Watchdog ICOs exit scamming; ERC20 token wallets getting emptied via smart contract bugs; people dying in token sale publicity stunts: the world of ICOs has become so bizarre it’s impossible to tell what’s real and what’s satire. As a glimpse into the events of the past week shows, there’s never a dull day in ICO land. Nor is there a sane one.
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The ICO Is Dead, Long Live the ICO
It’s easy to take potshots at ICOs; the same thing happens to every shiny thing once it loses its luster. From nu-metal to flared trousers and from Twinkies to mini-discs, everything was cool at one time, until it wasn’t. It’s open season on ICOs right now, and the current crop of crowdsales are making it very easy for the haters to hate.
As Wikipedia explains, Poe’s law is “an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the parodied views.” An examination of the past week’s ICO news – or those of any preceding week for that matter – shows how hard it now is to determine what’s real ICO news, what’s fake news, and what’s satire.
Seven Days in ICO Land
Monday (June 4): It emerges that a hacker has deposited an “unfeasibly large” amount of HADE tokens into Forkdelta and IDEX before withdrawing 26.5 ETH. They did so by exploiting a vulnerability in HADE’s token transfer code.
Tuesday: Blockbroker, an ICO set up to unearth ICO exit scams, exit scams.
