DOI: 10.1201/9781003225607-4

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Chapter 4

Blockchain: Is it a hoax?

The blockchain revolution started with the release of a whitepaper, authored

by a pseudonym developer called Satoshi Nakamoto, to establish the model

for the blockchain. It was primarily to explain the cryptocurrency called

Bitcoin, which has been the first and the best use case of blockchain so far.

Since the successful launch of Bitcoin in 2009, there has been a storm

of thousands of cryptocurrencies in the market. However, the dream of

becoming a millionaire through the cryptocurrency channel comes with

high risks and scams as well.

In this chapter, we will discuss the value of blockchain, if any, and criti-

cally analyse it to establish a point ‘Is blockchain a hoax?’ The sections will

walk through crypto success and failure, initial crypto offering (ICO) suc-

cess and fraud, failed use cases of blockchain and much more.

The following statistics highlight the launch of cryptocurrencies glob-

ally. As of the date of writing (18 September 2021), there were about

16,000 cryptocurrencies created; however, not all of them exist now. As of

September 2021 (Figure 4.1):

• There are roughly 9,336 cryptocurrencies (as tracked by coingecko.

com)

• There are ~5,728 active ICOs (as tracked by icobench.com)

You might be surprised to know that ~87% of the ICO were launched

on the Ethereum platform. We will go through the total number of ICOs

launched, failed and in progress and also the successful ones in this chapter.

INSIGHTS ON CRYPTOCURRENCIES

As per coinmarketcap.com (https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/),

there were about 6,000 currencies listed in 2020 on CoinMarketCap. As

of 7 August 2021, there were about 11,145 currencies listed on the same

site. The tokens or cryptocurrencies get launched with a project or use case

behind them.