Cryptocurrency markets have almost aligned with the stock market, making the correlation between the two quite strong. It’s safe to say crypto is here to stay. Despite it being alive and well, garbage cryptocurrencies are abundant. The pandemic gave rise to hundreds and thousands of cryptocurrency projects.
However, that was a different time. Quantitative easing was at its tail end. The free-money era has since ended. In other words, the weakest cryptocurrencies are going to die. Reckless enthusiasm will always exist for wild projects, but without funding, the most ridiculous pandemic-era crypto projects never would have come to fruition. Many of those that did are dying slow deaths. Let’s look at a few of them.
ApeCoin (APE-USD)
ApeCoin (APE-USD) is the token that fuels the growth of the ecosystem and built around the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Released in the not-so-distant 2021, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 NFTs, all variations of the same ape NFT. It never was anything and never will be. It remains one of the most egregious examples of cryptocurrency largesse funded by stimulus and stupidity.
That said, the bored apes remain incredibly expensive to this day. This collection ranges from the bargain price of 37.4 ETH, or $70,000, all the way to 1,777.77 ETH, or just over $3.33 million. It’s probably relatively easy to maintain the site and arbitrarily keep prices high. That doesn’t mean there’s any value in them.
In reality, the ApeCoin token has fallen and is subject to real market forces. Those energies have caused prices to dip from $5 to $2 with no sign of stopping. I see no reason to retain any hope in the ecosystem or project, and definitely not the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection.
Terra Classic (LUNC-USD)
Terra Classic (LUNC-USD) has essentially been dead since it experienced the equivalent of a bank run more than a year ago. Just as with a bank run, investor confidence plummeted, and a liquidity frenzy ensued. It lost almost all its value instantaneously which is where it has stayed.
Founder Do Kwon has drawn incredible ire since the downfall of Terra Classic. He is accused of securities fraud in the U.S. and similar crimes in his home country of South Korea. He was recently sentenced to four months in prison in Montenegro after being caught there trying to board a flight to Dubai in March with Costa Rican and Belgian passports.
It’s just dessert for Kwon who had a history of dismissing critics of his project as being ‘poor’ prior to its sudden collapse. Do Kwon was an egomaniac who defrauded people of $40 billion in total. His detractors were right about his project; he wasn’t as smart as he believed.
Casper (CSPR-USD)
Casper (CSPR-USD) is one of many cryptos that hoped to catch on through the utilization of proof-of-stake (POS) consensus method technology. That was its claim to fame. Casper’s management wanted investors to believe that POS was the end-all-be-all.
Many believed that it would be. Bitcoin (BTC-USD) was receiving a lot of pushback for proof-of-work (POW) mining practices that utilized massive amounts of energy and computing resources that leads to pollution.
That argument remains valid, but it hasn’t been enough to create any positive momentum for Casper, which has fallen since its inception and now trades for $0.04. Cryptocurrency marketing is rife with marketing speak that amounts to little. That’s a hallmark of the more dubious projects. Casper contains such wording, including the notion that it’s a ‘remarkable’ application of the PoS consensus method.
It’s admirable that Casper was intended to provide enterprise-level utility. However, founder experience working for companies like Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE), Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), and Red Hat are not the same as actual use case implementations at those firms.
On the date of publication, Alex Sirois did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.