What’s much harder to recognize are projects that are slowly burning through the raised capital with no product to show for it. Less than a handful of projects have gone live and the ones that have gone live have seen very limited use. In the grand scheme of things, blatant exit scams are only a small percentage of the total amount raised through the ICOs. Most invested capital is tied in the largest projects. Diar crunched the numbers for top 10 ICOs whose tokens have been trading for at least 6 months and found that their price fell by 93% on average from their all time highs erasing $22.3bn from the market cap.

The cryptocurrency industry may be maturing, but that doesn’t mean it’s likely to shed its reputation as a playground for scam artists anytime soon.



That’s according to a report from Diar, which found that ICO exit scams have now cost investors nearly $100 million.



The majority of these stolen funds, an estimated $68 million, has been raked in by exit scamsthat have occurred during the first two weeks of August. The largest, allegedly pulled by the China-based Shenzhen Puyin Blockchain Group, raised $60 million from three separate ICOs before attracting the attention of the State Market Regulatory Administration (SMRA)

According to CCN today, which references this original article from Diar , straight up ICO scams cost investors $100 million in lost funds so far. The referenced article goes on to point out that these losses don’t take into consideration those projects that raised funds via ICO and are currently burning through them quietly and under the radar without any hopes of producing a functioning system.Excerpt:The lack of accountability in crypto will directly lead to regulations. Crypto has failed to police itself, leading several countries to propose legislation restricting ICO’s or placing them into categories that come under current regulatory systems.Many long time crypto enthusiasts decry legislation and prefer self-policing systems, but the current environment falls well short of that ideal.We at TCF continue to believe that scams and ICO’s have contributed heavily to 2018’s bear markets. Until investors approach crypto with deep analysis, skepticism and become much more selective with their money, prices will remain suppressed.Remember, all the lost money could have been injected into the few legitimate projects, supporting both development and market prices. These searches for get rich quick schemes need to stop for crypto to mature.It’s your hard-earned money. Stop sending it to non-existent projects in the hopes of a quick profit. Do your research. Be critical. Be thorough. Be careful.Also posted in our Scams section with the original reported list of biggest ICO exit scamsThe CCN article follows:Excerpt:.’