ChainCensus

Dead Coins Database

curated set · 113 cases
113documented cases
32scams
2014–2026years spanned
MethodologyAPICite
When they dieddeaths per year · documented cases
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7
20
8
14
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’14’15’16’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
chaincensus.com/dead-coins · curated setcounts are documented cases, not every death
113 results · sorted by year died
NameLived ▾CauseNotes
Everclear CLEAR#2025–2026Wound downCross-chain liquidity protocol, once Connext, whose Everclear mainnet launched in April 2025. On 21 May 2026 it wound down protocol, foundation and labs, unable to turn $500M monthly volume into revenue; CLEAR fell 48%. ↗
Goldfinch GFI#2026Wound downProtocol lending crypto to real-world borrowers in emerging markets. After roughly $100M originated and pools in default and restructuring, GIP-87 passed with 100% support on 23 June 2026, putting it into maintenance mode with $56.15M still outstanding against $1.63M of TVL. GFI trades 99.8% below its January 2022 high. ↗
Over Protocol OVER#2026Wound downLayer-1 whose foundation cited insurmountable financial constraints and cut its wallet, nodes, RPCs, explorers and APIs on 28 April 2026, ruling out any restart. Block production is left to whichever validators remain. ↗
Radiant Capital RDNT#2026HackLending protocol drained via a backdoor contract on Arbitrum and BNB Chain in October 2024, losing $51M. After 18 months of recovery the DAO said on 1 June 2026 it had no viable path forward and went to maintenance mode. ↗
Step Finance STEP#2026HackSolana portfolio tracker. Attackers took 261,854 SOL — roughly $27M — from its treasury in late January 2026. STEP lost nearly 96% of its value, and in February the team wound down after exhausting financing and acquisition options, taking SolanaFloor and Remora Markets with it. ↗
Summer.fi SUMR#2026HackAn attacker inflated a Lazy Summer USDC vault's NAV ~9.5% with over-valued donations, then redeemed via flash loan for $6.04M on 6 July 2026. Summer.fi said on 15 July it had no viable path forward and is winding down. ↗
ZeroLend ZERO#2023–2026Wound downMulti-chain lending protocol. TVL fell 98%, from a $359M peak in November 2024 to $6.6M, as the chains it built on went illiquid and oracle providers dropped support. The founder shut it down in February 2026 with no recovery path for token holders. ↗
AML Bitcoin ABTC#2025ScamSold on a false claim that the Panama Canal Authority was close to approving it for ships. A jury convicted founder Rowland Marcus Andrade in March 2025 of defrauding investors of about $10M; he got 84 months. ↗
Conic Finance CNC#2025HackCurve omnipool protocol that lost $3M and then $300,000 to July 2023 exploits; deposits fell from $156M to under $600,000. On 7 March 2025 the team quit, unable to fix issues in its rebuilt version despite auditors. ↗
Elixir deUSD deUSD#2024–2025Wound downSynthetic dollar launched mid-2024. Stream Finance owed Elixir over $68M and held roughly 90% of the deUSD supply (~$75M); two days after Stream halted withdrawals, Elixir sunset deUSD on 6 November 2025, disabling mint and redeem and paying holders out 1:1 in USDC. ↗
Libra (Argentina) LIBRA#2025Rug pullMemecoin launched on Meteora and promoted by Argentine President Milei on 14 February 2025, who later deleted the post. It passed a $4.5B market cap, then insiders sold into the buying and took the cap down 90%. Nansen counted $251M of realized losses across 86% of traders. ↗
Prisma Finance PRISMA#2025Wound downLiquity fork wound down by its own governance under PIP-46: debt ceilings cut to zero, emissions stopped on 2 January 2025, trove managers sunset with rates spiked to 50% to force loans shut, and leftover PRISMA burned. ↗
Sango Coin SANGO#2022–2025AbandonedCentral African Republic state token sold with e-residency and land rights attached. Only about 10% of the planned 210 million tokens sold, raising under €2M with no public accounting; the Constitutional Court struck down the citizenship, residency and land incentives. In April 2025 the project said its original vision would not continue and the account has been silent since. ↗
Stream Finance xUSD xUSD#2025Mechanism failureYield-bearing dollar backed by off-chain trading. On 4 November 2025 an external fund manager disclosed a ~$93M loss of Stream's assets; deposits and withdrawals were suspended and the peg went with them. Loans secured by Stream collateral across Euler, Morpho and Silo were estimated above $280M. ↗
zkLend ZEND#2025HackStarknet lending protocol drained of $9.5M in February 2025 via a rounding-error flaw. With ZEND delisted by Bybit and KuCoin, the team wound down on 25 June 2025, leaving ~$200,000 of treasury for affected users. ↗
Mango MNGO#2021–2024Legal actionSolana exchange governance token that raised more than $70M from unregistered sales starting in August 2021. Settling SEC charges in September 2024, Mango DAO and Blockworks Foundation agreed to destroy their MNGO, request its removal from trading platforms, and never solicit a listing again. ↗
Petro PTR#2018–2024Wound downVenezuela's oil-backed state cryptocurrency, launched by Maduro in February 2018. The Patria platform — the only place it traded — shut it down on 15 January 2024 and converted remaining petros to bolivars, after a graft scandal around crypto used for oil sales toppled the minister overseeing it. ↗
Bald BALD#2023Rug pullMemecoin on Coinbase's Base chain that ran up 4,000,000% in 24 hours to a valuation around $68M. In July 2023 the deployer pulled the liquidity, draining $23M out of the project and netting $5.9M, then said BALD was a memecoin with no intrinsic value. ↗
Binance USD BUSD#2019–2023Legal actionOnce a top-three stablecoin. New York's DFS ordered issuer Paxos to stop creating new BUSD in February 2023 over unresolved problems in its oversight of Binance. Paxos halted minting and was left redeeming the outstanding supply 1:1 for dollars. ↗
DEI DEI#2023HackDEUS Finance's fractional-algorithmic stablecoin. A public burn vulnerability introduced in an April 2023 contract upgrade cost over $6M across BNB Chain, Arbitrum and Ethereum on 5 May 2023 — the second major exploit after a March 2022 flash-loan attack. Already trading near $0.30, DEI fell to $0.20 and the team paused contracts and burned the token. ↗
Fintoch FTH#2023ScamBNB Chain platform that falsely claimed to be built by Morgan Stanley, guaranteed 1% daily returns, and presented a paid actor as its CEO. Operators exited in May 2023 with about $31.6M of USDT, bridged out to Tron and Ethereum. ↗
Hector Network HEC#2023AbandonedFantom OlympusDAO fork whose treasury shrank from over $116M under accusations of mismanagement. July 2023's Multichain exploit was the final blow: holders voted to liquidate the remaining $16M and redeem HEC. ↗
Himalaya Coin HCN#2021–2023ScamGuo Wengui's H-Coin fed the Himalaya Exchange, through which the DOJ says he took over $262M in victim funds. The SEC charged him in March 2023, a jury convicted him in July 2024, and in June 2026 he drew 30 years. ↗
Indexed Finance NDX#2023HackIndex-fund protocol crippled by a $16M hack in 2021. By November 2023 its DAO held ~$120k, had fought off two hostile takeover votes with a 'poison pill', and handed control to a founder multisig to repay victims. ↗
Kokomo Finance KOKO#2023Rug pullOptimism lending protocol. On 26 March 2023 the deployer swapped in a malicious implementation contract that enabled unauthorized transfers, taking $4.5M of user funds. The token fell over 95% and the team removed its website and every social account. ↗
Merlin DEX MAGE#2023Rug pullzkSync exchange that promoted a CertiK audit, then lost around $2M during the public sale of its MAGE token in April 2023. CertiK's investigation pointed at a rogue developer with private key access who withdrew all the liquidity. ↗
Multichain MULTI#2023HackCross-chain bridge. More than $125M was drained on 6 July 2023, nearly $120M of it from the Fantom bridge. On 19 July the team said CEO Zhaojun had been arrested by Chinese police, who held the devices carrying the MPC keys, and that the company had ceased operations. ↗
Neutrino USD USDN#2023Mechanism failureWaves' algorithmic dollar. Analysts traced roughly $138M of USDN sold by the Waves team, the peg broke, and by February 2023 the token was being phased out in favour of XTN — leaving holders swapping a broken stablecoin for an unpegged one. ↗
SafeMoon SFM#2021–2023Legal actionReflection-token phenomenon of 2021; SEC and DOJ charged executives with fraud in 2023 and the company filed for bankruptcy. ↗
Voyager Token VGX#2023Legal actionBrokerage loyalty token. After sales to FTX US and Binance.US both collapsed, the bankrupt Voyager moved to self-liquidate in May 2023 with customers set to recover an initial 36% of their crypto. The wind-down left VGX with no issuer. ↗
Anchor Protocol ANC#2022Mechanism failurePaid up to 19.5% on deposits held mostly in UST, and drove UST's supply from $2B to $18.5B in a year. When the peg broke in May 2022 deposits fell from $14B to $8.7B over a weekend and the yield reserve halved to $176M in a month. Terra's chain and the protocol went with it. ↗
Capital Coin (Mining Capital Coin) CPT#2022ScamTouted as a DAO 'stabilized by revenue from the biggest cryptocurrency mining operation in the world'. The DOJ indicted MCC CEO Luiz Capuci in May 2022 over a $62M fraud, alleging funds went to his wallets, not mining. ↗
Cashio CASH#2022HackSolana stablecoin killed by an infinite-mint bug in March 2022: two missing validation checks let an attacker mint real CASH against worthless fake collateral, take over $52M and drop the token to $0.00005. The project was unaudited. ↗
Celsius Token CEL#2018–2022Legal actionLender's utility token; Celsius froze withdrawals and filed Chapter 11 in June 2022. Founder convicted of fraud; token extinguished in restructuring. ↗
Crowd Machine Compute Token CMCT#2018–2022Legal actionNo-code app ICO whose founder claimed a $40.7M raise; the SEC said Craig Sproule diverted over $5.8M of it to South African gold mining without telling investors. January 2022 consent judgments permanently disabled CMCT. ↗
FTX Token FTT#2019–2022Legal actionExchange token whose value rested on FTX's own business. FTX filed for Chapter 11 on 11 November 2022 listing $10B–$50B in liabilities, Bankman-Fried resigned, and John Ray III took over. The token lost the exchange it existed for. ↗
Fei USD FEI#2022Wound downReserve-backed stablecoin. After an April 2022 attack drained roughly $80M from the linked Rari Fuse pools and a $10M bounty offer went unanswered, founder Joey Santoro put forward TIP-121 to reimburse victims, distribute the assets and pull Fei Labs out of the Tribe DAO. ↗
HUSD HUSD#2022AbandonedFiat-backed stablecoin issued by Stable Universal and marketed through Huobi. The exchange delisted it in October 2022; HUSD fell to 28 cents, 72% below its peg, its market cap dropped to $63M from over $1B in 2021, and Huobi offered holders swaps into USDT. ↗
Nirvana ANA#2022HackSolana protocol drained on 28 July 2022 using a ~$10M flash loan and a pricing bug in its contracts. The ~$3.6M taken was approximately all the funds Nirvana had, and it shut down shortly after. The attacker's case was the first-ever DeFi hack prosecution. ↗
Ormeus Coin ORME#2017–2022ScamMLM token sold as backed by a $250M mining operation, one of the world's largest. The SEC said in March 2022 that the Barksdale siblings took more than $124M and had abandoned mining in 2019 on under $3M of revenue. ↗
Polybius PLBT#2017–2022ScamHashFlare's founders offered Polybius in May 2017 as a virtual-currency bank and raised at least $25M, moving most of it to accounts they controlled. Prosecutors say it never formed a bank or paid a dividend. ↗
Sparkster SPRK#2018–2022Legal actionNo-code platform ICO that took $30M from 4,000 investors in April-July 2018. In a September 2022 SEC settlement Sparkster agreed to destroy its remaining tokens, pull them from trading platforms and repay over $35M. ↗
TerraUSD UST#2020–2022Mechanism failureAlgorithmic stablecoin whose peg collapsed in May 2022, erasing ~$40B across the Terra ecosystem. Trades on as USTC at a fraction of a cent — dead as a stablecoin. ↗
Wonderland TIME#2021–2022AbandonedOlympusDAO fork on Avalanche. Days after its treasury manager was unmasked as QuadrigaCX co-founder Michael Patryn, founder Daniele Sestagalli declared on 30 January 2022 that the experiment was over — overriding a poll in which most respondents wanted to continue. TIME was down over 96% from its high. ↗
AnubisDAO ANKH#2021Rug pullOlympusDAO fork that raised 13,597 ETH, worth $60M at the time, selling ANKH in October 2021 before the developers absconded with all of it. Eight months on, the tagged wallet still held 12,500 ETH and had started laundering the rest through Tornado Cash. Nothing was recovered. ↗
Basis Cash BAC#2020–2021Mechanism failureAlgorithmic stablecoin launched on Ethereum in late 2020 that never held dollar parity for any sustained stretch. It sank below $1 in early 2021, peaked at $174M locked that February, and was left drifting under a cent. CoinDesk later identified pseudonymous co-founder 'Rick Sanchez' as Terra's Do Kwon. ↗
Empty Set Dollar ESD#2020–2021Mechanism failureRebasing algorithmic dollar that asked holders to swap ESD for coupons, locking supply away on the promise of redemption at a premium once the price recovered. It didn't recover: from late December 2020 the price slid to 23 cents, with little sign of ever returning to $1. ↗
Loci LOCI#2017–2021Legal actionPatent-search ICO that raised $7.6M from August 2017 to January 2018 on false claims about revenue, headcount and users. A 2021 SEC order made Loci destroy its remaining tokens and pull LOCIcoin from trading. ↗
Luna Yield LUNY#2021Rug pullSolana yield aggregator, the second IDO on the SolPad launchpad, which opened on 18 August 2021. Days later its site and socials went dark and over $6.7M in SOL, ETH, stablecoins and LP tokens left the protocol, reportedly routed through Tornado Cash. SolPad denied any relation to the team. ↗
Meerkat Finance MKAT#2021Rug pullBSC vault project drained of $31M — 13 million BUSD and about 73,000 BNB — on 4 March 2021, one day after launch. The deployer account itself upgraded the vault contracts twice, adding an unpermissioned init() backdoor. The team called it a hack, then deleted its accounts. ↗
SafeDollar SDO#2021HackPolygon algorithmic stablecoin. About $248,000, in 202,000 USDC and 46,000 USDT, was drained from its contract on 28 June 2021 — its second exploit in a week. The team paused the protocol and SDO's price collapsed to zero. ↗
Save The Kids KIDS#2021Rug pullInfluencer-promoted 'charity' token that opened on PancakeSwap on 5 June 2021 near $0.02. Its anti-whale sell limit was cut from 24 hours to 60 seconds before launch, letting promoters dump; the price fell to about $0.00138 by early July. FaZe Clan expelled one member and suspended three. ↗
Snowdog SDOG#2021Mechanism failureOlympusDAO fork designed to run eight days and then spend its whole treasury on one buyback. When the buyback opened SDOG fell over 90% instead of rising. The team's post-mortem conceded only the first 7% of supply sold could clear the pre-buyback price of about $1,200. ↗
Squid Game Token SQUID#2021Rug pullUnofficial token riding the Netflix show; anti-sell code trapped buyers before developers pulled ~$3M and vanished days after launch. ↗
StableMagnet SMG#2021Rug pullBSC 'stable' AMM that took $22.2M on 24 June 2021, rising to $27M as more user wallets were emptied. Because BscScan does not verify linked library code, the team deployed a malicious SwapUtil library that drained the pools and any wallet still holding an approval. ↗
Titan (Iron Finance) TITAN#2021Mechanism failureShare token behind the IRON partial-collateral stablecoin. On 16 June 2021 large sell orders triggered a run and TITAN fell from about $60 to zero within hours. IRON was minted against a ten-minute average TITAN price, so users minted at inflated prices and sold, breaking the peg. The Fed wrote it up as a case study. ↗
TurtleDex TTDX#2021Rug pullBSC file-storage project whose 15 March 2021 presale took 9,000 BNB, close to $2.5M. Days later the team drained the PancakeSwap and ApeSwap pools, converted to ETH and moved it to exchange wallets; the site went dark and the socials were deleted. Asked earlier about a rug, the team had joked that a turtle's arms are too short. ↗
Uranium Finance U92#2021HackBSC exchange forked from Uniswap v2. A calculation error in its v2 pair contracts let an attacker drain about $50M on 28 April 2021 during the migration; a smaller exploit had already taken roughly $1.3M on 8 April. US authorities seized $31M of the proceeds in February 2025. ↗
Zabu Finance ZABU#2021HackAvalanche yield farm. An attacker abused the token's transfer-tax mechanism to mint 4.5 billion ZABU, took about $3.2M in September 2021 and dumped the tokens on Trader Joe and Pangolin. ZABU slid from about $0.0047 to zero. ↗
BitClave CAT#2017–2020Legal actionBlockchain search-engine ICO that sold $25.5M of CAT to roughly 9,500 buyers in 32 seconds in 2017. A 2020 SEC settlement made BitClave repay the raise, hand 1.32 billion uncirculated tokens to a fund administrator for permanent disabling, and ask every trading platform to delist CAT. ↗
Boon Coin BOON#2017–2020Legal actionFreelance-marketplace token sold to over 1,500 investors for about $5M as stable and secure on patent-pending tech that did not exist. A 2020 SEC order made Boon.Tech destroy the Boon Coins it held and seek delisting. ↗
Compounder Finance CP3R#2020Rug pullYield aggregator whose token contracts went live on 10 November 2020. On 1 December the team used a public but unwatched 24-hour timelock to swap its audited strategy contracts for backdoored ones and pulled $10.8M from the vaults. CP3R fell 98.8% in a day. ↗
Cred LBA#2018–2020Legal actionLender that raised $26.4M in a 2018 LBA sale. It froze CredEarn deposits on 29 October 2020 citing fraud in the handling of corporate funds, then filed Chapter 11 on 7 November 2020 listing $100M-$500M of liabilities. ↗
DeTrade Fund DTF#2020Rug pullSold on access to centralised-exchange arbitrage bots, with a UK-registered company, an audit and a 'doxxed' CEO named Mark Jensen fronting the press releases. The private sale raised 1,438 ETH in December 2020 and the team vanished. Whether Jensen's face was a deepfake or one lifted from a real person was never settled. ↗
DigixDAO DGD#2016–2020Wound downGold-token DAO. In January 2020 holders voted over 95%, on 52 votes cast, to liquidate the $64M treasury and redeem DGD at 0.19 ETH per token. Digix, the company behind it, was not in favour and abstained. ↗
Dropil DROP#2018–2020ScamPromised profits from a trading bot called Dex. The SEC said in April 2020 no record showed Dex ever traded, and that Dropil claimed $54M from 34,000 investors while actually raising under $1.9M from fewer than 2,500. ↗
FCoin Token FT#2018–2020Mechanism failureToken of FCoin, which launched in May 2018 refunding trading fees in FT and paying 80% of collected fees to holders daily. In February 2020 founder Zhang Jian disclosed a shortfall of 7,000 to 13,000 bitcoin, around $130M, blamed on years of system errors over-crediting mining rewards. Withdrawals stopped; he denied both a hack and an exit scam. ↗
Gram (Telegram Open Network) GRAM#2020Legal actionTelegram raised about $1.7B in 2018 by selling 2.9 billion Grams to 171 initial purchasers. A US court blocked delivery of the tokens as unregistered securities; Telegram abandoned the project in May 2020 and settled by returning over $1.2B and paying an $18.5M penalty. ↗
Meta 1 Coin META1#2020ScamSold as risk-free, backed by a $1B art collection or $2B of gold, promising up to 224,923%. The SEC announced an asset freeze on 20 March 2020; coins were never distributed and the $4.3M+ raised funded personal expenses. ↗
Paragon Coin PRG#2017–2020Legal actionCannabis-industry ICO that collected $12,066,000 in crypto in its 2017 sale. A November 2018 SEC settlement ordered it to register PRG and refund buyers; it sent only $175,000 of the $250,000 fine, the founders left the US, and Paragon filed for bankruptcy in April 2020. ↗
Unikoin Gold UKG#2017–2020Legal actionEsports betting token. Unikrn raised $31M selling UKG from June to October 2017. Settling with the SEC on 15 September 2020, it agreed to disable UKG, ask platforms to remove it, and pay a $6.1M penalty. ↗
Yam Finance v1 YAM#2020Mechanism failureDeFi-summer rebase experiment that pulled in $585M of assets within days of its August 2020 launch, then broke two days in: the rebase issued excess supply to the treasury and disabled the on-chain governance needed to vote a fix. About $750,000 of treasury tokens were lost and the team began drawing up a v2. ↗
Yfdexf.Finance YFDEX#2020Rug pullAdvertised 'TrippleStaking' rewards on Twitter and Telegram for two days, paying promoters and offering 12 tokens per ETH deposited. It launched on 8 September 2020 and vanished the next day with $20M, deleting its website, Telegram and Twitter. ↗
Argyle Coin ARGYLE#2017–2019ScamPitched as risk-free, backed by fancy colored diamonds. The SEC won an emergency order in May 2019 halting a claimed $30M Ponzi with 300+ investors; over $10M went to earlier investors and to Aman's horses and rent. ↗
BitqyM BITQYM#2017–2019ScamCompanion token sold as an interest in a Bitqyck cryptocurrency mining facility running on below-market electricity. The SEC found the company owned no mining facility and had no access to discounted power. ↗
Gladius GLA#2017–2019AbandonedDDoS-protection ICO that sold GLA from October to December 2017 for nearly 24,000 ETH ($12.7M). It self-reported to the SEC and escaped a penalty, then shut down in November 2019 with no funds left to continue. ↗
KaratGold Coin KBC#2019Legal action'Gold-backed' coin sold through the Karatbars MLM network. On 21 October 2019 BaFin ordered issuer Karatbit Foundation of Belize to stop and wind up the electronic money business it was running in Germany on the KaratGoldCoin issuance, which it held had no licence. ↗
PlusToken PLUS#2018–2019ScamWallet scheme that presented itself as a South Korean exchange and promised 8-16% monthly returns. It took about $2.25B, including over 310,000 bitcoin, from more than 2.6 million members before collapsing in mid-2019. A Yancheng court jailed 15 people for up to 11 years in November 2020. ↗
Shopin SHOPIN#2017–2019ScamBlockchain shopper-profile ICO that took over $42M from August 2017 to April 2018 on invented retail partnerships and never built a working platform. Founder Eran Eyal spent at least $500,000 of it on himself. ↗
WoToken WOR#2018–2019ScamChinese Ponzi built around a non-existent arbitrage bot, paying 'interest' out of new deposits. It ran from August 2018 to October 2019 and took over $1B from 715,249 users. Four operators were sentenced to between 2.5 and 8.8 years. ↗
bitqy BITQY#2016–2019ScamSold on the claim that each token carried a fractional share of Bitqyck stock via a smart contract, plus a QyckDeals marketplace that was never the global platform advertised. Bitqyck took over $13M from 13,000+ buyers. ↗
AriseCoin ARISE#2017–2018ScamToken of AriseBank, a self-styled decentralized bank that claimed $600M of a $1B goal in two months. The SEC sued on 25 January 2018 calling it an outright scam; a court froze the assets and named a receiver. ↗
BeautyChain BEC#2018HackAn integer overflow in the token's batchTransfer function let an attacker move 57.9 * 10^57 BEC in a single transaction on 22 April 2018. OKEx rolled back BeautyChain trades two days later and paused ERC-20 deposits, with the project saying only that trading would resume at some undetermined date. ↗
Benebit BNE#2017–2018Rug pullCustomer-loyalty ICO that took between $2.7M and $4M before its site and social accounts vanished in January 2018. The team photographs on its About page were lifted from a British boys' school website. It had spent almost $500,000 on promotion and had over 9,000 Telegram followers. ↗
BitConnect BCC#2016–2018ScamLending Ponzi with guaranteed-return promises; platform shut January 2018, token collapsed >99%. Founder later indicted in the US. ↗
Centra Tech CTR#2017–2018ScamFake crypto debit-card ICO promoted by Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled; founders convicted of fraud, $25M+ raised. ↗
DavorCoin DAV#2017–2018ScamBitConnect-style lending scheme. Texas ordered it to stop on 2 February 2018; DavorCoin closed the lending platform on 7 February and DAV fell from a peak near $180 to about $3, then to roughly $0.03. ↗
Envion EVN#2018Legal actionContainer-mining ICO that took over CHF 90M from at least 37,000 investors without a banking licence. The Zug cantonal court dissolved the company and ordered liquidation on 14 November 2018; FINMA concluded in March 2019 that the ICO seriously breached supervisory law. ↗
Giga Watt WTT#2017–2018Legal actionMining-host token from a Washington state operation. Giga Watt filed for Chapter 11 in November 2018 owing nearly $7M to its 20 largest creditors, including about $800,000 in power bills; in January 2019 its electricity and site access were cut and daily operations stopped. Asked whether WTT holders could get their original bitcoin back, the company answered: 'No, it's not possible.' ↗
LoopX LPX#2018Rug pullSold on a proprietary trading algorithm that supposedly handled over 10,000 trades per second and paid members out weekly. Five token sales in January 2018 took 276 BTC and 2,446 ETH, about $4.5M, and then the website, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube channels all went dark at once. ↗
My Big Coin MBC#2014–2018ScamMarketed from 2014 to 2017 as a working cryptocurrency backed by gold and partnered with MasterCard. Neither was true and the coins were not transferable on the exchange the company advertised. Randall Crater took over $7.5M from 55 victims and spent it on a house, cars and $1M of antiques and jewellery. The CFTC called it a fraud in January 2018; Crater got 100 months. ↗
NuBits NBT#2014–2018Mechanism failureOne of the first algorithmic stablecoins, and the only live example of the seigniorage-shares design at the time. Its dollar peg broke for three months in 2016, repegged that September, then broke again on 21 March 2018; by July 2018 NBT traded near 25 cents. Both crashes traced to a small fractional reserve that was not algorithmically controlled. ↗
Oyster Pearl PRL#2017–2018Rug pullFounder Amir Elmaani, known as 'Bruno Block', told buyers the supply was locked, then secretly reopened the smart contract on 29 October 2018 to mint and sell PRL. The price collapsed. He pleaded guilty in 2023 and drew four years and $5.5M restitution for tax evasion. ↗
Pincoin PIN#2018ScamVietnamese MLM token promising 48% monthly returns and 8% commission per recruit. Modern Tech's team took about $660M from roughly 32,000 investors, then abandoned its offices in March 2018 and vanished. ↗
PonziCoin PONZI#2017–2018ScamA contract that told buyers outright it was a pyramid scheme, and they bought anyway. The creator shut the sale down, posting that it had been a parody art performance, that he never sold his own coins and that the contract was drained by other holders withdrawing — then warned readers off anything that looks like a pyramid, because it is zero sum. ↗
Prodeum PDE#2018Rug pullLithuania-based ICO promising blockchain price look-up codes for fruit and vegetables, promoted by paying Fiverr users to write its name on their bodies. It hit 18% of its funding goal, then exit-scammed over the weekend of 28 January 2018, leaving the word 'penis' on a white page. One listed founder said his identity had been stolen. ↗
Regalcoin REC#2017–2018ScamBitConnect clone promoted in India by Divyesh Darji, the alleged head of BitConnect Asia. It advertised 5,000% returns from a 'robotic trading algorithm' on a 99-day minimum lockup, plus referral bonuses every 11 days. The coin peaked near $90 in late 2017 and collapsed. Darji was jailed over BitConnect, made bail, and fled. ↗
Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services BAR#2017–2018ScamSold BAR on invented ties to the Federal Reserve, PayPal, Verizon, Boeing and Disney plus fabricated testimonials, raising as much as $21M. A court froze the assets and named a receiver on 29 May 2018. ↗
Tomahawkcoin TOM#2017–2018ScamOil-drilling ICO that ran from July to September 2017 on inflated reserve projections, leases the company did not hold, and a founder described as having a 'flawless background' despite a 1993 mail-fraud conviction. It raised nothing, but issued about 80,000 TOM through a bounty program. The SEC barred David Laurance in August 2018 with a $30,000 penalty. ↗
Useless Ethereum Token UET#2017–2018AbandonedSatirical ICO launched on 4 July 2017 as 'the world's first 100% honest' one, telling buyers plainly: 'No value, no security, and no product. Just me, spending your money.' Thousands of dollars came in within the first day. Nothing was ever built, because nothing was ever promised. ↗
iFan IFAN#2018ScamCelebrity social-network token. From January 2018 Modern Tech paid Pincoin's promised returns in iFan instead of cash; by March the team had abandoned its offices and left with the money. ↗
Confido CDT#2017Rug pullPitched smart contracts that would act as escrow between a buyer and a seller. Its November 2017 sale on the TokenLot platform raised nearly $375,000; days later the website and the team's social accounts were deleted. The token had traded as high as $1.20 on 14 November and fell to around 2 cents. ↗
Diamond Reserve Coin DRC#2017ScamZaslavskiy carried the REcoin scheme over to DRC World, also known as Diamond Reserve Club, selling a diamond-hedged 'membership' token. The SEC found it had bought no diamonds and run no business operations while still soliciting money. Both offerings were frozen together on 29 September 2017. ↗
GetGems GEMZ#2014–2017AbandonedTelegram-based messenger launched in December 2014 that called itself a 'crypto Facebook', with the GEMZ token as the incentive behind its referral programme; it drew over $1M of investment in 2015. Its market cap was small enough for individual traders to move: GEMZ peaked at $0.0563 in mid-May 2017, Poloniex delisted it, and the project was abandoned after that. ↗
Munchee MUN#2017Legal actionRestaurant-review app pitched as 'Yelp meets Instagram'. Munchee opened a $15M token sale in October 2017; the SEC made contact on day two and the company stopped at once, returning every buyer's money before a single MUN shipped. The cease-and-desist order landed on 11 December 2017 and held that calling a token a utility does not stop it being a security. ↗
OneCoin ONE#2014–2017ScamMulti-billion-dollar fraud with no real blockchain. Founder Ruja Ignatova disappeared in 2017 and remains on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list. ↗
PlexCoin PLX#2017ScamMarketed with a promise of 1,354% profit in under 29 days. On 4 December 2017 the SEC announced an emergency asset freeze against Dominic Lacroix and his company PlexCorps, halting an ICO that had raised up to $15M from thousands of investors since August. It was the first case brought by the SEC's Cyber Unit. ↗
REcoin RECOIN#2017ScamSold as 'The First Ever Cryptocurrency Backed by Real Estate'. The SEC found Maksim Zaslavskiy bought no property, had hired none of the lawyers, brokers and accountants he advertised, and that the coins on offer 'don't really exist'. He told investors he had raised $2–4M; the real figure was about $300,000. Assets frozen 29 September 2017. ↗
The DAO DAO#2016HackEthereum's crowdfunded investment fund sold about 1.15 billion DAO tokens for roughly 12 million ETH (~$150M at the close) between 30 April and 28 May 2016. On 17 June an attacker exploited a flaw in its code to divert approximately 3.6 million ETH — a third of the raise. A hard fork returned the money and split the chain; the minority that refused the fork continues as Ethereum Classic. ↗
GemCoin GEM#2014–2015ScamFrom September 2014 USFIA sold 'Gem Coins' through a multi-level marketing pyramid, calling them a digital currency backed by amber from mines the company did not own. Prosecutors put the take at $147M from 72,000 victims and found the coins had no circulation, no merchants and no economic value. Founder Steve Chen got 10 years. ↗
Paycoin XPY#2014–2015ScamGAW Miners' coin, launched on CEO Josh Garza's public promise of a $20 price floor. It was below $2 by the end of January 2015. Garza pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced in September 2018 to 21 months in prison plus six months' home confinement; a judge held him liable for more than $9M in the SEC's parallel case. ↗
UToken UTOKEN#2015ScamThe in-house currency of the uFun Club pyramid, pitched as a bitcoin rival backed by a 'gold reserve system' and several multibillion-dollar companies. Thai police raided the operation in 2015 after arrests across the Asia-Pacific; authorities put the number of people affected near 120,000 and possible damages as high as 38 billion baht ($1.13B). ↗
Coinye COYE#2014Legal actionKanye West-themed coin killed days after launch by a trademark lawsuit; developers abandoned it mid-litigation. ↗
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Cite this data

Dead Coins Database: 113 documented cases, scams most common. ChainCensus, cited 2 August 2026. chaincensus.com/dead-coins

Free to cite and screenshot with attribution. Full data via the API. The count grows over time — the methodology page keeps a dated change log, so a quoted figure stays checkable.

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