Dead coins are a popular term in the crypto world, especially in recent times when such coins have been on the rise. A dead coin is a digital currency that is no longer viable for trade.

A coin is termed dead if, within the last three months, the coin’s trades are worth less than $1000. Additionally, cryptocurrencies whose official websites are offline are considered dead. Currently, there are over 1600 dead coins, and the number keeps rising as new cryptocurrencies join the market. The advent of ICOs, especially, played a crucial role in increasing the number of dead coins.

How do You Identify a Dead Coin?

Dead coins have the following tell-tale signs:

No official live websites
The cryptocurrencies are used in a scam project
Coin developers abandoned or delisted the cryptocurrency
The coin’s wallet has several issues

Types of Dead Coins

The types of dead coins can be derived from the tell-tale signs. The most common types include;

Joke Dead Coins

These refer to coins that were developed without a specific use case in mind. Usually, some enthusiasts bet on the currencies even though they were launched just for their sake. Joke coins are pretty popular, and 2021 has especially been a good year for meme coins, such as Dogecoin. However, it is worth mentioning that for every successful joke coin, nine others don’t yield too much.

Some examples include JesusCoin and CryptoMeth.

Abandoned Dead Coins

These are the most common dead coins, and they come around for various reasons. Developers may abandon a coin due to limited funding, loss of traction, or being kicked out of exchanges. This category also includes coins whose information on why they died is little. Lucky7Coin is an excellent example of an abandoned dad coin.

Scam Dead Coins

Scam coins are also quite popular, especially since the first ICO went live in 2017. Some of the scams associated with such coins include pump and dump and massive pre-mine. To avoid being a victim of scam dead coins, it would be best to steer away from projects where the development team holds most of the tokens. Bitconnect was the biggest Ponzi scheme in the crypto industry and is an excellent example of a scam dead coin.