You can tell an altcoin is close to death when its price soars. That may sound like a contradiction in terms, but that’s what can happen to crypto assets when they’re in the throes of death. With low liquidity and thin volume, exchange-listed altcoins are prey to manipulators who will send them skyward one final time for a quick profit.
Also read: Bitcoin History Part 7: The First Major Hack
Holders of paragon (PRG) woke up to a pleasant surprise this morning: their coin was up 6,800% overnight. The project has effectively been dead for months, with the SEC ruling in November that Paragon must refund investors who participated in its token sale. News that the worthless token had mooned overnight was thus greeted with astonishment by PRG holders. At 7 a.m. EST on Jan. 1, paragon was trading for over $10, having been changing hands for just $0.30 the day before.
On closer inspection, however, it became clear that the Paragon project wasn’t enjoying a new lease on life. It had not been let off the hook by the SEC, nor had it announced a major partnership that had set the coin’s price rocketing. Rather, paragon had become the latest moribund coin to be subjected to a pump and dump. It had taken just $27,000 of trading volume on a single exchange, Yobit, to propel PRG to double-digit dollar prices, and then back down almost to where it began hours earlier.
The final indignity of dying coins, it appears, is to be fraudulently manipulated to enrich insiders one more time. As other tokens that launched during 2017’s ICO mania die off like paragon, they risk succumbing to the same fate. As for Proof of Work coins that are also in the process of dying quietly, there’s another means of manipulation – the 51 percent attack. In a blog post published on Jan. 1, prominent bitcoiner Nic Carter performed a post-mortem on 15 cryptocurrencies whose demise he’d predicted at the start of 2018.
Do you think exchanges should be more proactive in delisting low-volume altcoins? Let us know in the comments section below.
OP-ed disclaimer: This is an op-ed article. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Bitcoin.com does not endorse nor support views, opinions or conclusions drawn in this post. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the Op-ed article. The opinion editorial is for informational purposes only.
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