The other night I came across The Useless Ethereum Token, or UET for short. This seemed like a funny name for a coin so I took a look.
The first thing I read was this;
Let's be honest—everyone's tired of ICOs. They get hyped up for weeks, and then they launch and clog up the Ethereum network for days, Coinbase goes down for a while, and then “investors” see the new tokens lose most of their “value”. This ICO is going to be different.
Hmm, so far so good, I was intrigued so I read on . .
The UET ICO transparently offers investors no value, so there will be no expectation of gains. No gains means few investors, few investors means few transactions, and few transactions means no Ethereum network lag—not to mention no depressing posts on /r/ethtrader about people losing all their savings!
Aha! I thought; this man has got my attention, he is offering absolutely no value whatsoever, and telling us about it in advance.
I like your style sir . . I read on . .
I learned all about Ethereum smart contracts and Solidity over a weekend so I could launch this ICO. Most of the smart contract contract code is copied from GitHub and Stack Overflow posts, so it should be pretty much right… right?
You had me at; I copied the code from Github.
Also, I definitely didn't have any smart contract experts look at the contract before I launched it. I mean, why bother? All the other ICOs go through weeks of auditing and they still end up with bugs and vulnerabilities in their contracts.
Good point, well made.
Unlike with every other token sale on the market, I can guarantee here and now that the value of UET will not (in fact, can not) reduce during or after the ICO. Since these tokens aren't worth anything to start with, there's nowhere to go but up!
But remember—this is a completely honest ICO, which means I don't want anyone to mistakenly expect the value of the tokens to go up, either. They're called Useless Ethereum Tokens for a reason.
Well there you have it, a rather funny joke you might say; and you'd be right.
Except for one thing, that isn't the punchline hasn't come yet. The funniest thing about the Useless Ethereum Token is that it raised 310.444 Eth, the equivalent of /$69505 at the time of offering.
That's right people, a whole bunch of people spent 310.444 Eth on a token the developer warned them would be worth nothing.
Welcome to the future, welcome to a disturbing, and frightening new world.
What can I do with UET?
UET is a standard ERC20 token, so you can hold it and transfer it.Other than that… nothing. Absolutely nothing.
(Seriously, don't buy this. Why are you even still reading these?)
Let The Madness Begin
So now the insanity has truly begun, we know the Emperor's naked and we don't care.
We will not only trade tokens that carry promises that at best, could be described as complete bullshit. Now we will happily buy tokens that are telling us they're worthless.
Perhaps in the hope of . . ? Maybe the people who are left holding the UET wondering why they can't sell it, are hoping for a random strike of irony. Whereby it somehow becomes worth something, because it's funny.
I mean why would any . . erm, well, it turns out that it is trading . . it wen't as high as 0.02 BTC (/$58) and then crashed to a few hundred Satoshi (/$0.003).
It was pumped and dumped by the Dev, just like he promised . .
Will UET be traded on any exchanges?
I hope so. You have no idea how much I hope so.In fact, if it does get picked up by any of the major exchanges, I promise to use some of the ICO proceeds to constantly and incessantly manipulate the market.
How do I get a refund for the tokens I bought?
You're kidding, right?
What Now?
So where do we go from here? Well clearly we go headlong into oblivion, there is no what now. If you feel suitably insane, you can hunt down UET and trade it for around 1300 Satoshis.
If you do, you are crossing the boundary, into the twilight of madness, where you will buy any old shitcoin just for the laugh of it.
Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of the ICO, perhaps, just as the modern internet rose from the smouldering ashes of the dotcom boom. So too will the phoenix of cryptocurrency ascend from the burnt pyre of Initial Coin Offerings.
The logo is fun.
Haha!! totally and people still bought it!! World is going crazy!
That's my favourite part :-)
Cg
This brings up an interesting point - sometimes it's better if your "money" or "means of exchange/unit of account" isn't actually good for anything. That prevents it from being subject to the swings of supply and demand from use, which makes it a better base for contract law and exchange agreements (nobody wants price exposure/volatility in trade).
Thanks for the post, I enjoyed your humorous commentary. I'd like to think this was some sort of "high water mark/shoeshine boy" type of moment, but truthfully there are a bunch of cryptos with basically no use whatsoever that have traded for years.
I don't know which way is up anymore.
Well someone sure has made a map of cryptos with their (unique) uses no?
Thanks @cryptogee I haven't even attempted to branch out in the crazy world of purchasing anything other than steem as it is all still so confusing. I resteem a lot of post like this so I can locate it on my blog after I educate myself a bit more. Heck, I am still studying the ins and outs of steemit. Keep em comin my friend.
This reminds me of Cards Against Humanity's annual Black Friday gimmick. Last year they put a live feed on their website of a bulldozer digging a hole, and invited visitors to donate in order to keep the digging going all day. They raised a ridiculous amount of money, even though they were totally honest that there was no purpose for the hole, they were just trying to take advantage of Black Friday traffic without actually putting their product on sale, and you were basically stupid if you donated.
Great reference. I enjoy this every year.
haha I was thinking the exact same thing as I was reading this.
Yup, Black Friday is another stupid indicator, or maybe stupid barometer; yeah I think that works better :-)
Cryptogee
Oh Gosh- is this what we have come to?!?
Well I am now looking for projects/tokens that offer value with solving real world problems. Or those that at least generate more tokens (whether useless or not)
Projects like TIME Chronobank solve a real world problem as does Lbry.
Steem tokens earn more Steem tokens.
But the project I am watching most closely does both of these: ONG Coin.
It gives full control and monetization of social media content to the actual content creators and is free from censorship. At the same time you can get paid in multiple cryptos.
Tokens are only worth the value they bring. This madness has got to slow down and find a place in reality.
Yup, the madness is fully upon us now :-)
Sounds interesting, kind of sounds like Steemit, I'd like to know how they do it.
Cg
Hey cryptogee,
Briefly (and without writing the whole whitpaper here) it's a hub for all your social media channels. And you can choose to monetise your content with ads or not. If you do, you get a share of the revenue.
Your content is protected (not centralised) by running on both ethereum amd waves blockchains.
And they will integrate with Storj and Golem so you can rent out your computer to passively earn crypto
Ongcoin.io
Hmm, sounds impossible at the moment . . nice idea if it one day works :-)
Cryptogee
The irony is, that when all coins went down this one went up https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@emble/guess-what-what-is-the-best-performing-crypto-today-on-hitbtc
I jsut can't believe this has gotten so much traction in the time it has been put out there to the public to see how ICO's really work.
I thought this was joke when I first heard about it.
But as you can see. it is real and operating just like any ICO out there where people just blindingly just throw money towards something in the hope to make something back from it.
It is called exploiting people of their HOPE in something.
Or of pushing their buttons into their GREED.
Which ever you like to believe is the reason for what people do in their search for sucess thinking it is all about money and gathering more into their investment portfolio thinking they are doing nothing wrong.
But this goes to show you all that is not true
They are doing something wrong in believing in something that exposes you for the greedy little demons people can be.
Shame on you all for buying into this.
Just like giving into the BCH debacle a few days ago.
Now look how that turned out?
Into Coinbase going belly up in court and screwing us all who held funds with them and havin them turn the IRS onto those customers they deem "making too much" out of what?...
THEIR GREED!
It will be the complete down fall of the United States economy.
This is just the beginning.
I think a lot of people bought it for a joke . .
Cryptogee
I'm glad I found your post I haven't purchased this coin but the way you write is pretty funny and I enjoy your content. Looking forward reading more! followed and up voted.
Great article. But who is brave enough to tell the emperor. The messenger usually ends up dead?
The Emperor knows he's naked as well . .
Cg
Makes you think about what "value" really is. I suppose if there is demand for something, that automatically gives it value even if there isn't actually a real world use for it.
you have a point @kiss-my-axe
Crazy... I had to go to coinmarketcap to see for myself if this was true... Unbelievable. Or maybe not.
Yup, the world's gone start raving mad :-D
Cryptogee
its the skinny jeans cutting that blood supply to peoples heads, everyones crazy in this world, except me I'm a double hard custard chucker x
Its been raving mad for awhile now. Great article.
Cool article. I had never heard of Useless Ethereum Token but it sounds interesting. Funny how it started as a joke and people actually invested. Really interesting.
Yup, crazy times :-#
Cryptogee
Sounds like almost every crypto token. I honestly don't know why there's so much hype behind every new token sale. They all offer the same thing: speculation.
Buy, hold, sell. That's about it for most cryptos.
The fact that this guy states it's useless and people still bought it, is phenomenal, and shows the market is crazy.
Cryptogee
Yikes. That could be the catalyst to a market correction.
My god, I knew about UET but now they're trading it too...
I have to be honest though. I am kind of tempted to get a few..
It's like Dogecoin, everybody needs some Dogecoin too. Why? Just.. 'cause.
i actually like dogecoin, very small transaction fee, fast transaction time and accepted here and there.
Oh yes, Dogecoin is awesome! I have used it for sending funds between exchanges a lot. Much fast, such cheap indeed!!
But it does show, that even a 'crapcoin' can have purpose and value.. perhaps it is similar in UET. Wether it's a good investment is an entirely different matter... though if you look at the charts, Dogecoin has had some interesting price movement over the years.
Haha, yes I think I'll get a few just for the laugh of it :-D
Cryptogee
My feeling is once LISK, Stratis and NEO (formerly Antshares) get their modular blockchains and SDKs online, it's a matter of time before Ethereum is toast.
Makes me seriously consider actually doing my satire ICO.
I think you're right there, especially with NEO . .
Me too! :-)
Cryptogee
Good article, it's awesome how people are investing in it even though they know it's worth nothing. Or maybe that's the challenge, being mad and taking a chance into the unknown.
Except it wasn't unknown, he told them it was useless and that it would pump and dump on his say-so. The only awesome thing about it is people's game for a laugh, and stupidity.
Cryptogee
True :)
Lol, I though that you're gonna write that Etherum itself is useless :D tip!
!! never!!
This is beautiful. It's like one of those gag gifts we all know has no importance or use to us, but it's so stupid it actually becomes popular.
Essentially telling us not to get so hyped up for every ICO.
I know it's great; I hope this does start a whole new wave, which in turns ends the madness of stupid ICOs.
Cryptogee
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This is hysterical! I don't think that it should worry anybody. There are people who are genuinely trying to create value out of these cryptos and icos. This guy had a great sense of humor, and I think it would be fun to own a UET. It is a symbol of the times IMO. What ever happened to that coin 42? OMG I just looked it up and it is over $8k a coin... lol
These people are few and far between . . .
Never heard of it; why isn't it listed anywhere?
Cryptogee
Hi, cryptogee,
RE: genuine people creating value
You may be right, but I don't think we would be were we are in crypto (obvious progress towards a better monetary/currency system) if the people that were genuine weren't the strongest force in the crypto ecology.
RE: 42 Coin
Not sure, but you can check it out here: http://42-coin.org/
This was traded maybe 2 years ago on cryptsy I don't know much about it. I thought the concept was funny and interesting back then. I hadn't though about it since until this post.
Https://steemit.com/blog/@munzil/giant-gem-worth-rp2-2-trillion-found-in-myanmar-201784t04453860z
Hi brother, can you help me, because every post I rarely support.
The irony is, that when all coins went down this one went up https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@emble/guess-what-what-is-the-best-performing-crypto-today-on-hitbtc
That token looks shit! Eat a bag of dick UET.....💩
Hilarious concept and well written post. Is it actually as easy as he made it sound to create a coin and have a ICO? I always assumed it would take a team of super smart developers. Good for the guy; nice way to share his message and make a quick buck at the same time.
I know right? I'm thinking of launching one myself, after a weekend's learning! :-)
Cryptogee
Great article
I came across the useless ethereum token earlier this week. It reminded me of a story from the late stage of the dot.com bubble when a company (I can't remember the name) registered a something.com domain and made an IPO. The SEC documents told the whole story in plain English. They had no assets other than the domain name, no workers, no capital, no business plan, no hope of profit, no good reason for an IPO. All of it was in the first paragraph of the IPO announcement, but it still sold out and raised a whole load of money.
Then I came across onG while I was looking for competition that Steemit might face. The website looks nice, the bios of the investors look impressive. Their idea is something about a social media dashboard to bundle your social media accounts into one interface with a crypocurrency to pay you for your content - that seems a little fuzzy to me, I don't really get it.
Then I read the whitepaper. It seems that the onG team forgot to finish thinking about their idea before they jumped into fund-raising mode. They have a concept called Gravity that is like a time-weighted popularity ranking with a bunch of formulas to compute the Gravity of a post, but they didn't really explain why they compute it that way or what could go wrong if they get the formula wrong.
The comparison between the onG whitepaper and the Steemit whitepaper is night-and-day. I've actually read the Steemit whitepaper cover to cover twice. This is embarrassing to admit, but I get a little thrill from it. The writing is plain and clear, the ideas are clever and detailed - it is the work of brilliant people.
The best part about the Steemit whitepaper is that it demonstrates tremendous insight into how people, social groups, and markets work. That is the principle reason behind my support for Steemit. It lets individuals pursue their own interests, helps social groups form & interact, and uses market forces to hold the whole thing together. That is why Steemit will succeed.
You are obviously a Steemit believer, @cryptogee, so I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Maybe one of your followers will see this and decide to read the Steemit whitepaper. That would be a good thing.
Hmm, I beg to differ, but yes, at least it delivers on a promise, which I guess UET does as well :-)
Cg
REAL post you are making sense i wish the whole world can see this
I know so many people who have started to get into crypto recently, and they are trading coins they have no idea what they do. I generally think it's a very good thing, because as a poker player, you need to have some fish in the pond, in order to be able to part them from their chips. It's Darwinian man, Darwinian I tell you!
It's all gone shocking!!
Cg
tl; dr: people are dumb.
This is by far the funniest ICO I have ever seen.
Bloody hilarious! :-D
Cryptogee
There is the word USELESS in the name of the token and yet people still bought it!!
Maybe they thought about it like a real world object! With time, it will become something rare and people would be willing to buy it for a high price!
They should know that whatever can be created once on the web, can be replicated infinitely. Not much additional resources are required, except power and storage space.
The funny thing is, since I wrote this, it has gone up about 8 x in value . . wish I bought some! :-D
Cryptogee
It is an ICO. Gauging its value is difficult. It all depends on how well they are developing the end product and the usage for it...
As he clearly states in the ICO, he will not be developing it and there is no use for it, hence the name Useless.
Cryptogee
Maybe they are not developing them in the immediate future. But we never know tomorrow.. Just when everyone has forgotten about it, they develop a project around it and boom token price up!
Great write up. Wondering if you suffer from blockfolio addiction too? - https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@cryptocoinclub/confessions-of-a-blockfolio-addict
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