What happened to the cryptocurrencies discussed by John Oliver in 2018?

On March 11th 2018, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver did an episode about cryptocurrencies. As the episode explains, these are digital, decentralized currencies, open source, not controlled by any business or government. The episode touts the cryptocurrencies decentralized nature & blockchain technology, which was supposed to make them hard to hack, but that’s proven untrue. In 2020 a massive data breach saw the personal information of over 270,000 bitcoin and cryptocurrency users published online. While bitcoin's decentralized nature means there isn't a company or organization that can be targeted directly, centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, wallet providers, and other digital platforms will always be bitcoin's greatest weakness. And it’s not just data that’s been stolen-- over $700 million worth of crypto had been pilfered as of 2019.

Oliver talks about how people have been buying into them, but treating them more like a speculative investment than currencies. This is risky because the crypto market is extremely volatile and insufficiently regulated. We’re advised to treat going into crypto more like gambling than investing and to never put in more than you can afford to lose (though you could say this to a degree about any investment). Oliver notes in the episode that any discussion of new tech tends to age badly--so with that in mind, let’s look back and see how the crypto mention has held up. Here are the values of the 17 cryptocurrencies when the episode aired and their value as of writing this article.

1. Bitcoin

2018: $9,925

2021: $57,397.23

Oliver speculates that in a few years Bitcoin could be worthless or adopted as a new global currency. It turns out that both predictions were nowhere close to reality. After a blip in early 2018 the price of Bitcoin was fairly flat for years but then skyrocketed in value during the pandemic--it would have been an awesome investment. But as ads for investment brokers are obliged to tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future performance--and there’s major reasons to have doubts about the future of Bitcoin. Even though it’s been the dominant crypto for over a decade, has a market cap of $1.1 Trillian and is a household name, there are still no practical uses for Bitcoin. Stores still aren’t accepting it. And it’s too volatile to be a store of value. It’s also started to draw the attention of environmentalists for the waste caused by “mining” for bitcoins--more energy is used creating Bitcoins, which only exist online, than powering Ireland.

If you did invest in Bitcoin, when would be the time to sell? Ideally you got out on April 14th, when Bitcoin hit an all time high of $64,800. Could Bitcoin reach a higher price than that? Sure, that’s entirely possible. Will it become stable at a higher price? That seems unlikely in the near future.

2. DogeCoin

2018: $.004

2021: $.41

Dogecoin is mentioned as a crypto that was started a joke about how people will buy any crypto. An meme Shiba Inu dog with broken English is it’s mascot. And people bought it. With a market cap of $53.7B it is a top tier coin. It’s increased 100 times in value since that episode. If DogeCoin is looking appealing to you, please keep in mind that almost all of that increase in value came just in the month of April--and when cryptos take off like a rocket they tend to come crashing back to Earth soon enough.

3. Bitconnect

2018: $0

2021: $0

Bitconnect had already been revealed to be a Ponzi scheme (users were guaranteed daily interest earnings for their investment) by the time the episode aired. It was basically a pyramid scheme, but with cryptocurrency. Not surprisingly, no one has tried to resurrect this brand.

4. EOS

2018: $5.79

2021: $6.77

EOS was talked about as an example of a company that was long on vague grandiose proclamations, short on specific business strategies and surrounded by a bizarre company culture. It had sucked up massive investments without really doing anything. It’s market cap of $6.5B is respectable, but not that impressive considering EOS was supposed to change the entire world. Most of its existence EOS has had a lower value than it does now; it is another crypto that performed well in the first half of April, but has been slipping since then.

5. Long Blockchain Corp.

2018: n/a

2021: n/a

“Long Island Iced Tea Corp. to Rebrand as ‘Long Blockchain Corp.’: Corporate Focus to Shift Towards Opportunities Strategic to Blockchain technologies.” So read an infamous press release. Their stock immediately shot up 300%. Oliver mentions this as an example of hype surrounding blockchain, but it was more than that, it was a straight up pump-and-dump scam. The company was delisted from Nasdaq and became the focus of an FBI investigation. Long Blockchain Corp. might have gotten away with it if they had bothered to, you know, make a cryptocurrency.

6. Jesus Coin

2018: $.0002

2021: $0

“Jesus Coin has been developed as the currency of God's Son. Unlike morally bereft cryptocurrencies, Jesus Coin has the unique advantage of providing global access to Jesus that's safer and faster than ever before.” This was another satire currency. Investopedia states that they had a market cap of $50B, but this seems to be a case of sloppy journalism. The joke press release proclaimed the coin was “Predicted to Achieve $50bn Market Cap – Predicted by Peter (not the disciple).” It never got anywhere close to that and in fact has ceased to exist.

7. TrumpCoin

2018: $.05

2021: $.03

Sure, it’s to be expected that any business associated with Trump would be a flop (though TrumpCoin isn’t owned by Donald Trump) but it’s still surprising just how badly this crypto has done. With a meager market cap of $238 thousand, it would only take a handful of MAGA enthusiasts to pump up the value of TrumpCoin. Yet somehow it failed to “Make Crypto Great Again.” Was this a joke or a scam? I am being told that idea is FAKE NEWS and that many people are saying this is the BEST COIN EVER.

8. Clams

2018: $.66

2021: $2.66

Clams is a volatile crypto and presumably a small fry, with no market cap available.

9. Titcoin

2018: $.0002?

2021: 0

“Titcoin is a digital currency for porn that supports the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” I couldn’t find exact data for Titcoin and it appears to have died out in February.

10. InsaneCoin

2018: $.06

2021: $.01

Not a great performance for InsaneCoin, though it’s small market cap, $424 thousand, is still better than TrumpCoin’s.

11. Electroneum

2018: $.05

2021: $.02

That lousy price actually indicates a recent uptick, Electroneum has spent much of the last 3 years trading at well under a penny. Kind of a shame as this was supposed to be a finance tool for the unbanked. Market cap $384 thousand.

12. Wax

2018: $.13

2021: $.26

Was intended to make e-commerce transactions faster, simpler and safer. You know how you use Wax for all your online transactions, right? Market cap $408 thousand.

13. Particl

2018: $21

2021: $2.77

Something about privacy.

14. DeepOnion

2018: $2.20

2021: $.67

Something about security.

15. Snovio?

The name of this one never appeared on screen and I can’t find any existing coin with this name. The closest, Snovian.Space, is defunct.

16. Pluton

2018: $13.16

2021: $10.34

You can get a Pluton debit card in Europe. This one might actually be working the way it’s supposed to--except it’s volatile and spent much of the last 3 years being nearly worthless. Market cap $8 million.

17. NewBits

Can’t find a record of this one existing. There’s a New BitShares that was launched in 2020, it’s mostly worthless.

I want to leave with a note for anyone who sees some of these values and thinks they might be a good investment. You could earn money off them, but most of the cryptos that are up (or even not down too far) are so as the result of a recent spike in prices that seems to have reached its high point in mid-April. This is actually a similar state to where crypto was when that episode of Last Week Tonight aired; crypto prices had spiked earlier in 2018 before dropping to near worthless levels for years.