Reality hits home as UK crypto chancers go kaput

At least 340 UK companies related to cryptocurrencies or blockchain were dissolved or liquidated this year, compared to 139 in the previous year, according to a Sky News report.

More than 200 of those were incorporated with Companies House during 2017, when the value of Bitcoin surged 1,500% through to its peak in December.

“What you’ve had since the crash is a clean-out of the companies that don’t really have much and probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” Hugh Halford-Thompson, an early cryptocurrency enthusiast and founder of several blockchain companies, said.

“Last December, the interest in Bitcoin seemed divorced from any knowledge about the technology underpinning it – other than the name,” Sky News commented. “Shares in an unprofitable company called Long Island Iced Tea soared up to 289% when it renamed itself Long Blockchain – although that company was subsequently de-listed from the Nasdaq stock, and has now been issued with a subpoena by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. How times have changed.”

They have indeed, Sky News, they have indeed.