The cryptocurrency phenomenon and the growth of a keen audience of cryptocurrency owners was never going to go unnoticed by cyber-criminals. To achieve their nefarious goals they typically use classical phishing techniques, however these often go beyond the 'ordinary' scenarios we have become familiar with. By drawing inspiration from ICO (initial coin offering) investments and the free distribution of crypto coins, cyber criminals have been able to profit from both avid cryptocurrency owners and rookies alike.

Some of the most popular targets are ICO investors, who seek to invest their money in start-ups in the hope of gaining a profit in the future. For this group of people, cyber-criminals create fake web pages that simulate the sites of official ICO projects, or try to gain access to their contacts so they can send a phishing email with the number of an e-wallet for investors to send their cryptocurrency to. The most successful attacks use well-known ICO projects. For example, by exploiting the Switcheo ICO using a proposal for the free distribution of coins, criminals stole more than $25,000 worth of cryptocurrency after spreading the link through a fake Twitter account.

Even as we reported, earlier this week, that there's a veritable digital grave of failed ICOs (either through bad management or by design) that have taken millions of dollars with them, news is breaking that the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) has started cracking down on these blockchain-fueled practices. According to the Wall Street Journal, citing "people familiar with the matter", the outfit has issued a number of subpoenas and information requests to technology companies and advisers involved in the ICO practices.

The SEC's intention here is to see whether or not any of these ICOs have been designed and offered in ways that contravene the established securities trading practices and regulations (heads-up: many of them most likely have). More specifically, the SEC is demanding information regarding the structure of ICO sales and pre-sales - where many of these actually fall apart in their transparency. According to former SEC commissioner Dan Gallagher, "We're seeing the tip of the iceberg ... there is going to be a ton of enforcement activity". Naturally, the very nature of the blockchain and ICO startups can simply build themselves up in ways that prevent them from ever being identified - after all, fake websites, media accounts, and white papers are all relatively easy to forge, and considering the current state of the cryptocurrency and ICO market (which has improved compared to last year), some users are always bound to be caught in the net.

ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) were 2017's talk in the cryptocurrency work: they were akin to the Dot-com craziness in the late 1990's, early 2000's, in that investment and speculation moved billions of dollars. Wherever you turned, every week, and sometimes more than twice per day, ICOs were popping out - initial investment efforts much like Kickstarter in "cool" new projects built on the blockchain technology. According to Tokendata, around 46% of 2017's ICOs resulted in failed projects: of the 902 crowdsales that took place last year, 142 failed at the funding stage, and 276 have failed, due to the "developers" either taking the money and running, or choosing the less obvious approach of letting the project fade into obscurity - alongside the collectively raised $233 million between them.

As if those numbers weren't high and disheartening enough as they are, an additional 113 ICOs are being classified as "semi-failed": the teams behind the projects have either started the process of obscuring their activities, stopping to communicate on social media, or their community has become so small as to mean the project has no chance of success. All in all, the 46% failed ICOs could soon grow to a staggering 59% of either confirmed failures or failures-in-the-making.

Blockchain technologies will eventually change the world, eventually. Whether or not cryptocurrencies will be part of that world, however, is still up for debate. Venezuela, however, is looking to reap dividends from the current cryptocurrency craze before the final answer to that question has a chance of being answered. As the country has entered a severely crippled economic and civil state, the search for a way to raise government funds has led to the development of the petro cryptocurrency - which is linked, as one would expect, to the country's primary export and income source: oil.

As part of the petro pre-sale, investors were being offered $60 petro tokens at discounted rates that they can exchange for actual petros during a planned Mars ICO (Initial Coin Offering). After that ICO has been gone through, a petro will supposedly represent a barrel of crude from a specific division in the country's Orinoco oil belt. Is this a pre-buy for a barrel of crude of sorts? It seems so. It's also an extremely risky move for investors, though, but nothing that they aren't used to already: futures trading does exist, after all.

ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) are one of the most important facets of Ethereum, responsible for propelling the cryptocurrency's value to its values of today. These are the cryptocurrency equivalents of community-backed investments and startups - not unlike Kickstarter, but based solely in the crypto world. Demand for Ethereum usually sees vast increases in volume after a promising ICO goes live (or in preparation for it), and is one of the premier channels for value to be chained towards this cryptocurrency. However, as is usually the case - and one needs only look towards Kickstarter as an example of this - there are both success and disaster stories to be met in this space.

Case in point of a disaster, Ethereum startup Confido has recently made headlines both for its $375K ICO, and after it surfaced that the entire initial coin offering was nothing more than a scam. Confido claimed to be a blockchain-based app for making payments and tracking shipments, and as is usual in ICOs, it sold digital tokens to investors over the Ethereum blockchain in an ICO that ran from November 6 to 8. Last Sunday, the company started erasing all marks of its short, profitable foray into the ICO world: it deleted its Twitter account and took down its website. A company representative posted a brief comment to the company's (now-private) subforum on Reddit as well as Medium, citing legal problems that prevent the Confido team from continuing their work.