The auditor firm Ernst & Young released a report on Friday about the state of the ICOs which raised funds in 2017.

The study analyzed the 141 top ICOs representing 87 percent of the total funds raised last year, and things don't look good. 71 percent of the projects don't have a working product or even a prototype. The fact that most of the ICOs seem to be failing doesn't bother me even a tiny bit. It shouldn't bother you either, unless you really bought the argument that ICOs are the future of business. Well, it turns out, as it always does, that crypto is just another market, and markets have certain characteristics. One of these is that nine out of ten startups fail, and it's not all that different with ICOs. Don't fool yourself: most of your ICO bags will go to absolute zero.

The web browser Brave, developed by the BAT team, has just announced a new feature which makes it possible to tip individual Reddit and Twitter users for their content. I am not sure Brave will ever be able to capture a market share significant enough to get this going and become mainstream. But they are onto something, just as Steem is. Both projects address the same issue: how to reward people producing valuable content.

A church in Siberia learned got caught running a modest scale mining operation which was still profitable thanks to the low, heavily subsidized electricity fees. The church tried to argue in court that they were using the electricity to produce religious materials. The court did not buy it.