Smarter Than Crypto was a blockchain blockchain project that conducted an initial coin offering in the 2017-2019 era.
Reviewed by TheTokener Research Team
Blockchain
Ethereum
DisclaimerThis article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Crypto and ICO investments are high-risk. Full disclaimer.
This is an archival review of Smarter Than Crypto, a cryptocurrency project that raised capital through a token sale during the 2017-2019 ICO era. The blockchain space was a common target for blockchain projects during this period.
The ICO generation produced a handful of lasting protocols, a larger group of projects that pivoted successfully into DeFi or NFTs, and a long tail of ventures that gradually faded. The broader lesson is not that all ICOs were fraudulent — many were genuine, if flawed, attempts to apply new technology — but that the fundraising environment of 2017-2018 systematically rewarded story over substance.
For anyone researching Smarter Than Crypto today, the most important thing to understand is the context in which it operated. The 2017-2019 ICO period was a genuine experiment in decentralised fundraising, and not every project was a scam — many were legitimate attempts to apply emerging technology to real industries, including blockchain.
Like most ICO-era projects, Smarter Than Crypto built its economic model around a utility token. The token was not simply a fundraising instrument — it was meant to become the native currency of a working platform, with demand tied to actual usage rather than speculation.
In the blockchain industry, Smarter Than Crypto identified a specific coordination failure: parties who needed to work together lacked a shared, trustless system for recording obligations and automating fulfilment. Blockchain offered a potential solution by replacing bilateral agreements with self-executing smart contracts.
Few sectors went untouched during the 2017-2018 ICO wave, and blockchain was no exception. Smarter Than Crypto was one of several projects that identified friction points in this space and proposed Ethereum-based smart contracts as the mechanism for removing them.
Smarter Than Crypto issued its tokens on Ethereum, which meant that all transfers, holdings, and smart contract interactions were permanently recorded on the public ledger. This transparency was a feature of the token model — any investor could verify the total supply, check team wallet activity, and trace ecosystem fund expenditure.
Projects from the 2017-2019 ICO era had very different trajectories. A small number became significant DeFi protocols or infrastructure layers. A larger group survived by pivoting aggressively. The majority gradually became inactive as token prices fell and community engagement dwindled. Without current information from the team, it is not possible to say which outcome applies to Smarter Than Crypto.
The blockchain vertical attracted multiple blockchain projects during the ICO era, each claiming to have identified the most important problem to solve. Smarter Than Crypto's positioning relative to competitors depended on specificity — the more precisely it defined its target customer and use case, the more defensible its pitch became.
Smarter Than Crypto operated in good faith as far as public documentation shows. Its blockchain use case addressed a real problem, and its token mechanics were consistent with the norms of the period. Whether those mechanics produced lasting value for token holders is a function of adoption and market conditions that we cannot assess from historical data alone.
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