ASKfm: a Death on Everest

ASKfm decided to venture into crypto; its bombastic ICO promotional campaign turned into tragedy.

ASKfm, a platform for asking and answering questions and one of the top 10 social media networks in 2018, got into the spirit of the crypto frenzy and decided to launch its own token to incentivize content creation and distribution.

To promote their upcoming ICO, they organized an expedition to Mount Everest. The idea was to reach the summit and to place a ledger wallet with some 500,000 ASKfm tokens (worth $50,000 in ICO prices) there. On May 14, 2018, the goal was achieved.

ASKfm tokens & Mount Everest

The expedition brought ASKfm tokens on top of Mount Everest.

The ASKfm celebratory Medium post failed to even mention the poor Sherpa, who died during the descent. Sherpas are local people who assist climbers reach the summit of Mount Everest. Sherpa Lam Babu was left behind after the team reached their ambitious goal as if his life cost less than a handful of tokens.

The community was outraged by the project’s cynicism. From that point on, the ASKfm crypto affair went downhill. The ICO never took place, askfm.io (which was launched especially for the ICO) shut down, and no news has appeared regarding crypto integration. ASKfm is currently operating as usual, and even rewards users with their internal currency which has nothing to do with crypto and can be used for in-app purchases. It is not clear whether it was the sherpa tragedy that affected ASKfm crypto initiative so badly, or there were other reasons for its failure. Anyway, it’s a prime example of a crypto fail.