Aphelion Decentralized Exchange (DEX) Shuts Down; Bag Holders Left With Useless APH Tokens

Cryptocurrencies starting up and amounting to nothing isn’t really uncommon. As more of the world learns of cryptocurrency, its “get rich quick” nature will make people try their luck.

Sometimes, it happens to relatively successful coins as well, as is seen by Aphelion. Aphelion is both a cryptocurrency token and a NEO-based DEX. They’ve announced that they were taking steps to close their platform down. As a direct result, their own crypto coin has dropped so much in value that it’s virtually worthless.

The public announcement was made via twitter, but they give a bigger one via Telegram.

It is with great disapointment we must report our groundbreaking DEX and project is taking steps to close down. After nearly 2 years and successful applications across all channels and 10s of thousands of lines of open source code that the market has finally taken its toll.

— Aphelion (@Apheliontoken) October 8, 2019

Within this statement, they cite their utmost disappointment that their ‘groundbreaking’ DEX and their project as a whole are taking steps to close down. They stated that, while having had two years of successful business, the market has taken its toll on the organization. They cite a general lack of trading within their DEX and NEO based assets in general.

The Telegram post stated that they’ve been operating for all of 2019 with a loss. This was after they even raised the capital to incorporate the heavyweights of the crypto industry, Bitcoin and Ethereum, into their DEX wallets. They cite their diminishing token value as a final reason, before wishing the crypto community and industry, as a whole, the best of luck.

Aphelion’s Start

Aphelion’s token sale was very second ever to be held on the NEO blockchain, ending in December 2017. Within the public token sale, 170 million APH tokens were made available for purchase. This token sale aimed to garner up an impressive $34 million in funds for the platform. However, according to various token tracking sites, Aphelion raised only about $4.7 million to $6.7 million in funding.

Backlash

The Aphelion coin itself was simply used as a way to pay fees on Aphelion’s DEX platform. With the DEX going under, the coin is all but useless. It’s already dropped 99.99% and is still in complete freefall. The token will more than likely just fade into obscurity.

As Aphelion announced they were shutting down, there was a very substantial amount of backlash against the medium. Many people now consider Aphelion to be nothing more than a sham. The implication being the company pulling in as many funds as possible before killing their operation when they deemed it had run its course.

The implications of such an accusation being right is a sad thing indeed. Many people have done similar scams on more conventional formats, and have succeeded very nicely in the process. The laws with cryptocurrency are still somewhat vague, and changes from country to country just like anything else. Hopefully, this will be the last of such events.