What is High Voltage (HVCO) Crypto Coin? The Full Story Behind a Defunct Cryptocurrency

What is High Voltage (HVCO) Crypto Coin? The Full Story Behind a Defunct Cryptocurrency
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High Voltage (HVCO) crypto isn’t something you can buy, trade, or use today. It’s not a hidden gem waiting to be discovered. It’s not even a struggling startup. It’s a ghost. A digital corpse buried under years of silence, abandoned websites, and zero trading activity. If you’re wondering what HVCO is, the answer isn’t about technology or potential-it’s about what happens when a cryptocurrency dies and no one notices until it’s too late.

What HVCO Actually Was

High Voltage Coin (HVCO) launched around 2016-2017 as a hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake blockchain using the same SHA256 algorithm as Bitcoin. That means it was designed to be mined like Bitcoin, but also allowed users to earn rewards by holding coins-something that sounded promising back then. The total supply was capped at just over 1.69 million coins. No premine. No big institutional dump. On paper, it looked clean.

It claimed to offer fast, cheap, and anonymous transactions. That’s a common pitch for dozens of altcoins from that era. But unlike coins that actually built something-like DigiByte or Syscoin-HVCO never delivered. No wallet updates. No exchange listings beyond two obscure platforms. No developer activity. No whitepaper you can find today. Just a website that now returns a 404 error.

The Price History of a Dead Coin

Its highest price was $1.80 in April 2018. That’s not a lot by today’s standards, but for a coin with barely any attention, it was a spike. Then came the crash. By January 2017, it had already hit an all-time low of $0.00005926. And that wasn’t the end.

By November 2023, HVCO was trading at $0.001103. Sounds low? It is. But here’s the real kicker: zero 24-hour trading volume. That means no one bought or sold it in the last 24 hours. Not a single transaction. Not on Binance. Not on Kraken. Not on Coinbase. Not even on the tiny exchanges that still list forgotten coins.

Its market cap hovered around $1,640. For context, that’s less than the cost of a decent used laptop. And it’s ranked #28,998 out of over 25,000 cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinGecko. Wait-that doesn’t add up. It’s ranked lower than there are coins. That’s because some trackers list coins with zero activity as “inactive,” but HVCO still clings to a listing out of historical inertia.

Why HVCO Failed

It didn’t fail because it was badly coded. It failed because it had no reason to exist.

SHA256-based coins were already oversaturated. Bitcoin dominated mining. Litecoin and DigiByte had stronger communities. Syscoin had real use cases. HVCO offered nothing new. No unique tech. No partnerships. No roadmap that was ever followed. The promised merchant integrations in 2017? Never happened. The mobile wallet launch in 2018? Vanished.

Even the developers disappeared. No GitHub repo. No Telegram group with active members. No Reddit threads after 2019. The Twitter account @HVCO_Coin hasn’t posted since October 2019-over 1,400 days of silence.

One source, HTX.com, claims HVCO is tied to energy transmission systems. That’s nonsense. No other credible source supports it. No whitepaper mentions it. No technical documentation backs it. It’s either a lie or a case of mistaken identity with a completely different project.

A cracked HVCO blockchain node device with disconnected wires and a flickering LED.

What Happens When a Crypto Dies

There are thousands of dead cryptocurrencies. CoinGecko estimates over 8,200 are effectively abandoned. HVCO isn’t just dead-it’s in the bottom 0.5% of all digital assets by market cap. It’s part of what experts call the “zombie coin” category: coins with under $1,000 market cap and no trading activity for over six months.

And once a coin hits that point, it almost never comes back. The Blockchain Research Institute’s 2023 Cryptocurrency Mortality Index gives HVCO a 99.8% chance of permanent abandonment. That’s not a guess. That’s based on data: zero code commits, zero exchange volume, zero community, zero updates for over four years.

Even if someone wanted to revive it now, they couldn’t. The wallet software is gone. The blockchain explorer doesn’t work. There’s no way to verify transactions. No one holds it. No one trades it. No one even talks about it.

What You Should Know Before Buying HVCO

Don’t buy HVCO. Not because it’s risky. Because it’s impossible.

You can’t buy it on any major exchange. You can’t store it because no wallet supports it anymore. You can’t sell it because no one’s buying. Even if you found someone selling it on a shady forum, you’d have no way to verify if the coins are real or just a number someone typed into a fake blockchain viewer.

Some people still list HVCO on decentralized exchanges or obscure platforms like BC.Game or Whale.io. But those listings are meaningless. They show prices based on ancient trades from 2019. No one is actually trading. It’s like seeing a price tag on a car that’s been scrapped for parts.

And if you think “it’s cheap, so it’s a good buy”-that’s the trap. Low price doesn’t mean value. It just means no one wants it. You’re not buying an asset. You’re buying a digital artifact.

Three transparent plaques of dead cryptocurrencies, with HVCO at the bottom, fading into dust.

Is HVCO a Scam?

Was it a scam from the start? We can’t say for sure. There’s no evidence of a premine or rug pull. The coins were distributed through mining. But that doesn’t make it legitimate.

It’s more accurate to call it a failed project. The team started with good intentions, maybe. But they disappeared. No communication. No updates. No response to questions. That’s not fraud-it’s negligence. And in crypto, negligence is just as deadly.

Reddit threads from 2018 already called it a “premine scam.” Even back then, people knew something was off. The lack of transparency, the silence after launch, the broken promises-it all added up.

Where HVCO Fits in Crypto History

HVCO is a cautionary tale. It’s not unique. Thousands of coins launched between 2016 and 2020 with similar promises: faster, cheaper, better. Most died quietly. A few got acquired. A tiny fraction survived.

HVCO didn’t even make it into the top 100 dead coins. It’s not mentioned in major reports unless it’s in a list of “coins to avoid.” CryptoSlate called it “functionally defunct” in 2021. CoinDesk skipped it entirely in their 2022 micro-cap analysis because it had “insufficient activity to warrant coverage.”

It’s a footnote. A glitch in the blockchain record. A reminder that not every coin with a logo and a website is worth your time.

What to Do Instead

If you’re looking for low-cap coins with potential, look at ones with active development, real use cases, and community support. Check GitHub. Check Discord. Check exchange volume. Don’t just look at price.

HVCO teaches us that the most important metric isn’t how low the price is. It’s whether anyone still cares.

miriam gionfriddo
miriam gionfriddo 4 Dec

OMG I JUST FOUND A WHOLE WALLET OF HVCO COINS IN MY OLD LAPTOP FROM 2018!! I’M RICH!! WAIT NO-IT’S JUST A .JSON FILE NAMED ‘hvco_wallet_backup.json’ WITH THE BALANCE OF 0.0000000000000001 AND A PICTURE OF A CAT. I’M SO SCARED. 😱

Kenneth Ljungström
Kenneth Ljungström 4 Dec

Man, this is such a sobering read. I remember when we all thought every new coin was the next Bitcoin. We were so naive. HVCO didn’t fail because it was bad tech-it failed because no one cared enough to keep it alive. That’s the real lesson here. 💔

Barb Pooley
Barb Pooley 4 Dec

Wait… what if this was all a government psyop? I read on a forum that HVCO was secretly used to track crypto miners for the NSA. That’s why it vanished-because they didn’t want people knowing how much data they were harvesting. The ‘dead coin’ story? A cover-up. I’ve got the screenshots. Just ask.

Lore Vanvliet
Lore Vanvliet 4 Dec

AMERICA MADE THIS COIN DIE. CANADA HAS A REAL BLOCKCHAIN. WE DON’T WASTE TIME ON GARBAGE LIKE THIS. HVCO IS A SYMBOL OF AMERICAN ENTREPRENEURIAL FAILURE. #AMERICAFIRST #CRYPTOISNOTAMERICA

Scott Sơn
Scott Sơn 4 Dec

This isn’t a dead coin-it’s a ghost story with a blockchain. HVCO is the Poltergeist of altcoins. It haunts CoinGecko’s database like a broken VHS tape playing ‘404 Not Found’ on loop. I swear I heard it whispering ‘mine me’ last night while I was scrolling. 🕯️👻

Frank Cronin
Frank Cronin 4 Dec

People still fall for this garbage? You’re not buying a coin-you’re buying a digital tombstone with a price tag. If you think ‘low price = good deal,’ you deserve to lose everything. This isn’t investing. It’s archaeology with wallet.exe.

Nicole Parker
Nicole Parker 4 Dec

I think what’s so sad about HVCO isn’t that it died-it’s that it never really lived. It had the bones of something decent, but no heart. No community. No passion. That’s what kills crypto-not bad code, but silence. We forget that behind every coin is a person who believed, at least for a minute, that this could change something. And then… nothing. Just static.

Brooke Schmalbach
Brooke Schmalbach 4 Dec

Let’s be real-HVCO was never meant to be a currency. It was a stress test for how long a project could survive on vibes and a Figma mockup. The fact that it lasted until 2023 is a miracle. The real scam? People still checking its price like it’s a stock ticker.

Cristal Consulting
Cristal Consulting 4 Dec

If you’re looking at HVCO and thinking ‘maybe it’ll bounce’-pause. Breathe. Go check a real project’s GitHub. Look at commit history. Talk to the devs on Discord. If you can’t find a single human voice, walk away. You’re not missing out-you’re avoiding a trap.

Tom Van bergen
Tom Van bergen 4 Dec

Coins die because people stop believing not because tech fails. Belief is the only consensus that matters. HVCO had no belief. Just a whitepaper and a dream. And dreams don’t pay gas fees

Sandra Lee Beagan
Sandra Lee Beagan 4 Dec

As someone who’s lived through Canada’s early crypto days, I’ve seen dozens of these. The difference? Canadian projects usually had a university lab behind them. HVCO had a guy in a basement with a Raspberry Pi and a dream. We called them ‘garage coins.’ Most vanished. A few got bought by the feds. This one? Just… faded.

Ben VanDyk
Ben VanDyk 4 Dec

Interesting breakdown. The only thing missing is the fact that HVCO’s blockchain is still technically active. Just… no one’s mining it. The nodes are still out there. Quiet. Waiting. Like a ghost town with electricity still on.

michael cuevas
michael cuevas 4 Dec

So you’re telling me I wasted 3 hours trying to send 0.0001 HVCO to my friend’s wallet and it just vanished into the void? Yeah. That’s the whole story. I’m not mad. Just… weirdly impressed.

Nina Meretoile
Nina Meretoile 4 Dec

It’s kinda beautiful in a way. HVCO didn’t crash. It just… stopped. Like a candle blown out by a breeze. No drama. No fanfare. Just quiet. Maybe that’s the most peaceful death a crypto can have.

Joe West
Joe West 4 Dec

For anyone curious-there’s a way to still query the HVCO blockchain via a preserved node on archive.org. It’s not useful, but if you’re into crypto archaeology, it’s there. Just don’t expect a balance. The coins are all burned or lost.

Mariam Almatrook
Mariam Almatrook 4 Dec

It is profoundly regrettable that the cryptocurrency ecosystem continues to tolerate such flagrant examples of intellectual and economic malfeasance. HVCO represents a systemic failure of governance, transparency, and fiduciary responsibility. One must ask: if this is permitted to persist in the public ledger, what other deceptions are being normalized?

Chris Mitchell
Chris Mitchell 4 Dec

Real talk: the market doesn’t care about your project unless it’s alive. HVCO’s death isn’t tragic-it’s inevitable. The lesson? Build something people want to use, not something you just want to launch.

nicholas forbes
nicholas forbes 4 Dec

Some of you are overreacting. It’s just a coin. People die. Projects die. The blockchain keeps going. No need to turn this into a funeral.

Martin Hansen
Martin Hansen 4 Dec

Anyone who bought HVCO after 2019 deserves to have their wallet drained. You didn’t do your homework. You didn’t check the GitHub. You didn’t ask questions. You just saw ‘$0.001’ and thought ‘cheap = good.’ Congrats. You’re now a crypto cautionary tale.

Shane Budge
Shane Budge 4 Dec

Does anyone know if the original devs ever posted on Bitcointalk? I’m trying to trace if they moved on to another project.

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