2018-8-14 09:04 |
ICO Market Continues To Grow In 2018 Even When The Crypto Market Is Falling
2018 has been a wild ride for the crypto market, seeing highest of highs and lowest of lows. While on the other hand, the ICO market continued to grow following the trend set in 2017.
The data over the last seven months indicates that ICOs continue raising huge sums of money, despite many thinking of them as scams. Additionally, the number of projects launching month by month are pretty steady, even showing growth.
The evolution Of ICO EcosystemThere is a certain pike in ICOs from April 2017, when $218 million was raised in that month alone. The rest of 2017, until November, that is — did really well, as 584 ICOs were raising $2.52 billion.
Just like cryptocurrencies are fighting their legal market globally, even ICOs are doing the same. Thus, when the SEC ruled that a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) was a security, and when China decided to ban ICOs on Sept. 4, 2017 — many other state regulators started to take note of the financial risks associated with this form of capital raising.
What’s interesting about 2018 is that most experts believe that this was the year ICOs will come to an end. January quickly broke December’s $1 billion record, with 254 projects raising $1.83 billion. 2018, thus far, has been a significantly bigger year in terms of the amount of money raised by ICOs. Additionally, the data shows an increase in the number of ICOs that raised this capital in comparison to 2017.
Number of ICO projects have significantly increased too. In 2017, 1,069 ICO projects were launched for the entire year. However, in just the first half of 2018 there have been 2,131 projects raising a whopping $12.8 billion.
Across June and July, the two biggest targets — in terms of the percentages of projects — were between $1 and $10 million, but there was another large grouping of ICOs whose target was to make it to $50+ million. There were five projects that managed to raise over $10 million in their ICO that ended in July. The top grossing one pulled in an impressive $30 million.
What has become notable as the year has gone on is that the two biggest categories, namely Platform and Cryptocurrency, are getting closer together. For example, in January, platforms accounted for a quarter of all ICO projects, whereas cryptocurrencies were only 15.6 percent. So, while there has been a small growth in cryptocurrency projects, there has been a bigger decline in platforms, as other categories also pick up their stake in the overall situation.
Regulations and scams should be making them far less attractive to investors. Yet, money coming in is up, and so are products for the first half of 2018. It will be interesting to see if this trend is able to hold up in the closing half of 2018.
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