In August, ICOs received the lowest financing for 16 months. According to an Autonomous Research study published by Bloomberg, ICO projects received $326 million in August, which is the lowest amount since May 2017. At the same time in January-March 2018 companies attracted an average of $3 billion each month. When conducting an ICO, companies often use the Ethereum platform. This means that the cost increase of ethereum (ETH/USD) depends on the number of funds raised via ICO. As of August 11, 2018, ethereum cost $325 for a token, and today, on September 11 – $194 for a token.
GreySpark Partners, a consulting company, published the results of ICO market research. It turns out that almost half of the projects since the beginning of 2017 failed to raise funds. At the same time, more than 40% of ICO-projects managed to attract more than $1 million. 890 companies that conducted the initial coin offering did not receive any funding at all. Other 733 projects reached a mark of $1 million. Researchers stress that many of the successful companies turned out to be unprofitable.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
- Experts believe that in the future the number of large ICO projects will decrease. They associate this with a number of problems. One of them is that ICO creators make inadequate efforts, and the public is disappointed in the technical development of projects. It doesn't help that financial regulators in many countries have begun to show increasing attention to ICO due to the growing number of frauds.
- At the same time, experts predict the success of cryptocurrency hedge funds. Researchers stress that despite the January decrease in number, by September such funds have grown to 146. By comparison, in 2012 there were only nine cryptocurrency hedge funds.