It looks like the initial coin offering (ICO) market rush is well and truly over after just over a year and a half of heady investments. Figures published by Coinschedule demonstrate that the amount raised by ICO’s in January 2019 is approximately 95% down from the high in February 2018. The report states that the total amount raised for ICOs in January 2019 was $300 million whilst the total raised in March 2018 was a staggering $5.8 billion, demonstrating how the ICO market has fallen off almost completely.
Whilst 2018 noticed an ideal choice of token sale initiatives, regardless of the falling costs of cryptocurrencies, 2019 began rather slowly for ICOs. Lower than 50 had been introduced within the first week of January and around $6 million was once raised via 424 ongoing coin choices.
Yet another report published by the reputable ICOBench demonstrated that although around 600 ICO’s were successfully carried out in Q4 2019, the amount of capital raised was down by at least 30% when compared to the same quarter of 2018 at $1.4 billion from $1.8 billion. All this basically shows that the ICO market is in considerable decline and there does not seem to be much appetite for this type of funding.
Interestingly, according to Coinschedule, March and June of 2018 were the months where there were most funds raised in ICO’s at 4 and 5 billion USD respectively; however, this has to take account that the lion’s share of this amount was taken up by EOS which raised a staggering $4.1 billion. This was followed by Telegram at $1.7 billion although the outcome of that ICO is still shrouded in some mystery. The third ICO with the largest fundraising purports to be the Venezuelan Petro which raised around $735 million although that is also subject to scrutiny.
Coinschedule’s statistics also break down the amounts raised by category. Around 24% were dedicated to infrastructure projects, followed by finance with 16% and communications with 10%.
New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeek’s Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.
