Information as of October 2, 2018

This report was created by:

• Professor Dmitrii Kornilov, Doctor of Economics, Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and Leading Analyst at ICOBox;
• Dima Zaitsev, PhD in Economics, Head of International Public Relations and Business Analytics Department Chief at ICOBox;
• Nick Evdokimov, Co-Founder of ICOBox;
• Anar Babaev, Co-Founder of ICOBox;
• Daria Generalova, Co-Founder of ICOBox

This report presents data on ICO market changes during 2018. Special emphasis has been placed on an analysis of the changes that took place in the third quarter of 2018.

1. General analysis of the ICO market (during the third quarter)

1.1. Brief overview of ICO market trends

The third quarter of 2018 was not as successful for ICOs as the first and second quarters. Nevertheless, the total amount of funds collected exceeded $2.4 billion. In this regard, the 20 largest ICOs accounted for more than 40% of this amount (around $1 billion) (Table 1.4).

More than 600 ICOs were completed during Q3 2018. The website Icobench.com alone shows 525 completed projects for the period from July 1-September 30. This same website also shows more than 240 projects that are scheduled to start after October 1, 2018.

Despite the high risk of placing funds in ICOs, the statements of many publications on the existence of numerous fraudulent projects, and the depreciation in the prices of the tokens of many projects, this area continues to develop in anticipation of positive changes on the cryptocurrency market. Some ICOs issuing new tokens are in fact concealed offers of securities, which could be dangerous for backers. Due to the absence of clear legislative and regulatory principles on ICOs in most countries, ICO participants encounter new difficulties and possibilities.

Yet, nevertheless, the third quarter was rich in interesting events (Table 1.1) and large ICOs (Table 1.4). For example, the leader by funds collected in the third quarter was the tZERO project, which is a subsidiary of the Blockstain Overstock.com company. According to the information from a Forbes publication dated August 9, tZERO collected $134 million. The project was launched on December 18, 2017, and was developed to meet SEC requirements. tZERO is the first alternative trading system for cryptographic tokens that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) assigns to the category of securities. The goal was to collect $250 million. However, according to information from the press release, the funds collected by tZERO equaled $134 million. GSR Capital will subsequently purchase a share in the project worth $270 million when the company’s capitalization reaches $1.5 billion.

Table 1.1. Brief ICO market overview, key events and news for Q3 2018

Table 1.2 shows the development trends on the ICO market since 2017. Only popular and/or successfully completed ICOs (i.e. ICOs which managed to collect the minimum declared amount of funds) and/or ICOs listed on exchanges were considered.

Table 1.2. Aggregated trends and performance indicators of past (completed) ICOs^1,2,3,4

Note:
¹ This report uses the data of ICOBox, ICOBox Blockchain Research Center (IBRC), tokendata.io, icodrops.com, icodata.io, coinschedule.com, cryptocompare.com, smithandcrown.com, and icobench.com. For some ICOs information may currently be incomplete (for instance, the amount of funds collected). ICOs that collected less than $100,000 were not considered.
² Date when data was updated – September 16, 2018.
³ Not including EOS, which collected $4 billion or 7.12 million ETH over the year from June 26, 2017, to June 1, 2018.
⁴ Including the TON Pre-ICO-1,2 ($1.7 billion) and the Petro ICO ($5 billion). According to the data from the official website of the Petro ICO, Petro sales equaled more than $5 billion, which is equivalent to more than $4 billion euros or $31 billion yuan (http://www.elpetro.gob.ve/#about). However, the data on the amount collected by El Petro from some other sources differ. For example, according to criptomoedasfacil.com, the amount of funds collected cannot exceed $2.3 billion taking into account discounts, the project White Paper indicates $4.387 billion, and other sources mention the $3 billion stated, among others, by the President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro.

The data for the previous period were adjusted to account for the appearance of more complete information on past ICOs. The amount of funds collected via ICOs during the past quarter (July-September) equaled $2.4 billion. This amount consists of the results of 518 successfully completed ICOs, with the largest amount of funds collected equaling $134 million (tZERO ICO). The average amount of funds collected per project equaled $4.7 million (see Tables 1.2, 1.3). Overall, more than 150 ICOs were completed last month, but information on the amount of funds collected is not available for all of them.

Table 1.3. Amount of funds collected and number of ICOs

* This report uses the data of ICOBox, ICOBox Blockchain Research Center (IBRC), tokendata.io, icodrops.com, icodata.io, coinschedule.com, cryptocompare.com, smithandcrown.com, and icobench.com.
Information on funds collected is not available for all ICOs (information for last week is tentative and may be adjusted). ICOs that collected less than $100,000 were not considered.
** More than 1,000 ICOs were performed in 2017. However, the data for the 514 largest and most popular ICOs, the data of which can be processed, were considered when calculating the total amount of funds collected during 2017.
*** Including the TON Pre-ICO-1,2 ($1.7 billion) and the Petro ICO ($5 billion). According to the data from the official website of the Petro ICO, Petro sales equaled more than $5 billion, which is equivalent to more than $4 billion euros or $31 billion yuan (http://www.elpetro.gob.ve/#about). However, the data on the amount collected by El Petro from some other sources differ. For example, according to criptomoedasfacil.com, the amount of funds collected cannot exceed $2.3 billion taking into account discounts, the project White Paper indicates $4.387 billion, and other sources mention the $3 billion stated, among others, by the President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro.
**** Not including EOS, which collected $4 billion or 7.12 million ETH over the year from June 26, 2017, to June 1, 2018.
***** The data for 2018 have been updated (date updated: October 1, 2018).

Table 1.3 shows that the largest amount of funds was collected via ICOs in February-March 2018, mainly due to the appearance of major ICOs. The highest average collected funds per ICO was also seen in February-March 2018.

In total, more than $18 billion were collected via ICOs in the first three quarters of 2018 (and that is without the funds of EOS, an ICO that lasted for an entire year). This amount was collected by a total of only 741 projects.

Figure 1.1. Trends in funds collected and number of ICOs since the start of 2017

1.2 Top ICOs during Q3 2018

Table 1.4. Top 20 ICOs by the amount of funds collected during Q3 2018

* This report uses the data of ICOBox, ICOBox Blockchain Research Center (IBRC), tokendata.io, icodrops.com, icodata.io, coinschedule.com, icobench.com, and other specialized sources.
** The category was established based on expert opinions.
*** Only popular and/or successfully completed ICOs (i.e. ICOs which managed to collect the minimum declared amount of funds) and/or ICOs listed on exchanges were considered. Information may be incomplete for some ICOs (for instance, the amount of funds collected). ICOs that collected less than $100,000 were not considered.

Table 1.4 shows the top 20 largest ICOs by funds collected, most of which belong to the categories Infrastructure, Finance, and Trading & Investing.

Figure 1.2. Top 20 ICOs by the amount of funds collected during Q3 2018

During the third quarter of 2018 more than $2.4 billion were collected (this amount includes 197 ICOs). However, due to the fall in total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market since the start of 2018, the adjustment has crossed over to ICOs as well. This is leading to a steady fall in the hard cap requirements of projects, a drop in the effectiveness of fund collection, and many projects are not disclosing data on the amount of funds collected on their official websites. The future effectiveness of ICOs will depend directly on the change in cryptocurrency market capitalization, as well as on the formation of legislative norms for holding ICOs in the countries of the European Union, the USA, Japan, South Korea, UAE, and, of course, China.

Annex – Glossary

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