This Year’s ICO Funding Is Under Bear Attack, Falls by 48%

By Kapil Gauhar

As indicated in a report by ICORating, the amount which was raised through ICOs from July to September came down to 48% as compared to what was raised in April to June this year.

Amid quarter 3, more than half of the ICO projects which were declared simply managed to raise nearly $100,000 while only a minimum number got listed on crypto exchanges. Only 24 out of 597 projects got listed on exchanges which were staged in the third quarter.

ICORating said, “57 percent of ICO projects announced in Q3 2018 were not able to raise more than 100,000 USD. Only 4 percent of all announced ICOs were listed on exchanges.”

A Simple Notion

Different from this year’s quarter 1 and quarter 2 when two ICO unicorns, Telegram and EOS, raised more than $1 billion, the highest amount raised by an individual project was over $70 million in the third quarter. The London Football Exchange project was the only one which managed to feature in the top 10 fundraiser list for the 3 quarters of this year.

Bitter Third Quarter

There was also a bit to cheer about amid the quarter for the investors. With 597 projects reviewed, the halfway return from tokens was 22% with 79% of the tokens trading below their ICO value. As indicated by ICORating, there were numerous reasons for the bitter 3rd quarter, whereby it came into the prey of bear attack.

The crypto markets analysis firm, ICORating, wrote: “The market in Q3 shows signs of overall disappointment in traditional ICOs as a means of venture financing. This has multiple reasons behind it — a significant drop in returns for ICO participants, an increasing lack of transparency from ICO teams/projects, an overall market downtrend, the fact that investors became more experienced and prudent in their decisions, regulation activities, a lack of new ideas from project teams and not-so-fast pace of actual blockchain implementation in the traditional market.”