Is money still flowing into crypto projects?

An insight into how much money has been raised through ICOs this year despite the bear market

Photo by Hitesh Choudhary on Unsplash

Ever since the creation of a smart contracts platform and an ERC-20 standard by Ethereum, projects in the crypto ecosystem have been empowered to create their own economies. The issuance of tokens made it possible for blockchain projects to raise funds without the traditional financial system. The concept of ICOs began to gain momentum from 2016, and 2017 was basically the year of the ICO. Given the progress made in 2017, it is important to consider what 2018 as shown so far. This is because of the bear market. People need to understand what is really happening. Is investment in cryptocurrencies getting thinned out? Is the base getting widened or everyone is running away?

So far in this year 2018, over $10 billion has been raised from ICOs (for both presale and main sale). This is very important because we are currently towards the end of the month of June. And to keep in perspective, the total amount raised through ICOs in 2017 was over $3 billion. This means we are just halfway through 2018 and we have more than tripled the 2017 number. This explains a lot about the nature of the current bear market in the cryptocurrency world.This shows that the price of bitcoin does not necessarily reflect the faith in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency projects.

Thus far in 2018, there has been 469 ICOs with which there was a record of 126 ICOs in May 2018 alone. Interestingly, the most money was raised in March which is over $3 billion. The huge figures of this year’s ICO was lead by the Telegram presale and the private presale of Petro (the cryptocurrency proposed by the Venezuelan government). Other popular ICOs so far in 2018 include Bankera, Huobi token, Envion, etc. These begin to give a glimpse of the kinds of ICOs we would see in coming years. The finance and communication industry getting a taste of the new technological wave. Perhaps the success of Telegram with a crypto model will stir others in the communication industry to follow in the same footsteps.

Going through the short history of ICOs, the levels of optimism based on the amount raised are not showing any signs of regression. In 2016, the total number of ICOs was 43 and over $95 million was raised that year. The month with the highest funds was November and it was just over $20 million. The month with the highest number of ICOs was December, and it was just 11. The popular projects in 2016 were NEO, Digix DAO, Lisk, Iconomi, Waves, etc. As you would observe, many of the projects were other blockchain platforms.

In 2017, the total number of ICOs recorded was 210. Over $1 billion was raised in December alone. And 45 ICOs took place in December 2017. The popular projects included Bankex, Bancor, Filecoin, EOS (stage 1), Hdac, etc. Considering the surge in the value of cryptocurrencies in 2017, the amount raised by crypto projects is not surprising. However, the continual growth of the amounts pouring into crypto projects in 2018 shows that the technology is here to stay and the fundamentals is still growing. Going forward a number of leaders in the crypto ecosystem champion the cause of securitized tokens. These are tokens to replace the system of shares or stake in a company. This shows that the narrative of ICOs is gradually changing from cryptocurrencies to cryptoassets. This is why 2018 has been a regulatory year for crypto so far.

In conclusion, lots of money are still being poured into crypto projects. Also, lots of talents are leaving the traditional finance industry to get into crypto. This is just half of the year 2018 and the funds raised through ICOs already triple that of the whole of 2017. The bear market doesn’t seem to have any effect whatsoever. The speculators are gradually making way for real investors. Let’s hope that this sets a precedence for an healthy uptrend over the next couple of months.

P.S. All data expressed in this post were derived from the statistics of coinschedule.com

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