They Told us ICOs are Dead. We Beg to Differ.

ICO or Initial Coin Offering is a type of fundraising done with cryptocurrencies. Modeled after the traditional IPO (Initial Public Offering), ICOs are ways for startup cryptocurrency companies to sell their underlying token in exchange for Bitcoin, Ether or Fiat.

Unlike IPOs where investors get to own shares of the company they invested with, ICOs do not give investors shares in the company instead the investors are presented with an opportunity to earn big on their investment in the case that the token increases in value due to high demand in the future.

In the Q2 of 2018, ICO hit a dramatic decline that saw it record an average ROI that is way lesser than it has ever been since the records could remember.

Stats from ICOrating showed that only 7% of ICOs have been able to secure listings, 55% failed to hit their funding target while 15% already has a working business which is an improvement on the 6% from Q1.

The success of Bitcoin helped ICOs make a lot of raves in the past year but because a lot of them have turned out to be worthless due to unqualified team members, uncertified documents among other reasons, and some have turned out to be outright scam projects that seized the opportunity given in the heat of the moment to swindle unsuspecting investors, ICOs are beginning to get less attention than before but this does not in any way mean the end of the road for ICOs as there are still millions of reasons why it is not dying yet.

Some have turned out to be worthless due to unqualified team members, uncertified documents among other reasons, and some have turned out to be outright scam projects that seized the opportunity given in the heat of the moment to swindle unsuspecting investors, ICOs are beginning to get less attention than before but this does not in any way mean the end of the road for ICO as there are still millions of reasons why it is not dying yet.

The ICO is not dead, it is rather in a stage of maturing, although fewer funds are being raised through ICO lately, the majority of it is due to the unfavorable market condition. Seasoned investors still find investing in ICO thrilling and rewarding and serious projects still raise more funds than they ever did.

Also, the involvement of the SEC in ICOs has helped in drastically reducing the high rate of scams and half baked projects. According to Coindesk, the SEC closed down more than a dozen projects in the fiscal year of 2017 alone. They even created a framework that will help investors know the criteria to look out for before investing.

Upcoming ICO projects are being extra careful than before and are making extra sure that they don’t get on the bad side of the SEC. This is a step that has positively boosted the morale of investors as they will easily invest in an ICO or STO in this case because it is backed by the government.

The latest approach taken by startup companies is the IEO (Initial Exchange Offering), this is a method that sees the company hold its token sale on an already established cryptocurrency exchange.

The benefits that come with this are:

• The exchange already has a huge userbase that will be exposed to the token sale through advertisement
• The token will automatically be listed on the exchange, this will also boost the confidence of investors
• The investors will have a ready market to sell off their token if they wish to or continue to hodl on to the token if they believe in it.

Statistics show that IEOs have been very helpful and the ROI has been impressive.

Despite the many setbacks that have faced the ICO, there have been a number of projects that have raised a ridiculous amount of money.

Not Every ICO Fails - But Plenty Do

There are various reasons why ICOs fail even while others continue to succeed and they range from Inadequate product market, failure to create brand identity, unrealistic objectives and budgets, and a lack of audit, reporting and measurement among others.

We are a perfect example of a project that entered the market prepared. We've already raised $1 Million USD within days of walking down the ICO route.

We looked into why we're doing well where others seem to be floundering and came up with the following fundamental learnings that have driven successful enterprise everywhere:

Having A Qualified Team: Our CEO Mohammed Mazen is a Stock and Forex trader with vast experience in analyzing financial markets and managing portfolios on an individual basis using market and technical analysis. He also served in the National Guards of Bahrain where he led & trained a group of teams while picking up team management chops. He did his MBA from the British IEPS. You need driven folks like that to inspire and lead distributed teams.

Product/Market Fitness: We're a smart contract consultant first and were looking to make our job easier by automation. One thing led to another and here we are - transforming legal stipulations into an auto executing smart contract tailored for specific use cases that serve as a template for multiple transactions.

Innovation + Regulation: We're one of the world’s first fully insured cryptocurrency exchange and are compliant to KYC and AML norms. Our Nebbex Protocol, a patent-pending offline custodian wallet reconciles physical assets with smart contracts.

In simple English, we provide the security of cold wallets AND the liquidity of hot wallets in one comprehensive solution.

Check Out our Whitepaper for more information.