The Initial Currency Offers (ICO) were among the most popular terms and read in the cryptocurrency ecosystem during this 2017. With a total of more than US $ 3,700 million in collections, this flourishing scheme for raising capital has left a series of interesting data that are worth taking a look at.
Much of the statistics and data below are the product of a study conducted by a team dedicated to the commercialization of ICO projects. He consulted 2,125 portals and said he had applied more than 1,000 hours of work to offer this report.
According to this study, each of the ICO lasted approximately 24 days and the average collection was around 14.7 million dollars. On the other hand, the tokens released through this financing scheme had an average price of $ 1.13 each.
The Ethereum blockchain was chosen by 86.75% of the organized ICOs and 4.82% of them used the Waves blockchain, while the rest used those of NEM, Counterparty or others. The statistics do nothing but confirm the domain of Ethereum, where the ERC-20 protocol for the creation of tokens has allowed the proliferation of these instruments. Currently there are 20,581 different cryptoactives based on this well-known blockchain.
On average, each human team after an ICO was made up of 8 people, generally knowledgeable about blockchain technology and with expertise in the world of cryptoactives, as well as publicists and those responsible for campaigns on social networks. Commerce, infrastructure and finance were the main areas in which these teams were focused.
The presence in the networks of these fundraising instruments has been important. On Facebook, an amount of 11,183 users have been involved with a project of this nature, but on Twitter the figure exceeds 17,000. At Reddit, one of the most important networks in terms of ecosystem issues, up to 1,732 users have talked about ICOs.
As for the destination of the collected funds, 44% of these were dedicated to the development of the projects; 17% to marketing expenses and 11% to legal issues. On the other hand, 28% of the resources were allocated to other expenses such as infrastructure, internal economy of the platforms, operational expenses, etc.
According to information provided by a specialized portal, the most successful ICO was that of Filecoin, with a total of 257 million dollars collected, followed by Tezos with 232 million and Paragon with 183 million.
It is striking that Tezos, after having been one of the most successful ICOs in all of 2017, is now in a delicate legal situation that has affected the development of its project and each one of the people involved in it: from its CEO, even its investors; who still do not know if they will have a refund of the money invested.
When considering facts like the recently mentioned case of Tezos and taking into account the legal battles waged by different governments around the world to regulate or prohibit ICOs, the other side of the coin of this brilliant fundraising strategy is shown. Although, they are a powerful tool, capable of allowing a startup to finance itself in a "fast and simple" way compared to traditional methods; they also have a dark side in which both their team of promoters and the people who invest in them can be harmed more than they benefit if they are not carried out in a responsible and competent way.