Unlocking the Secrets of Successful ICOs
One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is that, last year, people really thought you know, every ICO just works that just throw out some money into a new token and you can make a gazillion dollars. -But we all know that’s not always the case. That’s why we need to learn token metrics. For those who think it’s boring, please see my previous post.
Let’s review some of the data points that contributed to the success of three ICOs and now relatively new coins. From an investor’s perspective, let’s see why each has pretty good ROI (Return on Investment).
WABI Token Data
With WABI, the token price was $0.25. The pre-ICO price was only $0.03. It's well within my ballpark. I think it’s a good price. They offered about 52 million tokens which is decent. About 100M tokens in total, which is decent as well. About 51% was sold in the ICO (which could be better). Another good thing is there's a low cap of $13M. - That’s amazing. For me, it’s far from being greedy. They're vested for 3-6 months with a 5-10% bonus. Also, Wabi offered a buyback of 25 cents for the tokens so it won't dump past that for the first 300k. WABI, in my opinion, is one of the best ICOs of 2017 because on top of having a low cap and a low price, they also had a good MVP and all-star team.
Bounty0x: A Micro-Cap ICO
The hard cap is how much the ICO is planning to raise. Since December last year, there has been a huge pullback in terms of investing in ICOs. In contrast, in early 2017, any ICO that was working could hit the hard cap. By the end of the year, a lot of ICOs had been getting their reality shock. Many ICOs could barely hit the soft cap.
Let’s take a look at Bounty0x. 500,000,000 tokens were minted in the genesis contract. The pre-sale was capped at $250K and the main sale at $1.5M, making a total of $1.7M. They initially made about 9% of the tokens available during the ICO, which was understandable with a low cap. They even doubled it to 18% or so later. Many people would pick an ICO like this just because it has a low cap or the token is cheap. But you know, investing is not just my hobby and I don’t decide only based on one or two factors (which is very risky). Looking at other factors, let’s take a look at this:
The Bounty0x Alpha platform went online on October 10. There is currently one bounty program running and we will be adding 3 more in the coming week. It is important to note that this Alpha platform doesn’t even scratch the surface of what Bounty0x will ultimately become. We decided to build this MVP in order to check the concept before we raise millions in funding. The response was amazing and therefore we decided to move on with a pre-sale and an ICO to bring the BNTY token to life. Source
It’s a good thing they have an MVP but I passed on Bounty0x since the team could be stronger. I mean, you don’t have to be correct all the time right? There are many other projects with all-star teams, a good MVP and at the same time, a low cap.
Dragonchain
IT was a month-long ICO, similar to power ledger. Platforms historically have done well. They have a pretty decent roadmap and prototype. I was also confident about the solid team and all-star advisors. There’s a fixed total supply of 433,494,437 DRGN which I like. However, It’s an uncapped ICO and with this kind of ICO, I recommend waiting until the last few days before buying tokens, just to know how much they’re raising. In terms of token statistics, they have 238M tokens called dragons. 55% were sold during the ICO/token sale. The token price was optimal at $0.126. The only thing I didn’t like was it’s an uncapped ICO. Even so, historically speaking, it hit the exchanges at around $0.24 and even though it isn’t like 100x yet but rather about 20x, still, many people have already made a decent profit. Even with the dip on March 19, it would still be at 2x profit if you bought it when it just hit the exchanges.
Token Data Analysis (Token economics) is on the rise
I believe that in the years to come, some of the most intelligent college students in many countries will graduate from major universities with Token Economics as part of their curriculum. It would be quite an achievement.
Having some knowledge about how to design the optimal token economy will be a necessity for most businessmen in the future. Just about any e-commerce business may come up with bright ideas on how blockchain technology can increase their visibility on the internet and make their customers’ lives easier. It's not only important for e-commerce but for many types of traditional businesses since payment systems are bound to use or at least be disrupted/influenced by the massive adoption of cryptocurrencies (which we will also discuss later). In one of my next posts, we will also discuss other data points and examples and I will dedicate another post for a project I am bullish on. See you around!
All charts are screenshots from www.coinmarketcap.com