Death of ICOs? Projects have only raised 5 percent of what they raised in 2018

For many, 2017 became known as the ICO year. That’s when a lot of startups tried to raise money for their projects by selling tokens through different types of campaigns.

But even though the ICO market seemed to be growing fairly okay also during 2018, the situation is quite different after the summer of 2019.

In 2018, the ICOs managed to raise more than $7.6 billion. So far in 2019, that figure is only $338 million – a decline of over 95 percent.

This is according to the analysis site Longhash who has looked at data from ICO Watch.

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Examined harder

The data also shows that the few ICOs launched in 2019 may generally be of higher quality compared to those launched in 2018.

Why the ICO market has shrunk so drastically is believed to be due to authorities around the world scrutinizing ICOs more closely now than before.

The regulatory austerity measures have been tightened, among other things, by the many fraud cases linked to ICOs that have existed.

“It wouldn’t be a surprise to see the ICO model vanish completely in 2020”

According to Longhash’s analysis, the future of ICOs looks bleak, despite the fact that today’s projects are believed to be of a higher quality than last year.

“There probably aren’t enough tokens ICOing to sustain the ICO as a viable fundraising model for much longer, especially since exchanges are increasingly desperate to snap up anything that’s decent for an IEO instead. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see the ICO model vanish completely in 2020”, Longhash writes in their analysis.

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