In case you didn’t notice, the great ICO bubble has popped, and the latest report by the WSJ vividly displays the steep downfall of this fundraising craze. Only $118 mln of capital has been raised via ICOs in the first quarter of 2019, a world of difference from $6.9 bln investors threw at initial coins offerings during the same period last year.
From excitement to skepticism
The report, which relies on the information provided by research site TokenData, states that the rapid decline of the ICO market is attributed to the double-whammy of regulatory clampdown and the brutal crypto winter. Investors, who were blinded by the Bitcoin craze, are adopting a skeptical attitude towards cryptocurrencies.
Uncomfortable statistics
The lion’s share of the projects (55 percent) even didn’t manage to raise money. Case in point: Sponsy, a failed ICO that ended up on eBay. On Sept. 26, U.Today reported about 70 percent of ICOs falling below their initial price, but TokenData now reveals that a whopping 85 percent of coins offerings failed to meet their investors’ expectations as of March 2019. TokenData CEO Ricky Tan calls a spade a spade by pointing out that token sales are ‘pretty much dead.’
Rising up from the dead
However, attorney Joshua Ashley Klayman is still certain that the idea of ICOs is ‘worth developing.’ Regulators have to come up with a set of rules for coin offerings that would allow startups to raise funds in a legal way.
SeedInvest, an equity crowdfunding startup that was acquired by Bitcoin unicorn Circle, is also poised to be a boon for selling tokenized securities to retail investors.
Vladislav Sopov