Despite Bitcoin price correction ICOs are still raising Billions
Wednesday, February 7, 2018The TokenData Take: ICOs raised $1.5B in January 2018

67 ICOs completed their fundraising efforts in January for a total of $1.5B raised. We’re fully aware the monthly statistics are starting to sound like broken records (pun intended)… That’s why we’ll keep it short this time so that we can all go back to procrastinating at work!
Trends of January:
- Big Raises: $20M average vs $12M in 2017 ($15M median vs $4.5M in 2017)
- Big Failures: 58% of all ICOs that were active and supposed to end in January failed, did not report, returned funds or 404’ed
- Large private & pre-sale rounds: The average ICO raised more than 50% (some even +75%) through private allocations and large pre-sale blocks. Some ICOs even decided to cancel the public/main part of the sale…Read more about this trend in Token Economy #34: RIP ICO? which includes our data and anecdotes.
- Longer fundraising cycles: The emergence of large private and pre-sale rounds has extended the duration of token sales significantly. The average duration for each of the pre-sale and public stages of an ICO is 30 calendar days. If you factor in time for KYC, whitelisting and marketing efforts, the actual fundraising cycle is closer to 3 months.
We’ve gotten a lot of questions in the past week about how the price drop in BTC and ETH will affect ICO fundraising stats. In our database we timestamp the capital raised numbers based on the official closing dates and corresponding announcements made by ICOs. However, the above-mentioned trends – large private/pre-sale rounds and longer ICO fundraising cycles – imply that significant price volatility in crypto or even a “large correction” might not affect ICO fundraising stats immediately and that there’s a lag.
For example, despite the big drop in BTC and ETH in the past weeks, $240M of capital raised has been reported in the first week of February, the bulk of which originated from pre-sales during December and January. Although there is not much history, we can look at July 2017, when ETH dropped 50% from its high in June. It wasn’t until August 2017 when there was a corresponding drop in ICO activity.
Expect a closer analysis of pre-sale dynamics and their impact on fundraising and token trading patterns next week!
Cheers,
TokenData
NEW TokenData Publications & Features
- State of The Token Market: A Year in Review & Outlook for 2018 – Together with our friends at Fabric VC, we put together a full data-driven review of the token craze of 2017 and qualitative outlook for the token landscape in 2018. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the presentation of this report at the World Economic Forum in Davos, because, you know, crypto never sleeps…
ICO Calendar: 31 Sales
Tue (2/6)
Wed (2/7)
- Birdchain – Platform for people to sell their unused SMS messages to businesses
- Dether – Buy and sell ether
- Dorado – On-demand delivery company
- Fintrux – Small business loans platform
- GBX – Token sale platform and cryptocurrency exchange
- GPCC – Graphic artwork copyright database
- Kryll – Cryptocurrency trading platform
- KWHCoin – Renewable Energy Cryptocurrency
- RoyalCash – Decentralized casino
- Snagride – Ride sharing application
Thu (2/8)
- BlockEx – Marketplace for cryptocurrencies and other investments
- Network Units – Decentralized worldwide collaboration of computing power.
- Refereum – Reward platform for video game influencers and players
- Skara – Gaming: cross-platform videogames & novels
- Sp8de – Platform for gaming dApps
- Trendit – Rewards Platform for Viral Content
Fri (2/9)
- Denaro – Cryptocurrency payments ecosystem & debit card
- DocCoin – Platform to access medical doctors
- Gas Files – Private blockchain file storage
- RealBlockchain – Real estate backed cryptocurrency
- Savedroid – Cryptocurrency investment platform
- SocialMedia Market – Influencer Marketing advertising platform
Sat (2/10)
- Flashmoni – Physical Gold-backed cryptocurrency
- Globitex – Cryptocurrency exchange
- Real Casino – Decentralized casino
Sun (2/11)
- GTurbo – Investment in a gas turbine production business
- Gym Coin – Payment Solution for the Fitness Industry
- Peer Mountain – Decentralized ID, trust, and compliance ecosystem
- Scrinium – Cryptocurrency trading strategy platform