ICOs raised $2B in May 2018 and $10B in 2018 ytd

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

ICOs raised $2 billion in May and $10 billion in 2018

ICOs raised a total of $2 billion in May 2018 with the following breakdown:

• 53 completed ICOs raised a total of $1.1B in May 2018 – versus $548M in April. 
• The EOS sale raised a total of $913M in May 2017 – versus $597M in April. 

When we add it all up, ICOs have raised a staggering $10 billion in 2018 year-to-date.. The May 2018 numbers came as a surprise to us, because we were seeing a downward trend, high ICO project failure rate (50-60%) and “bear market” conditions. 

We’ve taken a closer look at some of the trends behind the increase:

1. EOS..: The EOS token sale raised close to $1 billion in May. This is the highest monthly amount since the sale started in June of 2017 and it brings the project’s total to $4.2 billion (measured at daily closing prices). We do like to point out that there are plenty of articles online (e.g. 1, 2, 3, and 4) that take a closer look at the project and some of its fundraising claims. 
    
2. “Mega” private sales out of Israel: Two token projects out of Israel (Orbs and Pumapay) each announced 9-digit private sales ($118M and $117M), eschewing the pre-sale and public sale parts of the ICO altogether.
    
3. Momentum out of Asia: Token projects out of China, Hong-Kong, Korea, and Singapore have continued the momentum we first documented in February, raising $350 million in May

Given that the EOS sale has ended on June 1st and makes up one third of all capital raised in 2018, we expect this month’s number to come out lower….unless people really want to buy some tokens from a struggling headphones maker…

No ICO?!?!? Y U DO DIS?

Combing through the hundreds of token projects (>400), we are always pleasantly surprised to find high-quality teams that don’t believe ICO is the best way to start their crypto venture. 

A great example is the team behind Set Protocol, who have been “building” a protocol to create decentralized crypto baskets and indexes. We sat down with the founders to discuss their project, MainNet launch, and their decision to NOT do an ICO. Check out our feature about them!

If you know any quality teams that are skipping an ICO and that you would love to have featured by us – hit us up on [email protected] !

Cheers,

Ricky from TokenData

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