Want a slice of an ICO? Watch out!

I find it quite surprising to see statistics around ICOs, such as the fact that $13.7 billion has been raised by ICOs so far this year alone. $13.7 billion! In what?

Well, the 10 biggest ICOs this year are:

1. Telegram: $1.7 billion
2. Dragon: $320 million
3. Huobi: $300 million
4. Bankera: $150.9 million
5. Orbs: $118 million
6. Envion: $100 million
7. Flashmoni: $72 million
8. Neuromation: $71.7 million
9. Elastos : $70 million
10. Zeepin : $61 million

 

Picture courtesy of howmuch.net

Very familiar names, yes?

FinTech News (Switzerland) summarises these ICOs well:

Telegram – US$1.7 billion

Messaging app Telegram is building the Telegram Open Network (TON), a fast, secure and scalable blockchain and network project. The TON blockchain will be capable of handling millions of transactions per second if necessary, and promises to be both user-friendly and service provider-friendly.

Dragon – US$320 million

Dragon Coin is a project by Macau based casino operator Dragon Corp. Dragon Coin, or DRG, is an Ethereum utility token used to participate in the Dragon blockchain ecosystem. DRG tokens are exchanged for DGC (Dragon Global Chips), a cryptocurrency gaming chip, at supporting casinos, which allows both players and casinos to take advantage of the added transparency and security of blockchain technology.

Huobi Token – US$300 million

Huobi, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchange by volume, has created its own native token, Huobi Token. Huobi Token is a point system based on blockchain distribution and management, running natively on the Ethereum blockchain. Huobi Tokens enable users to vote for their favorite projects to be listed on Huobi’s HADAX platform, and also allow them to receive free tokens from these projects. Users can also purchase special packages using Huobi Tokens that reduce their trading fees.

Bankera – US$150.9 million

Bankera is building “a digital bank for the blockchain era.” It will offer proper bank solutions such as IBAN accounts, payment cards and payment processing, not only for cryptocurrencies but also for cash, payment cards etc. The Bankera ecosystem will include a digital wallet, exchange platform, a debit card, and payment solutions for merchants.

Orbs – US$118million

Tel Aviv-based Orbs is developing a decentralized, open and transparent network providing a public blockchain infrastructure-as-a-service built for large scale consumer applications. The three primary infrastructure offerings of the Orbs platform include consensus-based decentralized compute services, consensus-based decentralized storage services and Consensus as a Service (CaaS).

There you go. Useful insights, and even Telegram is dwarfed by the $4.1 billion ICO of EOS last year. EOSIO is software that introduces a blockchain architecture designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications. The software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication and the scheduling of applications across multiple CPU cores and/or clusters. EOSIO is being developed by Cayman Islands software developer Block.one.

So now you’re with it all. But, just in case you’re thinking of investing in any of these ICOs, take note of this Bloomberg article:

A slew of recent studies have shown just how risky ICO investing is. More than 1,000 tokens have already bitten the dust, according to the website Coinopsy … about 56% of crypto startups that raise money through token sales die within four months of their initial coin offerings. That’s the finding of a Boston College study that analyzed the intensity of tweets from the startups’ Twitter accounts to infer signs of life. The researchers determined that only 44.2% of startups survive after 120 days from the end of their ICOs … acquiring coins in an ICO and selling them on the first day is the safest investment strategy.