This is a guest post from Chris McDonald of ICO Watchlist
2017 had been a great year for ICOs, in spite of the broader crypto bear market. Figures captured by ICOWatchList show that the 11 biggest ICOs achieved a return on investment (ROI) between 253% and 23,000%. The question many potential investors should be asking is: was this a one-off? To help answer this, some key indicators need to be factored in. Here are some indicators to help investors out –
Volume trend
The volume of ICOs held steady throughout 2016, rising and falling marginally. However, this was just a warm-up year to the explosion of new ICOs during 2017 Q2. Since then, the volume of ICOs has been accelerating exponentially on a month-to-month basis.
Capital flows trend
Capital flows mimic past ROI trends. If investors consider past ROI trends to have been positive, they are more likely to inject funds into ICOs. On the other hand, if they consider past trends to have been negative, they will either withdraw or shy away from funding new ICOs. According to CoinDesk, capital injection in ICOs in the first quarter of 2018 was 118% higher than during all of 2017.
Equity vs ICO (initial coin offering) trend
Initially, most funding for blockchain ventures was in the form of equity funding (venture capital). For example, according to Business Insider, in 2016 Q1, equity funding accounted for $17 million compared to ICO funding of only $12 million. In 2017 Q1, equity funding settled at $139 million after a consistent drop, while ICO funding settled at $38 million after a steady rise.
In 2017 Q2, ICO funding surpassed equity funding for the first time at $757 million against an equity funding value of $258 million. Whilst equity funding stagnated at $259 million in 2017 Q3, ICO funding shot up to $1.3 billion.
Clearly, ICOs have become the preferred investment vehicle for blockchain projects as compared to equity funding.
ICO vs VC (venture capital) Return trend
Research, based on historical data provided by CoinMarketCap, shows that ICO funding has overtaken VC funding. This is due to the 16% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) that ICOs offer investors compared to the CAGR from VC of only 10%.
Institutional vs Retail trend
At the beginning of the ICO phenomenon, most investors were small-scale retailers. This trend continued into early 2017; however, towards the end of 2017 to early 2018, there was an upturn in the value of institutional investment. As of mid-2018, institutional investors are leading retail investors—not in volume but in value. This is a positive indicator of investor confidence in ICOs.
Conclusion
The above indicators point to one conclusion: ICO success is going to continue for the foreseeable future. The ROI picture reflected by the infographic below should be enough to convince any doubting investor that ICOs are worth their consideration.
Infographic source: https://icowatchlist.com
Photo Credit: Flickr