ICO Stats: Europe leads in ICO fundraising

ICO stats have continued to surge despite the current bear market that has characterized first half 2018. In the first 5 months of 2018, more money was raised through ICOs than the from 2013-2017 combined. Therefore despite Bitcoin moving from almost $20,000 to around $7000, ICOs are still popping.  As of June 2018, an estimated $6bn  had been raised through ICOs so far.

Different policies
Different countries are abandoning the ‘wait and see’ approach to blockchain and ICOs regulation and adopting pro-active policies. Protecting investors remains the key focus while not curtailing innovation. In USA, there was a recent House committee hearing on how to regulate ICOs with some calling for balanced approach while others remaining adamant. The bone of contention still remains how to classify some ICOs as securities.  In Europe, countries like Switzerland are attracting many ICOs because of favorable investor environment and is one of the leading in ICO stats in Europe.

Europe leads

The most number of ICOs are still in Europe followed by North America and Asia. Europe has capitalized on the blockchain wave and launched some of the major blockchain products such as Status, Bankera, while North America has Tezos and FileCoin among the leading projects. Asia has Dragon, Qash, OMiseGo among others. South America, Caribbean, middle east and Africa are also showing considerable progress in ICO stats this year. There has been increased talk, focus on blockchain and crypto especially in Africa. One of the biggest event, the Africa Blockchain Conference  held in May 2018 in Uganda  showed increasing level of interest even from top government officials. Kenya’s recently formed blockchain taskforce is recommending creating of a national digital currency as well as sandbox to ensure more crypto adoption. Suggestion of creating a nation-based crypto based currency could be similar to what other countries such as Tunisia, Estonia, Dubai and others have been trying to launch. A combination of tech talent, favorable regulatory environment and entrepreneurial culture are some of the factors leading to blockchain and crypto clusters. I covered more of that in this earlier posts about how to make a country become a blockchain nation.

Blockbusters

ICOs that have broken the billion dollar mark are: Telegram, EOS and Petro Coin. These three have raised over 45% of the total amount raised through ICOs. For Telegram, it raised about $1.7 billion in private sale early in the year and cancelled its public sale.Towards the end of 2017, the new of Telegram launching an ICO were received positively largely by the crypto community. With existing user base of 200 million users, the grand plan is to make a blockchain based platform to offer blockchain based services such as payments, dApps and other services. EOS finally concluded its year long ICO that raised staggering $4 billion. Petro Coin is a project by Venezuela government. Although information about the exact amount raised is hard to come by, insights show that it is projected to have raised $5bn. The coin is backed by oil and was launched in a bid to help the country’s staggeringly high inflation. All the coins are pre-mined and the government is reportedly setting up 9000 crypto mining machines according to Forbes article.

You can check out the global ICO stats chart we have complied from various sources. The map is not conclusive because it us hard to find all the information about ICOs. Some sites also give differing figures. Furthermore, some ICOs do not disclose their geographical location making it hard to include them in the list. However, the figures show a general picture of global ICO landscape.

Further reading: ICO marketing strategies.