ICO Market 2018 vs 2017: Trends, Capitalization, Localization, Industries, Success Rate

A balance of the general trend of the ICO market during 2018 is double-edged.

The ICO market seems to react to the trends of the underlying cryptocurrency in slightly volatile ways.

As a result, the average amount of funds collected by a single ICO during 2018 is smaller than during the previous year - $11.52 million, against $24.35 million in 2017.

The differences in size in terms of the actual results of each ICO remains relevant, even if the divergence between the amount of capital raised by the ICOs decreased, especially with a rise in the average size of the smallest ICOs: The least successful ICO that ended during 2017 with a positive result raised $420, while the worst result for 2018 was $761.More significantly, the range between the ICOs that can be viewed as being medium-small to large on the basis of the funds gathered lessened, ranging from $1.49 million to $40 million in 2018, while the range was from $1.4 million to $45 million during the previous year.

ICOs become spread worldwideIn 2018, ICO promoters were still choosing to establish their headquarters in a rather small number of countries: At the end of the year, the United States, Singapore and the United Kingdom were the countries hosting the largest number of ICOs since 2015, and these three were also the countries with more new ICOs ending during 2018.

The increasing number of projects competing for capital during 2018 represented a strong barrier to entry, as only 43.3 percent of the ICOs could gather at least $1. However, the performance of the token sales in 2018 that passed the first step was a good deal better than during 2017, as 19.2 percent of the projects at least achieved their soft cap - compared to 9.6 percent a year ago.

In spite of the larger number of ICOs launched during the year, the gap between the total number of token sales ending during 2018 and the few that achieved a hard cap is quite similar to the success funnel recorded during 2017.

In the last year, only 6 percent of ICOs were able to achieve their hard cap, while 6.7 percent did so in 2017.2018 recorded the summit of the rally experienced by the ICO market starting from mid-2017, and a subsequent decreasing phase that seems far from finished as of press time.

The ICO market is therefore too young to interpret last year's data as a first cycle that could repeat itself in the future on a larger scale or as a signal of a dramatic change in market perspectives.

The picture at the end of 2018 allows some hope with regard to a recovery of the ICOs' perspectives: Even after a dramatical downsizing, the market is still larger than at the beginning of the upward trend in 2017, and the fact that a concentration in both localization and industries is decreasing is perhaps a signal of a wider adoption.