To ICO or not to ICO: Analysis of Initial Coin Offerings and Token Sales - Seguridad Mania.com - España y América Latina

The talk presents the first holistic study on ICOs and token sales with key results that trace the evolution of the industry from 2013 to date. We argue that while the full potential of blockchain technology is yet to be realized, with major infrastructure challenges in place, the technology (particularly with the advent of the Ethereum blockchain, which is the first successful programmable blockchain), blockchain technology has created a new viable vehicle for early stage capital raising. Along with creating a new asset class, the development is transforming the financial services sector (with other industries like supply chain, healthcare, etc. closely following suit). We trace the evolution of ICOs and token sales using a hand-constructed complete ICO database from small contribution campaigns from a project’s backers and the community in 2013, to the multibillion-dollar industry as it is at the beginning of 2018. We show that successful ICOs tend to be more self-compliant with the forthcoming potential regulation and spend more effort on signalling their quality and reducing the asymmetric information problem. Finally, our research highlights the incomplete nature and poor quality of the data provided by the ICO aggregation websites and calls for creation of a complete database to study the phenomenon in a scientifically sound manner.