The popularity of ICO as crowdfundingEven 5 years ago, crowdfunding platforms were almost the only way for young entrepreneurs to raise money for the development of the project, bypassing long lines to investors and venture capitalists. However, this format is losing popularity.
This year, ICO was the money-raising (initial coin offering) - a form of attracting investments in the form of selling to investors a fixed number of tokens received by a single or accelerated emission. For 2017 ICOs raised
$ 2.7 billion.
To determine the reasons for the popularity of the ICO, it is enough to recall the modern phenomenon of crowdfunding, because with this method of attracting money for the development of the project, ICO has more in common with the classical investment tools. Actually, crowdfunding somewhat pressed the traditional IPO (the initial offer of shares), where the investor in exchange for money receives shares and the corporate rights that are conditioned by them. In turn, the ICO scheme has become an even more perfect mechanism for attracting investment, and in some cases is better suited for this purpose than crowdfunding.
For people behind the ICO, the initial monetary offer is a convenient option for implementing their own ideas. To run a cryptocurrency start-up, one does not need to conduct audits, take loans for a crazy percentage. And there is no need for any guarantees. Because of the complete lack of regulation and lack of accountability, ICO has become so popular.
The most famous case of a successful ICO is the creation of the Ethereum cryptocurrency (Ether). In 2014, the company released tokens, and after a while these tokens radically rose in price. Within this ICO, $ 18 million was raised, but now the capitalization of the currency has reached $ 4.6 billion. In total, for the year 2014, $ 31 million was collected for various projects, a record year was 2016 with
$ 210 million.
Another successful example is Export.Online, the platform, whose ICO is about to start soon. This is an innovative international trading platform, oriented initially to the needs of exporters. The main target audience of the project are companies that produce goods and services that want to enter a fundamentally new level of business and significantly expand the market for their products. The project team already has lots of experience in international trade and process management. More information on the website:
Export.online