What a suprise.
This should be measured in Bitcoin and Ethereum, not in USD. And also be revisited during the next Bitcoin bull run.
Point is; ICO's are scams.
For my real job I've researched all of the top 100-110 coins by market cap, though some come and go on a regular basis, and not all coins have ICOs. Out of the ones that did, I would say, in the top 100:
- 10% are outright scams, mainly got to the top 100 through careful manipulation of CMC
- 70% are genuine ideas that "threw the blockchain at a problem," and probably won't be around 2 years from now
- 20% are legitimate, interesting projects that are really on the forefront of combining cutting edge technology with the blockchain
Even though a lot of ICOs are scams, most of them are just moneymaking ideas that aren't scams but don't have the legs to go do the distance... Then every once in a while there is a really smart project with a dedicated team; those also get rekt by prevailing market conditions quite frequently, however.
This is not investment advice, and I'm not invested in any of them, but a few projects I found to be unique and have potential include:
Holo (HOT)
Endor Protocol (EDR)
Decentraland (MANA)
SingularityNET (AGI)
OneRoot Network (RNT)
Having said that, yeah, the ICO market is still completely oversaturated, and
I'm just as pessimistic about it as anybody.
You seem a lot less pessimistic of ICOs than many others here, especially giving a 20% "not a scam" assessment to the top 100 (and maybe they deserve 1% not a scam rating at best?), and as an elephant in the room, you did not really describe some of the issues that ICOs have when they raise a whole hell of a lot of money up front (likely way more than they need) when they would not likely have been able to raise even close to a fraction of such amounts through traditional means (that is a significant reason why they did ICO in the first place which is a means to get unintelligent investors on board). Once they raise their initial money, then it is questionable whether they will carry on with their vaporware (and frequently vague ass) promises because they already made a killing up front (where is the incentive to deliver, even if (WHICH IS A BIG ASS "IF") they initially had good motives?).