ICO (Initial Coin Offering) is one of the popular crowdfunding platforms that accelerates the fundraising mechanism. Icos are very similar to IPOs (Initial Public Offerings). An IPO offers shares of the company to the public and ICO enables fundraising for blockchain-based projects.

There has been a tremendous growth of ICO over the last years. The first ICO was launched in the year 2013 by Mastercoin. Let us study their progress over a period of time.

ICOs in 2018

The year 2018 witnessed the growth of ICO and the market reached a value of US$ 13.7 billion.

Many companies invested in ICO development solutions to launch their products for fundraising. By this time, bitcoin had already made some billionaires, and thus the image of ICO was quite promising. There was not much industry experience in this field and everyone from sports, finance, real estate, healthcare, and others started investing in ICO solutions.

However, a study was also released in the same year stating the fraudulent activities in the ICOs.

ICOs in 2019 

The start of 2019 witnessed a drop in the volume generated by ICOs. The funds generated in Q1 of 2019 were approximately US$ 118 million which were almost 58 times lower than the funds of Q1 of 2018.

The downfall of ICO attracted the growth of STO. STO (Security Token Offerings) are asset-backed tokens that are guided by governmental regulations. Everyone had their eyes on STO and predicted it to be the next turning point in the industry. But things did not move as planned. The fall in STO was due to complicated regulations and un-regularized laws. By June 2019, there was not even a single STO that was running in Europe.

After that came IEO (Initial Exchange Offering). In this, irrespective of project teams, funds were raised by recognized cryptocurrency exchanges. This method did not attract much audience and did not solve the discrepancies of earlier methods.

ICOs in 2020: Where are they heading?

The answer lies in the regulated tokens. SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) are two regulatory institutions that are continuously working to make ICOs more regularized.

Some countries have highly regularized ICOs and do not face many risks while going for Ico Development. Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Cayman Islands, and the British Virgin Islands are some of the ICO friendly countries that you may consider for starting your ICO project.

The trend is focusing on utility tokens that allow token buyers to access and use blockchain-based platforms. If you are looking forward to ICO Development for your project, then you must find out a reliable and trustworthy ICO software development company.

Antier Solutions offers mission-driven ICO development services to maximize your fundraising opportunities. We follow a comprehensive roadmap – from idea generation, design conceptualization, and white paper creation to ICO launch and marketing – to help you accomplish your business goals.

Schedule an obligation-free call with our experts to start your ICO project.