The year 2017 was without a doubt the Year of Bitcoin, as the increasing interest in cryptocurrency boosted a massive market race. As if that wasn’t enough excitement, some speculators took the further leap to investing in cryptocurrency projects through a regulated process called an “ICO,” or initial coin offering, in which a startup sells its own crypto token to raise money.
The speculations about the skyrocketing price of Bitcoin and altcoins turn out to be true. According to crypto media outlet Bitcoin.com, which has surveyed last year’s ICOs and has found that from a total of 902 tracked by TokenData, 142 failed before raising funding, and another 276 failed after fundraising.
Well, according to an estimate that failure rate is considered to be around 46%, which means that nearly half of the ICOs have failed. And there are those who we can call “semi-failed”, as their teams have gone out of reach and they have failed to get the required admiration from the community.
Though the number will not be much surprising for those, who already know the failure rate of early stage startups which is 90%, that doesn’t mean that you can keep on wasting a lot of money on the things that will never work for you.
Bitcoin.com reports that the community of some ‘semi-failed’ ICOs was so small that the project had no chance of success, as they state that; “[..] it means that 59% of last year’s crowd sales are either confirmed failures or failures-in-the-making.”
Meanwhile, some ICO projects are also motivating for investors, as in case of Telegram which raised $850 million in ICO, and is deemed to be the world’s biggest ICO yet. ICOs are here to stay, but if you’re tempted to invest in one, hold both sides of the story in your mind and more importantly, must do research.
