ICO’s raised a record rate of $797 million in the second quarter of 2017, according to CoinDesk’s State of the Blockchain report. Combined with Q1 2017’s rates, initial coin offerings were funded by $1.13 billion in the first half of the year.
One of the main findings of the report was a comparison between two funding methods. While venture capital (VC) scored a total of $235 million in Q2 2017, ICOs outnumbered VCs by securing a $797 million of fundings.
According to CoinDesk, the combined public blockchain token valuations exceed $100 billion. The company reported that, prior the second quarter of the year, the valuations never exceeded $25 billion.
CoinDesk’s ICO Tracker shows that the all-time total funds ICOs secured are standing at $1.78 billion. Q2 2017’s results take the largest portion of the sales with nearly 45 percent of all ICO funds.
The report emphasized that ICOs are on the rise. According to the company, “global issuers assemble to sell and distribute tokens, with massive deals open and on horizon.” Single ICOs also performed extremely well: many of them exceeded the largest VC deal with several companies raising over $200 million.
ICOs exceed more than three times the quantity and total of blokchain venture deals, the reports shows. CoinDesk reported that the ICO demand not only matches the supply but the returns on multiple token sales “have far exceeded” holding bitcoin or ether on short term. The top ICO deals for Q2 2017 include Bancor ($153 million), Status ($95 million), TenX ($83.1 million), and MobileGo ($53.1 million). On the other hand, the top VC deals include R3 ($107 million), Canaan ($43.6 million), Blockchain ($40 million), and Axoni ($20 million).
CoinDesk highlighted that the global ecosystem remains unsure about the legality of the ICOs. According to the report, there is only a limited number of comments on the token sales from major regulatory bodies worldwide from the perspective of investors, issues, and exchanges.
However, the state of the ICOs have worsened after a few days ago, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) decided to impose an immediate blanket ban on all ICO fundings, stating it is an illegal way to raise funds. Soon after the PBOC announcement, the crypto market suffered a major blow to the prices – the market cap decreased by $16 billion due to the ICO ban.
Furthermore, Russia, following China’s trails, issued a public statement, warning the citizens of the country about the dangers of ICOs and cryptocurrencies. The Russian Central Bank statement goes by:
“Cryptocurrencies are issued by an unlimited circle of anonymous entities. Due to the anonymous nature of the issuance of cryptocurrency, citizens and legal entities can be involved in illegal activities including legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime and financing of terrorism.”
Other countries have issued warnings to their citizens too – regarding ICOs -, including the United States, Singapore, and Hong Kong.