Study finds
Research compiled by London Fintech Week 2018 has revealed that if present trends continue, the year 2020 could see an ICO ecosystem of $30bn-$40bn value of tokens issued with around 2,000 token projects. To put this into context, traditional fintech investment in 2017 globally totalled circa $30billion.
This is against a backdrop of an ever-growing number of ICOs being launched in 2018, following a surge in popularity in the new form of fundraising. ICOs have seen over 50 per cent growth in value between January-May 2018 at $9.6billion compared to the whole of last year at $6.1billion.
In the last 12 months (May 2017-May 2018), 60 per cent of ICO activity took place in the first five months 2018.
Since March 2016, there have been 861 ICO projects with a total value of $16billion, 55 per cent of which took place in the first five months of 2018 alone.
Business models that are seeing the highest surge in ICO activity include money & commerce at 31.5 per cent (such as finance, payments and trading exchange), system architecture at 28.7 per cent (communication, data storage and AI), content at 25.3 per cent (games, AR & VR, social media and advertising) and process at 14.5 per cent (such as healthcare, gambling and supply chain).
Commenting on the news, founder of London Fintech Week, Luis Carranza, said: “We are very excited by the news that ICOs could reach $40billion in the next two years. We are witnessing the next form of fintech evolve, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Regulation in some legal domains is now adapting to this new fintech phenomenon, bringing ICOs into a more recognisable framework.”
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