IEO projects seemingly outperform ICOs, STOs in 2019
A year’s worth of data on Token Offerings reveals that Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs) have seemingly outperformed all other fundraising mechanisms including STOs and ICOs during H1 2019, according to Inwara’s Blockchain and Crypto report — H1 2019.
But there’s a catch, which I’ll get into later.
But first, In case you’re not familiar with IEOs — you can think of them as the centralized cousins of ICOs. IEOs are token offerings launched exclusively on a cryptocurrency exchange(s), on behalf of a company wanting to raise funds.
During H1 2019, IEOs have been wildly successful at raising funds and have also rekindled investor interest in the blockchain-based fundraising space.
Source: Blockchain and Crypto report — H1 2019
IEO projects raised a whopping $1.625 billion during H1 2019, with a staggering growth of over 5300% YOY. An incredible achievement considering the nascency of the investment vehicle. Even STOs, despite its obvious challenges towards achieving mass-adoption, managed to raise 51% more funds than the previous year.
On the other hand, the funds raised by Initial Coin Offerings declined sharply by as much as 91% YOY during the same time period, amounting to a cool $1.3 billion. While still a significant amount, it pales in comparison to ~15 billion raised during H1 2018 alone.
So what’s the catch here? A single project (LEO Token) is responsible for as much as ~61.34% of the funds raised, that’s $1 billion!!
Source: Blockchain and Crypto report — H1 2019
LEO Token’s contribution to the funds raised by IEO projects becomes clear as day when analyzing the IEO funding trend graph.
Funds raised by IEOs observed a surge of over 800% from March-19 to April-19 and then surged to a whopping $1.21 billion during May-19. Remember, $1 billion of this $1.2 billion raised during May was raised by LEO token alone.
Projects like LEO token are a rarity in the crypto space because previously only two other projects have raised such inordinate sums — EOS ICO which raised $4.1 billion and Telegram ICO which raised $1.7 billion.
But even when excluding the funds raised by LEO token, IEO projects managed to raise $625 million which is still a significant amount, especially when considering the nascency of the investment vehicle.
Published at Wed, 03 Jul 2019 23:31:00 +0000