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ICO Analysis for November 2017

This is the monthly ICO analysis conducted by Algalon Capital analytical department. You can have a look at the analysis for October 2017 and September 2017 as well.

The report covers 122 ICO’s completed in November 2017; pre-ICO’s are not included.

These terms are the key metrics in our report:

  • Soft cap is the minimal amount required by a project.
  • Target is the funding goal as stated by a project’s team.
  • If a target is not stated, then we use hard cap, which is the maximum amount a project is hoping to achieve, or a technical limit of a crowdsale.

November ICO’s: failure or success?

An ICO is considered to be a success if all these conditions are met:

  • Soft cap is reached.
  • More than 50% of the target or hard cap is collected.

An ICO is considered to be a failure if at least one of these conditions is met:

  • Soft cap is not reached.
  • Less than 50% of the target or hard cap collected.
  • No information on the project status and funds raised is available, the official website was deleted and or the official Bitcointalk thread gets cleared.
Distribution of projects by status [Failure or Success] in November 2017.
Diagram 1. Distribution of projects by status [Failure or Success] in November 2017.

If soft cap, target and hard cap are not stated, our experts will analyze the project and make sure that the funds raised are sufficient to implement the business. Thus, if a business has collected the necessary funds to implement their roadmap, we deem it a success. If not, it is considered unsuccessful.

Funds raised, USD (*if stated)
Total funds raised by all projects* $949M
Total funds raised by successful projects* $747M
Total funds raised by unsuccessful projects* $202M
Median funds raised by successful projects $14.6M
Median funds raised by unsuccessful projects $1.4M
Median funds raised by all projects (incl. successful and unsuccessful) $4M

The amount of funds collected is increasing every month. In November $949M was collected vs. $905M in October vs. $838M in September 2017.

However, we should mention that every month fewer projects state the amount of money they collected. In November 19% of all the ICO’s did not report amounts of capital raised. Nevertheless, these were mostly ICO’s that did not gain full market exposure, meaning their results would not affect the overall figures.

Median funds collected by all projects, including successful and unsuccessful ones, was $4M in November 2017 vs. $2.8M in October 2017, which is an increase of 43%.

We should always take into account that small and failed projects heavily influence this figure, many of which fluctuate from month to month. That’s why we also estimate median funds collected by successful and unsuccessful projects separately.

Median funds collected by successful projects in November 2017 was $14.6M vs. $16M in October 2017. And median funds raised by unsuccessful projects in November 2017 was $1.4M, the same amount raised in October 2017. Thus, median figures of capital raised by both successful and unsuccessful ICO’s were basically the same in October and November 2017.

Distribution of completed projects by funds raised, USD in November 2017. (Based on 99 projects that reported funds raised out of total 122).
Diagram 2. Distribution of completed projects by funds raised, USD in November 2017. (Based on 99 projects that reported funds raised out of total 122).

The following pie graphs categorize the projects by total earnings.

Most projects collect less than 20% or more than 90% of their target

Distribution of the projects by funds raised, as a percentage of the target/hard cap in November 2017.
Diagram 3. Distribution of the projects by funds raised, as a percentage of the target/hard cap in November 2017.

The following graph analyzes ICO’s with a verified target or hard cap figure.

Conclusions:

  • ICO’s still collect huge amounts of money, November continues the uptrend with $949M vs. $905M received in October.
  • Still a significant portion of all the projects fail – according to our criteria, 72% of ICO’s completed in November 2017 were unsuccessful. That is the same level we saw in October when 73% of all the projects failed.
  • Out of all projects, the medium funding reached of a target or hard cap was 17%, which is a decrease from October’s median of 27%.
  • The median amount of funds raised by a project was $4M, which is an increase from October’s median of $2.8M.
  • ICO’s most often raised 0-10%, 10-20% and 90-100% of their target/hard cap (39%, 17% and 19% of all the projects respectively).
  • 3 out of 34 successful projects did not state a funding goal, target or hard cap, but raised collectively $150M.
  • An increasing number of projects tend not to state soft cap/target/hard cap and also tend to conceal the ICO results after it has been finished.
  • Still, a large portion of the projects also conceals the figures, substituting them with vague definitions like “successful” or “exceeding expectations”. Presumably, they do it to be tamper with token price, soft cap, hard cap, supply or team share.

Sources: Algalon Capital, project websites, whitepapers, official Bitcointalk threads.