Initial Coin Offerings: An analysis of ICOs' worldwide

Initial Coin Offerings: An analysis of ICOs' worldwide Since earlier the last decade there has been an emerging interest around the concepts of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies: the two approaches immediately started to impact different industries, symbolizing a revolutionary and disruptive technological innovation. Amidst the most innovative implications of these technologies, it’s possible to highlight the birth of the smart-contracts and the – nowadays renowned – cryptocurrencies. These concepts brought, as a consequence, the beginning of the Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) phenomenon. ICOs emerged as a method with the purpose to carry on entrepreneurial finance, venture capital and other presale crowdfunding activities, all those activities are built upon the Blockchain technology structure. The configuration of this unprecedented crowdfunding method relies on the issuance of new tokens from a company, with the aim to finance its Blockchain-based project; the tokens newly issued are offered to investors that are willing to allocate their money on the project. Investors, in return of their investment, will receive the guarantee of access to some of the company’s services. Tokens can be traded among investors according to their current market value. This method, since its introduction, due to the high profitability of some of the Coin Offerings, achieved over years a proper and increasing recognition and popularity. The paper has the aspiration to offer to the reader, at first, a broad overview regarding ICOs, their origin, the technologies upon which relies the crowdfunding process, the past and recent market trends and other relevant introductory aspects. Afterwards, the author will address the work in a more analytical approach: the development of a database has been carried out with the purpose to use the collected data to place emphasis on statistically relevant evidences. A part of the work will thus be dedicated to the database creation and its methodology, highlighting the sources used and the procedures adopted, complete with the elucidation of the variables included in the dataset. The following chapter of the paper will cover some descriptive statistics of the most significant variables included in the database. The descriptive statistics will be carried out in accordance with the whole database sample and some of its subsamples, accurately selected by the author according to the values of a set of variables. To complete this work a regression analysis will be performed, with the aim to find statistically relevant evidences of a hypothetic correlation between the success of an ICO – represented in the analysis by the amount of money that the company collected – and some of the variables included in the database. To complete this paper, the implications of said analysis and the final conclusions obtained are going to be outlined and discussed.