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By Jonah Dally and Alex Andreoli
The History of ICOs to Present Day
Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are a new way of raising money that has been introduced to the public. Some sources cite their creation as early as 2013. ICOs gradually became more common in 2015 and 2016. Notable ICOs that launched in 2016 are ICONOMI, which raised a market capital of about $10 million, and SingularDTV, which raised about $7.5 million in market capital. These few ICOs in 2016 started a trend and opened endless possibilities for new investors to earn more money through having "tokens" in ICOs.
At the beginning of 2017, people were worried that ICOs wouldn't take off. With only 7 ICOs and $28 million raised in the first quarter, people were skeptical of their growth. Much of this skepticism came about because of how governments would regulate these ICOs and cryptocurrency in general. Many governments, such as China and South Korea, acted quite negatively toward having their people put in billions of dollars into this untraceable currency. They both banned ICOs and even shut down all cryptocurrency exchanges in their country. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has started to crack down on ICOs.
However, all of this skepticism about ICOs and cryptocurrency did not stop the explosion of ICOs in Q2, Q3, and Q4 of 2017. The amount of money raised through ICOs began to increase at a rapid rate. As people began to view ICOs as a new way to invest in companies, they became more
