Return on ICO Investments: Data for Top 25 Tokens by MarketCap | KoinOK Blog

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The KoinOK Blog

13 min readAug 7, 2018

ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering. ICOs are increasingly becoming a dominant form of start fund-raising, especially cryptocurrency startups.

In an ICO, a utility token, which will be used to fuel and sustain the decentralized network platform, is sold to the public with an aim of raising money beforehand for building the network itself.

Basically, through an ICO, an investor is entrusting a centralized entity with his/her funds to deliver a decentralized economy around a pre-decided utility, e.g. storage, computing, music or possibly any other utility function you can think of. This network is global in nature and runs via internet. You don’t get an ownership of company stocks through an ICO, rather you become a part owner of the decentralized economy itself, depending on what proportion of total tokens you own/hold. This is a new form of ownership and thus seems confusing to many at present. You are investing directly in an isolated economy.

As this decentralized economy attracts more participants with time, the utility token (offered in ICO) gets more demand as it is necessary to conduct all economic activities within the decentralized economy, resulting in increase in its value.

Historical Background

Although the journey of ICOs started in July 2013 with Mastercoin going for crowdfunding centered around cryptocurrency for the first time, it was Ethereum’s ICO in 2014 which really gave validation to this model of raising capital. And it was in 2017 when growth of ICOs became exponential, with most of the ICOs based on Ethereum Platform.

In 2017, ICOs raised a total of around $6 billion, almost 40 times as much capital as raised during the whole of 2016. And over $2.2 billion was raised by 20 ICOs alone.

Even in 2018, a total of $6.3 billion were raised through ICOs just within the first three months — January to March, which is 18% more than the whole of 2017 figure.

This shows ICO market is refusing to die down and infact more and more companies are exploring this route to raise funds for their startup growth. Not just the total funding figures, but the number of ICOs has also seen a great jump of 59% in these three months over the whole of 2017.

However, at the same time, ICO industry has attracted several bad players as well who have no intention of creating a decentralized economy and run away with the funds raised through ICO. Infact, the failure rate of ICOs is much higher as compared to its success rate. Hence, investors need to do their own due diligence to find out good undervalued opportunities and avoid getting into a scam or a ponzi scheme masqueraded as ICO.

Performance Data of Top 25 Tokens by Marketcap:

Let’s now look at the data for growth/decline in value of top 25 utility tokens by marketcap from their ICO period to now. Please note that as only top tokens by market cap are considered, there is already a higher likelihood that these tokens have done well. However, the trend for lower market cap tokens may not be the same. So, this data cannot be taken as representative of the whole ICO market.

NOTE:

i) Data for ICO Price has been taken from ICO Listing Platforms

ii) Data for All Time High Price and Current Price has been taken from Coin Market Cap (CMC)

iii) All the below titles are hyperlinked, so you can go to individual token project websites to know more about the projects.

1. Ether (ETH)

Ether is a necessary element — a fuel — for operating the distributed application platform Ethereum. It is a form of payment made by the clients of the platform to the machines executing the requested operations.
ICO Price — 0.311 USD (August 2014)
All Time High (ATH) — 1377 USD (Jan 14, 2018)
Current Price (CP) — 411 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI (from ICO price to current price) — 1321.54x or 132054%
Decline from ATH to Current Price (Impact of 2018 Bear Market) — 70.15%

2. EOS (Conducted ICO on Ethereum Platform; It has now launched its own mainnet)

EOS.IO is software that introduces a blockchain architecture designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications (the “EOS.IO Software”). This is achieved through an operating system-like construct upon which applications can be built.
The software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication and the scheduling of applications across multiple CPU cores and/or clusters.
The resulting technology is a blockchain architecture that has the potential to scale to millions of transactions per second, eliminates user fees and allows for quick and easy deployment of decentralized applications.
ICO Price — 0.99 USD (June 2017)
All Time High (ATH) — 21.46 USD (April 29, 2018)
Current Price (CP) — 7.04 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 7.11x or 611%
Decline from ATH to CP (Impact of 2018 Bear Market) — 67.2%

3. NEO (previously AntShares; Conducted ICO on Ethereum Platform; It has now launched its own mainnet)

NEO, formerly known as Antshares, is the People’s Republic of China’s first ever open source blockchain. Since its founding, NEO’s mission has been to improve and revolutionise the way e-commerce is done. Neo has been designed to get the existing up to date and get it plugged into the new age smart economy.
NEO is making use of tech to connect and network people and businesses en masse. The NEO blockchain will implement P2P networking, digital certificates, cross-chain interoperability, superconducting transactions and dBFT consensus technologies to effectively execute the management of smart assets within a safe and legally binding framework.
ICO Price — 0.036 USD (August 2017)
All Time High — 161.55 USD (Jan 18, 2018)
Current Price — 26.3 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 730.5x or 72950%
Decline from ATH to CP — 83.7%

4. TRON/TRX (Conducted ICO on Ethereum Platform; It has now launched its own mainnet)

TRON is dedicated to building the infrastructure for a truly decentralized Internet.
ICO Price — 0.0019 USD (September 2017)
All Time High — 0.21 USD (Jan 5, 2018)
Current Price — 0.029 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 15.26x or 1426%
Decline from ATH to CP — 86.2%

5. Binance Coin (BNB)

Binance Coin is the native token of Binance Cryptocurrency Exchange — the largest in the world in terms of daily volume.
ICO Price — 0.115 USD (July 2017)
All Time High — 24.46 USD (Jan 12, 2018)
Current Price — 13.6 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 118.26x or 11726%
Decline from ATH to CP — 44.4%

6. ICON (ICX)

The ICON project is building a global decentralized network. In the ICON world, independent blockchains with different governances can transact with one another without intermediaries. Dozens of reputable institutions are already in the network. Anyone can create a new blockchain project and join the network.
ICO Price — 0.11 USD (Sept 2017)
All Time High — 12.06 USD (Jan 10, 2018)
Current Price — 0.864 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 7.85x or 685%
Decline from ATH to CP — 92.8%

7. WAVES

Waves Platform was purpose-built from scratch and came into operation after a successful ICO in 2016. Today Waves claims to be the fastest, most secure and user-friendly open blockchain platform in existence, with a wide range of effective tools for everyday use by enterprises and individuals.
ICO Price — 0.188 USD (May 2016)
All Time High — 17.06 USD (Dec 19, 2017)
Current Price — 1.84 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 9.79x or 879%
Decline from ATH to CP — 89.2%

8. OmiseGO (OMG)

OmiseGO is a public Ethereum-based financial technology for use in mainstream digital wallets, that enables real-time, peer-to-peer value exchange and payment services agnostically across jurisdictions and organizational silos, and across both fiat money and decentralized currencies.
ICO Price — 0.326 USD (July, 2017)
All Time High — 26.14 USD (Jan 8, 2018)
Current Price — 5.23 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 16.04x or 1504%
Decline from ATH to CP — 80%

9. 0x (ZRX)

The Ethereum blockchain has become host to a variety of variety of digital assets, with more being created every month. Soon, thousands of assets will be tokenized and moved onto this open financial network. As the token space continues to develop, the need to exchange these assets will be compounded.
0x protocol will act as a critical piece of infrastructure for the token economy, allowing Ethereum smart contracts to programmatically and seamlessly exchange Ethereum-based assets.
ICO Price — 0.048 USD (September 2017)
All Time High — 2.37 USD (Jan 13, 2018)
Current Price — 0.95 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 19.79x or 1879%
Decline from ATH to CP — 59.92%

10. Zilliqa (ZIL)

Zilliqa is a new blockchain platform that is designed to scale in an open, permission-less distributed network securely. The core feature that makes Zilliqa scalable is sharding — dividing the network into several smaller component networks (called shards) capable of processing transactions in parallel.
ICO Price — 0.0038 USD (Jan 2018)
All Time High — 0.2 USD (May 10, 2018)
Current Price — 0.0517 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 13.6x or 1260%
Decline from ATH to CP — 74.15%

11. Aeternity (AE)

æternity is a scalable blockchain platform that enables high bandwidth transacting, purely-functional smart contracts, and decentralized oracles.
ICO Price — 0.284 USD (June, 2017)
All Time High — 4.91 USD (April 30, 2018)
Current Price — 1.66 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 5.85x or 485%
Decline from ATH to CP — 66.2%

12. Ontology (ONT)

Ontology provides new high-performance public blockchains that include a series of complete distributed ledgers and smart contract systems. Ontology supports collaboration amongst chain networks with its various protocol groups.
ICO Price — 0.2 USD (Jan 2018)
All Time High — 10.71 USD (May 4, 2018)
Current Price — 2.2 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 11x or 1000%
Decline from ATH to CP — 79.46%

13. Augur/REP (Conducted its ICO on Ethereum; It has now launched its own mainnet)

Augur is a Decentralized Prediction Market Platform, built on Blockchain technology. Prediction markets allow users to buy and sell shares in the outcome of an event. The current market price of a share is an estimate of the probability of an event occurring. Utilizing this technology, our markets can effectively eliminate counterparty risk and centralized servers.
ICO Price — 0.6 USD (September 2015)
All Time High — 107.7 USD (Jan 13, 2018)
Current Price — 27.87 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 46.45x or 4545%
Decline from ATH to CP — 74.12%

14. Basic Attention Token (BAT)

Basic Attention Token improves the efficiency of digital advertising by creating a new unit of exchange between publishers, advertisers and users. It all happens on the Ethereum blockchain. The value of the token is based on user attention, which simply means a person’s focused mental engagement.
ICO Price — 0.036 USD (May, 2017)
All Time High — 0.864 USD (Jan 9, 2018)
Current Price — 0.28 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 7.78x or 678%
Decline from ATH to CP — 67.6%

15. RChain (RHOC)

RChain aims to build scalable blockchain applications.
ICO Price — 2.4 USD (Token Sale ended on Dec 10, 2017)
All Time High — 2.99 USD (Jan 8, 2018)
Current Price — 0.61 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 0.254x or declined by 74.6%
Decline from ATH to CP — 79.6%

16. Golem (GNT)

The Golem Network is a decentralized sharing economy of computing power, where anyone can make money ‘renting’ out their computing power or developing & selling software.
ICO Price — 0.01 USD (November 2016)
All Time High — 1.16 USD (Jan 2, 2018)
Current Price — 0.214 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 21.4x or 2040%
Decline from ATH to CP — 81.55%

17. KuCoin Shares (KCS)

KuCoin Share is the native token of KuCoin Cryptocurrency Exchange.
ICO Price — 0.0693 USD
All Time High — 20.13 USD (Jan 12, 2018)
Current Price — 2.23 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 32.18x or 3118%
Decline from ATH to CP — 88.92%

18. Pundi X (NPXS)

Pundi X’s mission is to make buying cryptocurrency as easy as buying bottled water.
ICO Price — 0.001 USD (Jan 2018)
All Time High — 0.0153 USD (June 17, 2018)
Current Price — 0.001925 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 1.925 or 92.5%
Decline from ATH to CP — 87.42%

19. Status (SNT)

Status is a free (libre) and open source mobile client targeting Android & iOS, built entirely on Ethereum technologies.
ICO Price — 0.0365 USD (June 2017)
All Time High — 0.609 USD (Jan 4, 2018)
Current Price — 0.0535 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 1.47x or 47%
Decline from ATH to CP — 91.2%

20. Populous (PPT)

Populous is an invoice and trade finance platform built using the latest in blockchain technology. Populous uses XBRL, Z Score formula, smart contracts, stable tokens and more to create a unique trading environment for investors and invoice sellers from all around the world.
ICO Price — 0.278 USD (July 2017)
All Time High — 68.91 USD (Jan 28, 2018)
Current Price — 4.62 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 16.62x or 1562%
Decline from ATH to CP — 93.3%

21. IOST

IOST is building a scalable, secure and decentralized blockchain App platform. It aims to provide high TPS, scalable and secure infrastructure to enable infinite possibilities for developers to create, innovate and build their next big ideas.
ICO Price — 0.01 USD (Jan 2018)
All Time High — 0.127 USD (Jan 25, 2018)
Current Price — 0.0195 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 1.95x or 95%
Decline from ATH to CP — 84.65%

22. Mithril (MITH)

Mithril is a decentralized social media platform which rewards all content creators.
ICO Price — 0.0698 USD
All Time High — 1.47 USD (May 12, 2018)
Current Price — 0.454 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 6.5x or 550%
Decline from ATH to CP — 69.1%

23. Waltonchain (WTC)

Waltonchain aims to create a business ecosystem which successfully integrates blockchain-based technology and IOT.
ICO Price — 0.65 USD
All Time High — 43.89 USD (Jan 28, 2018)
Current Price — 3.42 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 5.26x or 426%
Decline from ATH to CP — 92.2%

24. aelf (ELF)

aelf is a decentralized cloud computing network in which full nodes run on cloud servers. Each smart contract runs on its own Blockchain. Token holders ensure governance and allow developers to customize it to meet their own needs.
ICO Price — 0.099 USD (2017)
All Time High — 2.59 USD (Jan 8, 2018)
Current Price — 0.533 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 5.38x or 438%
Decline from ATH to CP — 79.42%

25. Kin (KIN)

Kin is creating a decentralized ecosystem of digital services.
ICO Price — 0.0001 USD (Sept 2017)
All Time High — 0.001361 USD (Jan 6, 2018)
Current Price — 0.000174 USD (August 7, 2018)
Growth/ROI from ICO Price to CP — 1.74x or 74%
Decline from ATH to CP — 87.2%

Dislaimer: This should not be construed as an investment advice. Please do your own research before investing.