Cracking the Landscape
How ICOs are generating billions for startups, and what this tells us about the future.
Back in 2016, ICOs generated a total 96 million USD in token sales globally. Last year (2017), this number rocketed to approximately 3.7 billion, with trade and investment-based ICOs accounting for approximately 13.7%¹. On the corporate side, giants like Google and Goldman Sachs are leading the pack in ICO investment and research². ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) are a form of digital currency that some speculate will not only rival, but potentially even replace Venture Capital in its application to the initial cultivation of capital needed for startups to develop — particularly in dynamic markets such as real estate that demand high-speed execution; to achieve this, it is vital that liquidity of the assets themselves be immediate.
The underlying technological platform itself — the blockchain — allows for higher-quality liquidity in asset transaction, whilst maintaining an unprecedented level of transparency that reduces the uncertainty between investing and receiving parties to create a shared reality via a distributed ledger that also allows for self-regulation through smart contracts, thereby minimizing risks on the investor side.
Unlike traditional investment models, blockchain applications on platforms such as Ethereum have the ability to maximize cost efficiency by eliminating backend practices and voiding the alternative need for intermediaries that routinely charge 10–20% to verify and process the transfer of assets internationally, which can take up to several weeks; overall, a system which greatly undercuts the liquidity of an investor’s assets.
Blockchain, on the other hand, serves the needs and objectives of both parties, without the middle-man. It allows startups to generate the growth capital needed to produce results faster and with greater meticulousness than ever before, solely due to the liquidity of digital assets themselves. Markets like real estate now have the potential for higher efficiency and execution rates, giving companies with the right appreciation for cryptocurrency and other such applications of blockchain the ability to generate high-impact solutions to complex problems and perform with the level of sophistication and intricacy needed to match the quality of their solutions.
To learn more about how one company is doing exactly that, please visit blockchain.noon.sg
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