The ICO Market has yet to return to the heights of mid-2017, but investment and returns remain steady despite a more cautious approach from investors. However, this week’s ICO Bench Weekly Market Review contradicts the general feeling that investors are holding back and waiting for the next bull market.
Indeed, Dragon, which completed its ICO in March, is the most successful publicly funded ICO to date, raising a staggering $320 million. March 2018 saw 1.759 billion invested in ICOs, making it the highest grossing month of the past twelve.
Recent successful ICOs
The most funds raised by an ICO in recent weeks was the $50,918,694 raised by Moover, a platform that allows users sell or buy excess mobile data. Moover received a poor 1.9 rating from ICO Bench but this doesn’t appear to have deterred investors from putting money into the project.
The top five latest ICOs by money raised are:
1 MOOVER $50,918,694
2 Current $36,000,000
3 KYC.LEGAL $28,000,000
3 AIRCOIN $27,987,875
5 Thrive $26,000,000
Truegame is the top-rated recent ICO on Coinbench. Its token sale was completed on the 30th of April. The top five best reviewed newest ICOs were:
1 Truegame 4.8
2 Pecunio 4.7
3 Midex 4.7
4 KEYRPTO 4.6
5 Blockscart 4.6
The highest earning ICO in March (and indeed the most successful of all time) was Dragon which raised $320 million, more than double the second highest earner, Dropil. The full top five was:
1 Dragon $320,000,000
2 Dropil $60,000,000
3 WAWLLET $55,000,000
4 Celsius $50,000,000
5 TrakInvest $50,000,000
By country
The United States leads the way as the country with the most ICOs launched, raising a combined investment of nearly $3 billion. Other leading players are Russia, the UK and Switzerland, which has the highest number of ICOs per capita (9 per 1 million people). Other smaller countries punching above their weight are Estonia with 94 ICOs (7 per 1 million people), Slovenia with 8 ICOs per 1 million, and Cyprus with 6 ICOs per 1 million.
Platforms
Unsurprisingly, Ethereum is the platform of choice for the overwhelming majority of ICOs, with 81.25% opting for the most established blockchain platform. Waves is the second choice with 3.1%, with Stellar, NEO, Separate Blockchain and NEM all sharing a market share of less than 1%.
Industries
With new ICOs every week, most sectors of commerce are now represented in ICO Bench’s list of market size per industry. However, most of the ICOs launched are either platforms or cryptocurrencies, with business services, investment and software industries fleshing out the top five. But ICOs have been launched in every field from healthcare to electronics, and from charity to art.
Return on investment and hard cap concerns
With the market saturated with ICOs, some are bound to fail. The number of failures is a concern with less than 50% reaching their hard cap in March 2018 compared to around 90% in May of last year. So while investment figures show no real sign of decline, there are indications that investors are more sophisticated and more prone to investigating ICOs before they put their hands in their pockets.
NEO is still the biggest winner in terms of ROI with lucky investors who parted with $0.03 per token during the ICO enjoying a 228,087.48% profit. Such profits are unimaginable in any other investment sphere, and it is easy to understand why ICOs, despite the number of failures, still attract investors dreaming of a big win. The other largest ROIs are (Current price as of end April 2018):
| Crypto | Coin Name | ICO End Date | ICO Price | Current Price | ROI |
| Neo | Neo | Sep 07 2017 | $0.03 | $73.02 | 228087.48% |
| Emphy | EPY | Nov 05 2017 | $0.10 | $134.97 | 134873.14% |
| JOLYY | JOY | Feb 24 2018 | $0.03 | $12.35 | 44342.84% |
| EmerateCoin | EMC | Dec 24 2017 | $0.01 | $3.35 | 33362.72% |
| Populous | PPT | July 24 2017 | $0.25 | $23.02 | 9181.60% |
