I analyzed 1000 Crypto ICOs. Here is What I Learned.

In this article, I share my insights from analyzing the price performance of hundreds of crypto projects at specific timestamps (days after public listing: 1, 10, 60, 365). The results are relevant both for investors in ICOs and for buyers of projects immediately after their public listing.

Please note that this is not an academic study. Still, I believe the findings are of added value for crypto investors.

And with that, let’s get started!

The Dataset

The data I used for this analysis comes from https://coinmarketcap.com/ico-calendar/ended/. It consists of a total of 983 ICOs that took place between January 2019 and October 2022.

As you can see in the chart below, the majority of ICOs in this dataset happened in 2021 and 2022. This will become important when I interpret the data throughout this article.

ICO Prices

The following chart shows the distribution of ICO prices — the prices at which coins or tokens were sold at different stages of the funding process.

It is striking that the majority of projects set the price at just a few US cents. Less than 10% set price at or above one US Dollar. This coincides with conversations I had with the executives of various crypto projects — according to which many projects choose such a low price mainly for psychological reasons. As it turns out, many (inexperienced) investors associate a low ICO price with higher future growth potential. As we will see later on, this assumption is wrong.

ICO Funding Goals

Most projects aimed to raise up to $500K with a significant part setting goals at $1M or more. A few more insights…