Top ICOs of 2018: Initial Coin Offerings that beat the Crypto Bear’s market

When we think about the peak of Cryptocurrencies, we think of 2017. 2017 was definitely the most successful and gave cryptocurrencies worldwide fame. Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) turned from whispers of the dusty corners of the Internet, to an incredible investment opportunity for both individuals and companies alike. In this article we will take a look at the top ICOs of 2018, but the whole topic is somewhat subjective, because of the turbulent nature of Crypto prices.

Even though cryptocurrencies had their most successful year to date in 2017 with a total of 7 ICOs in Q1. The total amount of funds raised totaled $28 million. Q2 of 2017 saw a huge increase and the number of launched ICOs almost quadrupled. A total of 25 ICOs were launched in the second quarter and the total amount of funds raised totaled $680 million.

So far so good, Q3 saw a double increase in the number of launches. The ICOs increased in market value with the incredible rise in price and the total funds raised went above $1 billion. Q4 didn’t disappoint either and by the end of the year, the total funds raised by ICOs for 2017 totaled $4.9 billion.

By the end of the year, cryptocurrencies were without a doubt, on the world financial map. Banks, governments, companies and individual investors of all shapes and sizes were all eyeing this hot, new opportunity. Unfortunately, a big part of the projects linked to many of those ICOs are either non-existent or have little to no impact today.

So it’s natural that the best year for cryptocurrencies became the best year for ICOs. For many people and companies, the return of investment is the biggest measure of a success in a project. That’s why when we talk about the top ICOs of 2018, we will look at them with a grain of salt.

Statistics about the top ICOs of 2018

The biggest factor for the subjectivity of the topic is how Crypto prices are measured. Most of the top ICOs are issued on the Ethereum network as ERC-20 tokens. This means that most of them can be traded in Ethereum, and some can be traded with Bitcoin too. So when we look at the prices of these tokens in fiat currency, this figure is calculated by the token’s Ether or Bitcoin price converted to fiat.

In 2018, Ethereum and Bitcoin lost 80% or more of their total valuation so when we calculate these tokens Ether and Bitcoin price in fiat we can see that across the board almost all ICOs lost value. In this article we will look at some statistics about these top ICOs and we will conclude why they are considered successful.

The timing of when you sell these tokens is one of the most important factors for a successful Crypto investment. Buy at the lows and sell at the peak, that’s what matters. Unfortunately, 2018 was a “disaster” for ICOs and most of them plummeted in fiat currency prices so selling at the peak was extremely important for 2018’ top ICOs.

Top ICOs in 2018 by amount of capital raised:

1. EOS – $4.1 billion
2. Telegram – $1.7 billion
3. Petro – $735 million
4. Dragon Coin – $320 million
5. Bankera – $151 million

EOS is a scalable smart contract platform and Ethereum’s biggest rival. EOS is and open-source developers’ community and in many ways it’s superior to Ethereum and inferior in other. EOS and the company Block.one broke all records for Initial Coin Offering raised capital. They collected $4.1 billion, bypassing the last record holder Telegram by 300%.

Telegram was holding the record, raising in 2018 $1.7 billion and shocking the whole Crypto community. Telegram is a messaging giant and they released in 2018 their native token which will be used in the Telegram network. The 3^rd spot goes to Petro, the Venezuelan Petrol-backed national Cryptocurrency.

Venezuela issued their native Digital Currency – the Petro and raised $735 million. I’m not going to go deep on the Venezuelan Petro, because we’ve wrote a lot of articles about it. If you are interested, you can find our Petro articles and a Petro Guide.

Top ICOs for 2018 by Return of Investment (ROI) from ICO price:

1. Smartlands – 600% ROI
2. Digitex – 530% ROI
3. Zilliqa – 385% ROI
4. ODEM – 200% ROI
5. EOS – 128% ROI

The truth is that more than 50% of all ICOs fail to raise money, but in 2018 many ICOs managed to raise significant amounts of capital from investors. 2018 was a 365 day bear market for Cryptocurrencies and the whole Cryptocurrency market lost a lot of its market capitalization. But despite the bear market, some ICOs managed a good return of investment, calculated from the tokens’ ICO price. The top ICOs by Return of Investment were Smartlands, Digitex, Zilliqa, ODEM and EOS.

EOS was hyped from a long time, because of the open-source community of developers of Decentralized Applications (dApps). EOS raised the most money and brought a reasonable Return of Investment by the end of 2018 of 128%.

ODEM is an Ethereum-based platform designed to help students and corporate buyers of education and knowledge. ODEM helps them engage with top academics to create quality on-site educational experiences at a far reasonable cost than competitors. The ROI generated by ODEM is 200% by the end of 2018, taking the number 4 spot.

Zilliqa is a decentralized platform for application hosting. The platform uses sharding and managed to generate a 385% Return of Investment for its investors. Digitex takes the number two spot for top ICOs with a Return of Investmnet of 530%. Digitex is a fee-less futures exchange for digital asset trading.

The number one spot for top ICOs of 2018 goes to Smartlands. Smartlands is an international platform for security tokens. Smartlands generated ROI of 600% by the end of 2018, toping our chart for top ICOs.

Read more:

• Top 5 of the worst ICOs of 2018
• Why are Initial Exchange Offerings not as popular as Initial Coin Offerings
• More than 50% of all Initial Coin Offerings fail to raise money