According to report of November 30, 2017 published by Atomico, who are a leading venture capital firm in Europe, related to their research on the statistics of global currency offers (ICO) in the old continent, entities based in Europe raised near of $ 1.76 billion through this fundraising modality.
Taking into account that initial offers of currencies are not legal or lack regulation in most countries, they are certainly more commonly used as a form of crowdfunding to generate capital for new businesses.
ICOs are still a relatively new trend, raising funds by selling a newly issued cryptocurrency or token in exchange for bitcoin, ether or fiat money. To date, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has not presented new regulations. However, there is still a long way to go before regulators understand that the technological trend is what imposes the needs, and not vice versa.
The research conducted by Atomico based its data sets on TokenData, a California-based platform that collects and produces ICO statistics and analysis. Although 90 percent of the data was from last year, the research included ICO activities as far back as 2014.
Interestingly, the report made a prediction that the historical resilience of large European companies could begin to fade, which would allow those venture companies to also associate with ICOs.
Firms such as Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, and Blueyard Capital Berlin, among others have already taken an important step in ICO fundraising. The Atomico report also predicts that 2018 will be the year in which the “most established funds” also participate.
Germany and Austria follow Switzerland closely as regards the capital raised. However, Central and Eastern Europe have launched many more ICO companies compared to the mentioned regions.
A great reason for the success of ICOs is the ability to generate funds in a market where capital is largely scarce.
Despite frontal restrictions such as the case of China or South Korea, the US SEC is postponing any final decision regarding the introduction of new regulations or the modification of existing legislation. However, in the decentralizing spirit of blockchain technology, there is a survival advantage in the face of the regulatory issues that will take sooner rather than later, so that the entities responsible for developing and implementing regulations must adapt.
