New CoinGecko Crypto Report Reveals Diminishing ICO Token Market and These Key Takeaways

CoinGecko has released its cryptocurrency report for the third quarter of 2018, being the 5th report they presented since the third quarter of 2017. CoinGecko analysed the performance of the cryptocurrency market and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). At the same time, they have also analysed some other issues such as masternodes and non-fungible tokens.

The report starts saying that out of five virtual currencies (the top 5 in the market according to their market value), just one is registering losses, this is the case of Ethereum that is 22% down compared to a year ago.

However, Bitcoin (BTC), XRP, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and EOS registered important gains growing 52%, 186%, 28% and 708% respectively. Ethereum had a difficult third quarter since several ICOs sold their assets gathered in order to preserve their value.

And indeed, the ICO market has shrunk considerably during the last quarters. In the second quarter, 606 funding drives were completed and only 267 were successful. That makes a total of $7.73 billion dollars. However, in the third quarter, the number of ICOs raising funds slowed down. During the last quarter, 388 were launched and only 193 were successful gathering $1.59 billion dollars. This represents a decrease of 500 per cent in a very short period of time.

It is also important to mark that just seven projects were able to maintain the market value related to the amount of money they were able to raise. In general, once the project is being listed in an exchange, investors sell their tokens.

Some exchanges during the third quarter have seen the adoption of a controversial strategy known as Trans-fee Mining. This helps exchanges boost their trading volume. Users can create new exchange-based tokens using rebates of transaction fees at the exchange.

Different platforms such as Fcoin, Coinbene, Bitforex, ZB and OKEx implemented the controversial trans-fee mining scheme. Exchanges with trans-fee were able to grow faster than those without trans-fee.

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Although there was a bearish sentiment in the market, there was a strong growth in trading volumes. Additionally, there are many new exchanges being launched, according to CoinGeecko.

In terms of the events that marked the whole market during the third quarter, CoinGecko reported that there were 43 news articles related to government issues and 42 that informed about mainstream adoption. Governments and agencies are becoming more involved in the market and regulating the space.

CoinGecko has also analysed several masternode coins that are int eh market. The best performing coins were BWK, WGR and XLW with an increase of 58%, 25% and 3% respectively. The biggest losers were XZC, BITG and ION, with a decrease of 32%, 27% and 23% respectively. The report explains that the market seems to have a growing interest in masternodes in the space. Investors seem to be searching for alternative investment in this bearish market.

In this report, CoinGecko informs that there is a new group of tokens known as non-fungible and that is handled on a blockchain but they are not traded on exchanges. Additionally, they are not built on the same technical standards as fungible tokens.

Those that want to have access to the full report of this third quarter can do it here.