With Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market capitalization trending down for the last few months those following cryptocurrency may be surprised by the timing of the largest (Pre) ICO which took place in February / March of this year — starting with Telegram.

$1.7 Billion++ : Telegram (GRAM) ICO (#1)

Holding top position by a large margin is Telegram by presale ICO to private investors which has already amounted to over $1.7 billion dollars for the inclusion of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology into their already highly successful secure messaging app.

Telegram, the well known secure messaging app launched a private presale ICO in February 2018 raising $850 million from 81 investors and a few weeks later, launch a second private presale ICO doubling the initial presale to a total of $1.7 billion raised (in March of this year).

If $1.7 Billion isn’t enough, Telegram has hinted at making “one or more subsequent offerings” in addition to these first two presales.

Not only is this the largest ICO of all time, it’s the biggest preICO! For this reason alone, worth following the Telegram ICO over the upcoming months as its sure to have a large impact on the market, both at ICO and when the platform launches its new crypto functionality.

$257 Million: FileCoin (FIL) ICO (#2)

In 2017, Filecoin was the largest ICO with over $257 million in funding raised (September of 2017).
Filecoin offers decentralized data storage on the blockchain. Although there are many similar decentralized data storage projects already on the market, such as Storj, Sia and Maidsafe — Filecoin has a solid team and investor support backing the project.

It’s also worth noting that the current traded price of Filecoin (Futures) is currently trading at 40% above it’s ICO token price (of $5).

$230 Million: Tezos (XTZ) ICO (#3)

In July of 2017, the blockchain project Tezos, offering on-chain governance and protocol management received over $230 million for their project.

Tezos is a smart contracts platform (similar to Ethereum) which solves a governance issue which plagues many other platforms. This is by incorporating a protocol over time through on-chain governance for smooth blockchain evolution thereby avoiding the possibility of a hard-fork.

Interesting to note, this token (at time of writing ) is traded at over 400% on original token price (of $0.50).

$185 Million: EOS (EOS) ICO (#4)

Completing in June 2017, EOS completed their funding round with over $185 million for the project.
EOS is a blockchain operating designed to support (for commercial use) decentralized applications that scales smoothly to thousands of transactions per second. EOS will be building an operating system for decentralized applications accessed through the web by offering services like user authentication, cloud storage and hosting.

Worth noting, even after the slump in coin market capitalization, EOS is still up over 500% from ICO Token price (of $0.93).

$153 Million: Bancor (BNT) ICO (#5)

In early June 2017, Bancor completed their ICO funding amounting to $153 million dollars which was at the time the largest ICO crowd funding event ever.

Bancor is a platform designed to help make it easier for users to launch their own blockchain tokens. Bancor made headlines when it announced it had attracted new and investors notably, Tip Draper of VC fund Draper Fisher Jurvetson and BlockChain Capital, an investment firm that focuses on startups using blockchain tech.
This is a trend which we continue to see as more venture capital and institutional investors emerge on the scene.

Final Thoughts…

Even though the price of many cryptocurrencies has fallen considerably over recent months and taking with it market capitalization, these recent ICOs could indicate large investment is moving from existing coins to new coins (and technologies) under development in the form of ICOs.

Investors are still bullish on cryptocurrency and blockchain projects with already over $2 billion invested into various ICO projects the first quarter of 2018 with an investment trend leaning towards institutional investors focusing on tomorrows cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies by investing in today’s ICOs.

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