ICO Performance Tendencies

Are Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), also called token sales or token offerings, typically good investments? ICOs are smart contracts on a blockchain (usually Ethereum) that enable firms to raise money directly from investors. The median time for listing a successful ICO on a token exchange is 42 days. In the May 2019 revision of his paper entitled “The Pricing and Performance of Cryptocurrency”, Paul Momtaz examines the performance of ICOs for horizons of one day to three years after initial listing. He also investigates whether there are robust predictors of initial pricing and longer term performance. His sample consists of all tokens tracked by coinmarketcap.com during January 2013 through April 2018, less confirmed errors and outliers in extreme 1% tails because they are unverifiable. His benchmark for calculating abnormal returns is the market capitalization-weighted return of cryptocurrencies (dominated by Bitcoin and Ethereum). Using daily high, low and closing prices, market capitalizations and trading volumes of 1,403 ICOs and daily closes of major cryptocurrencies during the specified period, he finds that: (more…)