CoinGecko, a cryptocurrency ranking and evaluation site, has released its quarterly report.
Following are three interesting conclusions revealed by the document.
1. ICO market shrinks by factor of five
The ICO market has shrunk considerably from quarter to quarter. In the second quarter, 606 funding drives were completed, 267 successfully, making a total of $7.73 billion; the latest figure is 388 ICOs (of which 193 were successful) making $1.59 billion. This is a drop of almost 500 percent. It should be noted however that much of the previous sum was attributable to one startup only - EOS.
34 of these projects were listed on cryptocurrency exchanges, but only seven managed to maintain a market value equal to the amount of money raised. This is because most investors sell their tokens when a project is listed.
Interestingly, the report shows that if you had invested $100 in each of these projects, your net loss would have been $740.
The country which hosted the most ICOs in this quarter was Singapore with 35; following was the UK with 18, and then the US with 15. Malta, which recently enacted cryptocurrency legislation, saw six projects.
2. Top five Cryptocurrencies up in value year-on-year, except Ethereum
The report shows that the slow downward trend of cryptocurrency prices and market value that has characterised 2018 continued into the third quarter, but at the same time, trading volumes have grown steadily.
The five top cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin , Ethereum, XRP, Bitcoin Cash and EOS - are all worth considerably less than they were at the beginning of the year. The biggest loser is Bitcoin Cash (down 78 percent), while the least affected is EOS (down 25 percent).
However, four of these five are more valuable than they were at this time last year.
Ethereum is the only loser in this respect, down 22 percent year-on-year. This is likely due to the declining number of ICOs, which are Ethereum's bread and butter. However, it should be noted that Ethereum is still completely dominant in this realm, as it is used for more than 85 percent of all projects.
In terms of market share, eight of the biggest coins are responsible for 90 percent of the market. Bitcoin is once again above 50 percent.
3. New exchange on the block
Binance, OKEx and Huobi, the three Chinese giants, all displayed relatively stable business in the third quarter, while a new player took a big slice of the cake - BitForex of Singapore.
According to coinmarketcap.com, BitForex reported handling $314.6 million worth of cryptocurrency transactions in the last 24 hours. This translates to a whopping $614 in adjusted volume. This latter figure discounts venues which charge no fees and allow customers to earn tokens by placing trades, which can be considered manipulation. CoinGecko lists BitForex' 24 volume at $362 million.
On the whole, reported trading volumes have been highly volatile.
CoinGecko offers pricing information on cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency exchanges, like coinmarketcap.com, but with extra data and differing price information. It also lists ongoing ICO campaigns.
