Determinants of ICO Investment Decision: An Exploratory Factor Analysis

Nurettin Ayarci and Ayse Ozden Birkan

International Journal of Financial Research, 2020, vol. 11, issue 5, 69-78

Abstract: An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is a funding mechanism used by projects to sell their crypto-token in exchange for Bitcoin, Ether, etc. It is the counterpart of the Initial Public Offering in the new digital currency economy. ICOs help projects to be funded in a short time with a high-profit margin. The primary purpose of this study is isolating the principal factors that affect the decision to invest in an ICO. A large array of potential signals, consisting of promotion and marketing effects, investor motivation, founder team effects, whitepaper and ICO specific factors, are considered in an online survey and the responses are analyzed using Exploratory Factor Analysis. The results of the analysis reveal five composite principal factors that determine the decision to invest in an ICO. These five principal factors are the ICO whitepaper, websites for finance news and ICO listings, ICO project sector and founder, ICO project team and social media. Our findings provide a perspective to both investor and ICO founders about which factors to prioritize when deciding to launch an ICO or to invest in one.

Keywords: cryptocurrency; ICO; initial coin offering; digital currency; exploratory factor analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciedu.ca/journal/index.php/ijfr/article/view/18300/11641 (application/pdf)
http://www.sciedu.ca/journal/index.php/ijfr/article/view/18300 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jfr:ijfr11:v:11:y:2020:i:5:p:69-78

DOI: 10.5430/ijfr.v11n5p69

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Financial Research is currently edited by Gina Perry

More articles in International Journal of Financial Research from International Journal of Financial Research, Sciedu Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gina Perry ().