Success factors of initial coin offerings

Maksim Belitski () and Dmitri Boreiko ()
Additional contact information
Maksim Belitski: University of Reading
Dmitri Boreiko: Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

The Journal of Technology Transfer, 2022, vol. 47, issue 6, No 4, 1690-1706

Abstract: Abstract This study furthers recent research on Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) in understanding the set of characteristics that drive ICO performance and reduce information asymmetry. Using data on 166 ICOs and more than 300,000 contribution addresses that sent funds to ICOs in Bitcoins or in Ether between 2013 and 2017, we examined the effect of ICO characteristics on ICO performance. We found that three boundary conditions predict ICO fundraising amount, number of investors, hard cap achievement and token ranking. These are registering ICO and publishing project’s code on GitHub, obtaining VC or Business angel financing before the campaign or during presale, and finally, publishing the whitepaper before the campaign’s start. Other factors such as serial investors, presale of tokens, bonus sales and funders' ownership share explain ICO performance. We offer implications for ICO investors and policymakers.

Keywords: Token Sales; Initial Coin Offerings; Serial Investors; Blockchain; Venture Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G11 G20 K22 M13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10961-021-09894-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:jtecht:v:47:y:2022:i:6:d:10.1007_s10961-021-09894-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/10961/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10961-021-09894-x

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Technology Transfer is currently edited by Albert N. Link, Donald S. Siegel, Barry Bozeman and Simon Mosey

More articles in The Journal of Technology Transfer from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().