University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Economics Subotica, Segedinski put 9-11, Subotica, Serbia
JKP Informatika Novi Sad, Bulevar cara Lazara 3, Novi Sad, Serbia
2nd International Scientific Conference on Recent Advances in Information Technology, Tourism, Economics, Management and Agriculture – ITEMA 2018 – Graz, Austria, November 8, 2018, CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS published by the Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans, Belgrade, Serbia; ISBN 978-86-80194-13-4
Initial Coin offerings represent an alternative method of fundraising for projects that do not require established reputation, working project, interaction with banks for raising capital, etc. It uses crowdfunding instead ICO’s, that represents a financing model which enables everyone with internet and enough money to invest regardless of its country of residence or any other attribute. ICO essentially represents an invention that enables any startup company to fund itself without any equity obligation or commitment. These attributes allowed startup companies to gather necessary finding via crowdfunding from multiple sources around the globe. Since the funding process is usually built with blockchain network (ETH Blockchain is the predominant one) tracking of the smart contracts and contribution can allow a higher degree of insight into the funding process because it is completely transparent. Analyzing this data can provide insight into the number of participants and contributed amount. The goal of this research is to see are the ICO-s found by a large number of small investors by crowdfunding process or Venture Capital (VC) are predominant investors and what is the exact ratio of small investors compared to large capital institutions and investors. The primary data source is Etherscan (www.etherscan.io). The goal of this paper is to make an overview of ICO financing and starting point for further trend tracking. These results will aid the researchers and startups doing the ICO’s to prepare the investment and marketing strategy for their projects in order to gather their funding in a more efficient manner.
[1] www.etherscan.io
[2] https://next.autonomous.com/
[3] https://www.tokendata.io/
[4] D’Ambrosio, M., Gianfrate, G. (2016) Crowdfunding and Venture Capital: Substitutes or Complements?, The Journal of Private Equity Vol. 20, No. 1 (WINTER 2016), pp. 7-20.
[5] https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2014/07/43648-real-difference-vc-crowdfunding-investment-marketing/
