Due to a bear market, regulatory pressure and initial coin offering(ICO) bans, 2018 has been a tough year for ICO projects. Over 95% of ICO tokens which got listed on Chinese major crypto exchanges trade below the ICO price in the first half of 2018, and the value of certain token even plummet over 99 percent after listing on the trading platform, according to BlockBeats.

ICO has been an increasingly popular way to raise fund adopted by blockchain startups. An examination found that 264 tokens have been listed on 5 exchanges—Huobi Pro, OKEx, Binance, HADAX, Kucoin—from January 1, 2018 to June 30, 2018, and 98.8% of them have valued below the initial offering price by August 21.Only 3 tokens —GRS,HT and GO—experience an increase in their value.

The token called WBTC hit the most by falling 99.86% , from its ICO price of CNY 4.03 to CNY 0.0056 now. 96 tokens have lost 90% of their value, heading to zero.

It worth noting that all of the tokens that have been listed on OKEx and HADAX since the beginning of this year trade below their ICO price, and the rate for Binance-listed tokens is over 95%, 98.24% for Huobi Pro-listed tokens.

This data means without proper regulation, ICO has become a tool for ill-intentioned players to accumulate wealth and entails great capital loss for retail investors. Every ICO project usually stays active for a certain period of time after the token is listed on some exchange, and the issuers will try their best to increase the value of tokens and to attract more investors to get their hands on it. For most of them, the cost of maintaining the token value is much higher than that of the product development.This is a major red flag for any investor.After the active period ends, the ICO team will stop upholding the project’s market value.

As the bearish market trend continues and many projects arise as scams, investors should be wary of any project that guarantees a return on your investment.