25 July Beijing-ICO Report of 1st half of 2017 in China (hereinafter referred to as “the Report”)has been released by National Committee of experts on the internet financial security technology (IFCERT). The Report shows that there are 43 platforms in China that provides ICO-related service. The 65 completed ICO projects have raised a total of 63,523.64BTC, 852,753.36 ETH, some RMB and other virtual currencies. Financing scale and user participation also shows a rising trend. The system will continue to track its development and release warning in a timely manner.
Below is the full text:
Recently, ICO (Initial Coin Offering), which is fund-raising through the issuance of encrypted tokens, has become unusually hot. However, there are many potential risks of ICO, including fund loss resulted from project failure or development team runway, financial risk caused by price fluctuation, fraudulent ICO, illegal fund raising and so on. National Committee of experts on the internet financial security technology has compiled the Report from monitoring the domestic ICO situation.
1. ICO platform monitoring
The risk-analysis platform of IFCERT detects that 43 platforms provide ICO-related service in China.ICO platform can be divided into four modes. First is the third-party platform, which provides ICO services for all kinds of projects. Second is the traditional crowdfunding mixed with ICO, Which provides traditional products crowdfunding, equity crowdfunding and ICO service. Some crowdfunding site are transforming into ICO platform. Third is the cryptocurrency exchange plus ICO model, which takes established advantage of user group in terms of deposit and listing tokens, such platform also provides trading of cryptocurrency and ICO services. Fourth is other models, some cryptocurrency wallet service providers or navigation portals also engage in ICO.

Figure 1 shows the distribution of these four models, among which the third-party platform and virtual currency transactions + ICO model account for the vast majority.

Figure 1 ICO Platform Model 

In terms of operation avenue, most ICO platforms are located in Guangdong, Shanghai and Beijing as they host nearly 60% of ICO platforms. Also another six platforms cannot be identified with clear operating entity.

2. ICO project monitoring

As of July 18, 2017, IFCERT found that 65 ICO projects have been listed and finished. 5 projects have been completed prior to 2017. From January to April 2017, 8 projects were online. In May, the number is 9, 27 in June and 16 in July (as of 18 July). The number of ICO projects is increasing at exponential rate as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 The number of ICO project are increasing

Bitcoin and Ethereum are the most popular token as they are accepted by 90% of ICO projects. A few ICO projects accept payment by CNY and other virtual currency, such as ETC, EOS, ICOCoin and so on.
3 ICO Scale monitoring

Since 2017, ICO projects completed through the above-mentioned platform have collected a total of 63,523.64BTC, 852,753.36ETH, some RMB and other virtual currency, which equals to a total of 2.166 billion RMB at the spot rate of 19 July 2017. A total of 105k investors chips in these ICOs. Figure below shows the amount of ICO and participants count. It can be seen that, similar to the ICO project on-line frequency, ICO financing scale and user participation level also showed an upward trend.

Figure 3 ICO financing amount and participation time trend

From the ICO platform, the largest amount of financing platform for the ICOAGE (operating the main body for the Shanghai interest in the Information Technology Co., Ltd.), ICOINFO (operating the main unknown) and ICO365 (operating subject for the Shenzhen Public Chain Technology Co., Ltd.), accounting for 30.7% , 22.9% and 10.6% respectively. The following figure shows the specific distribution.

Figure 4 ICO platform financing amount

4. User Analysis

Through the sampling analysis of some ICO investors, around 50% comes from Guangdong, Zhejiang, Beijing, Jiangsu and Shandong. Figure 5 is the specific distribution.

Figure 5 ICO user geographical distribution

In terms of gender, male investor accounted for 80%, a number significantly higher than female users. Most users are aged between 20 and 49 years, among which 32.1% of users are aged between 20 and 29, 31.2% between 30 to 39 years old and 16.7% are 40-49 years old.

Figure 6 ICO Investor allocation by age

5. Summary

The Report reveals the result generated from monitoring domestic ICO platforms by the risk-analysis platform of IFCERT. Some basic situation of the ICO platform, scale of financing, trending and the user allocation are included in the Report. The system will continue to track the development of ICO and prompt risks in advance.