Morning Report: The ICO Craze May Be Slowing

Morning Report: Despite rollicking hype, the ICO market may be slowing.

The Filecoin ICO has yet to close, hosts of smaller coins are raising funds, and big banks are looking into the market.

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But that doesn’t mean that it’s all up and to the right in the land of initial coin offerings.

In fact, even as the funding mechanism becomes better known, CoinSchedule’s chart of ICO proceeds points down, though there are a few caveats we’ll discuss.

ICO volume set a record in June after rising sharply from Spring 2017 levels. Volume fell in July and appears set to fall even further in August. Here’s the CoinSchedule chart:

That’s not a very bullish trend.

Notably, Filecoin, a simply massive ICO that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars, is not included in the above. As the text following the chart states, sums are added when ICOs close. Filecoin won’t close until September. That means September will put several hundred million on the board from the storage-focused coin offering. In fact, it should put September over August by itself.

But it will be a long road back to June’s heights for ICOs in aggregate, though not an impossibility. Crunchbase News has long thought that paper ethereum profits from the early-2017 appreciation of that asset drove the early ICO boom. As we’ve reported, ethereum is a critical component of many ICOs. It’s possible as ethereum works its way back to the $400 mark we’ll see a re-inflation of the ICO market.

If not, that was a pretty small bump for a pretty small subset of startups to have scared so many putatively big VCs.

From The Crunchbase Daily:

Uber eyes IPO in 18 to 36 months

• Incoming Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the ride-hailing giant is likely to go public in the next 18 to 36 months. The expected IPO, which would likely be the largest VC-backed offering since Facebook, is critical for a host of foreign and domestic investors with billions tied up in the company.

Deliv doubles footprint

• Deliv, a same-day delivery service that works with major retailers, announced that it is doubling its coverage area to encompass 1,400 cities in a bid to compete with Amazon. Silicon Valley-based Deliv has raised about $40 million to date.

A few apps target blue collar jobs

• Startups and tech giants alike are looking for ways to serve the needs of blue-collar workers in hiring and finding work. Yet although employers are facing a massive shortage of skilled blue collars workers, there’s not a lot of recent investment in apps and tools for filling jobs, a Crunchbase News analysis finds.

See great startups at Disrupt SF

• More than 500 great startups will be exhibiting at TC Disrupt SF, with several hand-picked startups to demo on our Showcase Stage. You don’t want to miss out – our past Disrupt SF Startup Alley companies have raised more than $30M in funding since exhibiting at Disrupt. Crunchbase readers can get a $500 discount off general admission tickets.