Evolution of Initial Coin Offering

Jean-Armand Figeac
February 2018

Preliminary Research Study submitted as part of the requirements for Master

of Sciences in Banking and Finance

Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts

Institut für Finanzdienstleistungen Zug, IFZ

The aim of this preliminary research paper is to provide a first draft and ap-
proach on the challenging problems the general master thesis will be geared
towards. The main goal of this white paper is then to critically identify the
high relevance of Initial Coin Offering in the international financial sphere and
decipher not only its past and present implications but as well establish per-
spectives for ICO future development.

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Contents
1 Introduction 4
1.1 Economic Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 Rise of Fintech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 ICO Recent Surge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 Problem Statement 6

3 Objectives 7

4 Preliminary Literature review 8

5 Theory of ICO 9
5.1 Technological aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.2 ICO Representative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.3 ICO Funding and Venture Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

6 Methodology 12

7 Results 12

8 Conclusion 13

9 Reference 14

2
Acronym
GDP: Gross Domestic Product
ICO: Initial Coin Offering
IPO: Initial Public Offering
P2P: Peer to Peer
SMEs: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

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1 Introduction
1.1 Economic Background
Not only SMEs play a major and crucial role at a macro economical scale rep-
resenting on average 70% of a GDP country, they account for not less than two
thirds of total employment stretching -in the Eurozone for instance- from 53%
in the United Kingdom to 87% in Greece (Eurostat, 2015). It can therefore
be advanced that these entities are key components for both developing and
developed countries (OECD, 2017). Raising capital is as well one of the most
important factor for business’ success, which in turn, has positive consequences
for a country’s economy; both momentum and speed highly matter (Forbes,
2016). Important economic actors and well-established companies firmly assert
that enterprises without sufficient funds are not only bounded to fail but as well
limited in terms of knowledge and know how (World Bank, 2014). Financing
thus represents an undeniable source of growth and success for businesses.
For the past centuries, only a tiny fractions of economical actors have been the
catalysers of firms’ success such as banks, financials services, private and wealthy
investors. Recently, this sphere broadens up including now a wider aspect of
financial actors like Venture Capital which boomed during the late 1980s and
early 2000s; Angel Investors and Early Stage investors as well appeared to have
strengthen their bonds with much more start-up companies (Metrick, 2007).

1.2 Rise of Fintech

Economic boom and bust cycles are nothing new and the latest which occurred
in 2007-2008 is still present in both investors and lenders’ mind. The terrible
scars of the global financial crisis then resulted in an unprecedented loss of con-
fidence from customers in their banks and broadly speaking, financial services.
Allegedly, this mistrust of conventional financial institutions will remain in the
sin bin for still a long period of time (Fintech Singapore, 2017). As a result, a
new branch of financial services came into existence; rather than being incor-
porated under the formal and classical financial umbrella, this financial service
segment was rather being developed in parallel oftenly refers to as ‘Fintech’.
Although this term is broad and encompasses wide areas such as Insurtech,
P2P, alternative finance and so forth, we will in this report deeply decipher
a sub-segment belonging to Blockchain and more specifically cryptocurrency.
This new scientific jargon brought significant attention over the past few years
yet disputed and controversial. It seems indeed that a vast majority of actors
taking part in are facing a crucial lack of technological understanding leaving
thus this realm underrated notwithstanding the high complexity of this field.
To a certain extent, it may be advanced that digital currencies’ roots stem in the
adoption of digital cash; this purchasing cash system emerged back in the early
eighties and was firstly pinpointed by the work of Chaum in 1983. Later on,
the dot-com bubble in the 90s further strengthened this technological idealism

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(Financial Times, 1999).
The term cryptocurrency is actually a fusion of two terms both having robust
meaning. While currency refers to a mean of exchange into which a value is
pegged to and is publicly accessible, crypto on the other hand, is a field into
which technical application and process enable secure communication; its ety-
mology is a combination of “write” and “hidden secret” (Rogaway and Bellare,
2005). Rogaway and Bellare (2005) encompassed this term and advanced that
crypto is the scientific aspect to analyse protocol in a way preventing other par-
ties to decipher it. From then onwards, -and after WWII usage of encrypting
highly important messages, our era of ‘Living Service’ applied this methodology
to secure confidential data, authentication and information security (Preneel,
2000).

1.3 ICO Recent Surge

Although a tiny niche of specialists is used to the encryption domain, it is not
until the collapse of the global economy in 2007-2008 driven by credit market
and housing bubble firstly sparked in the US, that a vast majority of peo-
ple discovered the paramount importance and the sound potential of this phe-
nomenon (The Economist, 2013). Indeed, taking benefit of the tremendous
decrease of trust in financial intermediaries and financial services worldwide
population was confronted to, a unique research white paper brought into light
two crucial variables that have been missing so far namely trust and decentral-
ization (Nakamoto, 2008).
The purpose of this new creation was, in its broadest form, to promote a decen-
tralized exchange mechanism without national or international control. This
new system would thus bring a radical transformation into the payment and
transfer sphere where potential great achievements could be made. Much ink
has been spilled over this controversial topic and both its supporters or oppo-
nents claim to have the right arguments to either affirm or slander its future rise
in our contemporary society. Thus, depending on the approach adopted, believ-
ers could make an endless list of advantages and strengths while on the other
hand detractors would offer a much more dogmatic perspective. Nevertheless,
some main digital currencies attributes could be summarized by the follow-
ing key points: decentralization, privacy, fungibility and scalability (Nakamoto,
2008). Lately, this revolution brought the attention of investors, speculators and
firmly believers. In point of fact, this embedded system has the potential to not
only act as a distributed ledger but is capable as well to offer crowdfunding
mechanisms through open source software and more especially token protocol
known as ERC20 (Ethereum, 2018). The technological aspect of tokens and
crytpocurrency will be further analysed in the main paper research.
These token sales are the core research of the master dissertation and will be
therefore referred to as Initial Coin Offering -or ICO. ICO raised the inter-
est of several stakeholders and within a matter of few years, its volume grows
rapidly. Although 2016 numbers of ICO were merely doubled compared to the

5
year 2015, 2017 recorded a 400% token sales increase while achieving a 3’739%
volume increased (Coinschedule, 2018). The below graph strongly highlights
the exponential speed at which ICO developed recently.

Figure 1: Number of ICOs launched globally (PwC, 2017)

2 Problem Statement
The new technologies described above possess an immense array of applications
and have the full potential to disrupt several key actors in the financial sphere
(Financial Times, 2018). As mentioned in the previous section, raising capital
is crucial and of paramount importance for businesses to take off and subse-
quently be sustainable from a financial point of view. The past half decade gave
birth to different and alternatives way for raising capital such as crowd equity,
crowdfunding and other disruptive models empowered by Fintech; this trend is
far from fading away and will continue to grow (Forbes, 2017). Additionally, a
new phenomenon came into light through the Blockchain process named “Ini-
tial Coin Offering”. In its most simple and elementary form, an ICO can be
illustrated half way between a crowdfunding project and an IPO. While the first
one benefits from a certain flexibility in terms of regulation and is, in general,
targeting to raise several hundreds of thousands of a certain currency such as
the dollar or the euro, an IPO on the other hand, is highly regulated and seek to
penetrate the primary market while raising several millions. To obtain such an
important amount of capital, it can be understood that both of these processes
are long and tedious: indeed, neither crowdfunding nor IPO could reach their
goal amount overnight.
This is where ICO outperforms both of them. In order to emphasize and accen-
tuate the recent strong role ICO took in the Fintech segment, it can be advanced
the dissertation’s milestones will gravitate around the following main questions:

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 - “What shall be the key considerations to be taken into account from an
investor perspective when investing in ICOs?

- If potential objective guidelines for token issuers could be created, what

would they encompass?

Eventually, a much more detail practice-centred approach question state-

ment would be:

- Financial rating indicators being core components and main attributes

looked upon by financial investors, what would be the matrix assessment and
selected weighted variables to be scrutinized when grading/rating ICOs?

Although this paper has not the pretention to draft the exact and adequate
structure to be only relied upon, it should provide though a sound ground-
ing starting point to further elaborate and establish development of technical
elements when grading/rating ICOs.

3 Objectives
The objectives of the research paper are multifold. The first part of the dis-
sertation will explain how ICO gained such an important momentum and will
identify the main drivers of such a dynamic boost over the past half-decade. To
achieve this, a theoretical perspective will be conducted putting into light ICO
process and its divergences/differences from previous way of raising capital in
the XXth century. We will as well draw our attention in the first section to the
technical aspects’ ICO require to fully enable us to obtain the necessary knowl-
edge and lexicon in this specific financing mechanism. Along those lines, an
overview of the recent and future regulatory actions taken by central authority
and supervisors will demonstrate how governments tend to actively deal with
these new bloomers.
The second part of the paper will gravitate around the practical aspect of ICO
and most especially how a certain rating scheme to those new models could be
created. Several key variables and criterias will be selected to which specific
weight shall be allocated. This part should then exhibit what are the main ele-
ments to take into consideration for ICO analysis. The list of objectives could
be represented as follows both from a theoretical and practical perspective.
Goals of the theoretical framework:
- Explore the technical aspects embedded in cryptocurrency
- Gain knowledge of ICO landscape while analysing its key components such as
market cap, token value and their evolution
- Evaluate and represent ICO process and their properties
- Realize ICO benchmark in order to seize its current and future perspective
- Compare traditional financial raising mechanism and ICO

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 Practice-oriented goals:
- Critically decipher potential risks at the centre of ICO
- Establish ICO guidelines on long term basis
- Select potential core variables and criteria from ICO rating through in-depth
analysis.

4 Preliminary Literature review

Despite the fact that a vast amount of useful resources is available on the Inter-
net on such a hot and debated topic, high-quality academic white papers could
rarely be found. It then become even more complex to dig deeper in the ICO
process and ICO ratings topic. One of the major inconvenience is in fact the
very early stage of this financing mechanism and the lack of past experienced
academicians in this field.
Nevertheless, to fully appreciate and discovered the economical potential laying
in ICO, literature review will be conducted through both primary and secondary
sources. The purpose of combining both of those approaches relies in the fact
that macro knowledge may be indeed more relevant for such a recent theme.
While primary source encloses detailed academic journals and in-depth descrip-
tions researches, secondary sources reflect global descriptions and critical studies
of a specific topic, here being ICO (Galvan, 2013).
For this master dissertation, primary sources will include, but are not limited
to, white papers and academic journals available through MOOCs enrolment.
For instance, Princeton University and Nicosia University both offers valuable
insights from professionals on Bitcoins and Cryptocurrencies and introduction
to digital currencies through Blockchain initiatives. They both will contribute
to provide us stable grounding on cryptography and cryptocurrency technical
aspects. Along those lines, sections in several book masterpieces on Blockchain,
blueprint, Blockchain origins and business block chain will contribute to illus-
trate the great achievement realized so far. These detailed researches will then
allow us to penetrate the great depth of cryptocurrencies being the main roots
of ICO. Once theoretical background has been set, we will then be in position to
review the past and current cryptocurrency benchmarking and its wide impacts
on ICO’s.

Literature review on ICOs’ economy and its breakdown will be conducted by

gathering information from three main sources worth being mentioned here.
The first one will be geared towards being the sparse yet highly qualitative
white papers including specific detailed analysis from academicians and practi-
tioners. The second one shall extract information from large corporations such
as consulting agencies and non for profit companies such as think-tank highly
active in this segment; both benefit from theoretical and practical knowledge
from members involved in the daily ICO business. Lastly, selected white papers

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from start-ups having recently achieved ICOs, qualitative internet studies from
high profile and well-known investors/entrepreneurs will add up an additional
layer to the researches. The purpose of doing so is to combine a wide arrays
of ideas, visions, aspects and points of view from the most implied persons yet
details oriented and specialists in this sphere.

Eventually the practical part ending the report will be geared towards supervi-
sion and regulators press release in order to analyse the several risks embedded
in ICO process. Regarding ICO ratings, in-depth researches on active websites
in ICO data analysis and firms’ insights will offer valuable information as well.
A further step will then be to suggest guidelines and select potential variables
and key criteria to take into consideration for ICO success. To summarize, the
goal of this dissertation is to fill up the gap between the theoretical character-
istics of ICOs process on one hand and the practical aspects to consider when
rating and grading this new financing mechanic on the other hand.

Figure 2: Preliminary Literature Review Scope

5 Theory of ICO
5.1 Technological aspects
ICO technological aspects will be scrutinized in the main master research paper.
The first part of the technological aspect will encompass encryption properties

9
including cryptographic hash functions such as SHA 256, Proof Of Work and
the concept of Signatures.
These core Blockchain concepts are of paramount importance to fully under-
stand the relevance of this new mechanism. The second part will then underpin
the anatomy of tokens with a focus on both its fundamentals and technological
attributes. Tokens creation through ER20 earlier mentioned, Soft Fork/Hard
Fork will thus belong to this subpart.

5.2 ICO Representative Process

Being identify both as a strength and a weakness, ICO process relies in value
proposition. A team possessing an idea propose to the community to buy their
tokens. Main types of tokens could be categorized into three branches, all of
which embedding different properties: equity, security or utility token (Wilmoth,
2018). By doing so, the team has access to funds which can later on be allo-
cated in order to build up a stronger team, develop the company technologies
and scale up their pilot project if one has been conducted beforehand. It is worth
mentioning here that several companies manage to raise important amount of
capital without having previously develop a core product; potential investors
should therefore conduct appropriate due diligence in order to weight pros and
cons and protecting themselves from any false or misleading information (Lux-
embourg House of Financial Technology, 2017).
Core specialists advance that companies planning to raise important amount of
funds without having sufficient work pre-established have either a low chance
to succeed or may be facing tremendous risk awareness from retail or institu-
tional investors (Altucher, 2016). An important amount of such companies is
unfortunately very active in this domain and shall be refrained from penetrat-
ing the cryptocurrencies sphere. To prevent this, regulators are actively working
on such issues by educating and warning investors: in-depth investigations and
compliance due diligence are necessary at all-cost as the possibility to lose a
large majority of initial investment exists. Figure 3 highlights milestones com-
panies need to perform to pass on to the next stages in ICO process.

5.3 ICO Funding and Venture Capital

A key particularity of ICOs is the very high velocity of fund race. For instance,
a project entitled ‘Bancor’ that occurred during summer 2017 managed to ob-
tain not less than US $150 Millions in less than three hours (Forbes, 2017).
Along those lines, ‘Augur’s’ ICO reached 50% of its cap equivalently to US $2,5
Millions in three days while ‘Tezos’ achieved a wildly successful one collecting
US $232 Millions in a matter of four days (CNBC, 2017). This new process
tends to crucially diminish the amount of time to raise capital; it has proved

10
 Idea identification Idea identification Roadmap Planning
& & &
Token Relevance Token Relevance White Paper Creation

Pre Sale Feedback from community

Legal Advices &
(Optional)
Targeted audience

Building Team
Business Planning Active ICO Sale Building Technology Product Launching
Building Business

Figure 3: ICO step-by-step process

to stretch –in very broad terms- from few days to one or two months. In addi-
tion of fund raising speed, another important variable to take into consideration
is the total number of ICOs. Besides the important and vast amount of ICO
that recently occurred, it seems that traditional money lenders and traditional
financing mechanisms has been overtaken by these events and are running be-
hind. The graph below outlines this trend while putting into perspective the
amount raised by Angel Investors and Venture Capital company against ICO
fundraising. Figure 4 exhibits ICO pattern recently adopted; not only the as-
tronomical amount of money raised should be emphasized but as well the high
velocity with which it developed.

Figure 4: Total Funds Raised –in US$ Mio (Desjardins, 2017)

As previously mentioned, funds are paramount importance for firms to sus-

tain. Nevertheless, such a tremendous growth may rise questions and concern
for money lenders and receivers. The dissertation will thus tend to critically de-

11
cipher ICOs mechanisms of raising funds and examine the core reasons of such a
high and velocity trend. While those core notions will be further analysed in the
master thesis, this preliminary report will not dwell into technological details.
Once the technological concepts will be reviewed though, they will allow us to
understand not only the full potential benefits this technology could bring to
the economy as a whole but as well the challenges and the evolution of such
mechanisms.

6 Methodology
The purpose of this research study will be first to establish a grounding theoret-
ical part on ICO evolution while combining paramount elements of this dynamic
perspective. The theoretical part shall include the representative ICO process
along with the review of its evolution over the past few years. This sub-step
will allow us to put into perspective traditional way of raising capital and the
various types of ICOs current market have dealt with; along those lines, the
important yet immature regulations national supervisors are confronted with
will be reviewed.
The last subpart of the theoretical aspect of this research paper will provide tech-
nological grounding knowledge for us to realize and appreciate the full potential
this innovation sphere could generate. Once theories have been established,
we will then be in a position to critically decipher a more practical aspect of
ICO. The author should then be able to establish and draft specific guidelines
for future ICOs while taking into account the previous mentioned technological
aspects and theories. In order to do that, several current and futures methods
being in the back log of supervisors and regulators will be analysed. The later
shall give us specific directions yet not fully implemented. Eventually, when
ICO risks have been identified from a market, operational financial and regu-
latory point of view, a SWOT analysis would outline the potential advantages
ICO are facing at the moment and their potential future challenges. In the end,
the last part will draft a scorecard matrix applicable to the ICO sphere. With a
keen focus on risk practices, appropriate weightings to core variables and criteria
(data points) will be determined through quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Figure 5 graphically depicts the methodological road map the author will
follow. While the above part includes theoretical important aspects needed to
dig in the topic of the dissertation, the one below is centred towards practical
approach.

7 Results
The purpose of the last part of the report will be aimed towards developing a
practical approach to ICO. As previously described above, the decision to take

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 Technological Aspects
Cryptographic Hash Functions & Anatomy of tokens
Encryption Token Creation

ICO Landscape
ICO Evolution Types of ICOs
Goal/Purpose/Objective Market Structure
ICO Representative Process
ICO Launching

ICO Current & Future perspectives

ICO VS other Financing methods ICO Regulation

Master Research Topic

ICO Ratings & Analysis

Assessment Matrix, Scorecard & Grading Criteria

ICO Risks
Market/Operation/Financial/Regulatory

Figure 5: Methodology Representation of the Master Dissertation

part in ICO –to invest or not- is still today of crucial importance as several
investors decided to embrace this new investment vehicle. Nevertheless, scarce
resources are available to them and due-diligence on such conditions seems to
be intense if not impossible. Thus, the author has in mind to establish guide-
lines to be adopted by companies which could be as well reviewed by potential
investors. Along those lines, matrix scorecards related to specific future ICO
shall be created. Scorecards are indeed a key milestone for several stakeholders
such as credit risk agency and risk managers. Eventually, once the key points
would have been selected, certain weights should be allocated to each of them
enabling the user to have a holistic view on the ICO itself via the final formula
and final result.

8 Conclusion
The master dissertation will analyze Initial Coin Offering evolution and have
a prominent focus on its current and future perspectives. In order to do so,
a theoretical framework shall include technological aspects cryptocurrency are
based on: Blockchain key elements will then be highlighted in this section being
referred to as the catalyzer of digital currencies. Along the report, key consid-
erations from both potential investors and fund raising seeking companies will
be analyzed. Additionally, a regulatory approach will be conducted to outline
how supervisors are adapting to these new dynamics of financing mechanism.
The second part of the dissertation will be focused on a more practical approach
and will tend to identify crucial areas of ICO risks. Besides, the author plans to
elaborate scoring matrix and select different key criteria’s and variables required
to rate ICO appropriately.

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