An exploratory study of Initial Coin Offerings : A better understanding of the ICO market and its fraudulent and unregulated nature

2018

Master's thesis Business Administration BE501 - University of Agder 2018 Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) has become a new way for firms to raise capital, in 2017 and the first quarter of 2018 they raised approximately $12 billion. If a person managed to buy the top 10 performing ICOs in 2017, they would have had an average return of 10,400%. These returns have created considerable media attention and increased focus from law-makers in different countries. As this is such a new phenomenon there is an insufficient amount of research done; this thesis addresses this gap. By conducting an exploratory study where we summarize the data available, we describe the most critical issues in this new mar…