Bloomberg: Initial coin offerings may have raised less than it seems
The $22 billion raised in ICOs this year might have been half of that, or some other figure, Bloomberg reports. Looking at 2018's ICOs and comparing across a number of reporting services, it becomes clear that exactly how much a given project has raised is often in the eye of the beholder. "“At the end of the day, there’s no way to really agree on the information based on provable facts,” said Alex Buelau, co-founder of Oxford, U.K.-based listing site CoinSchedule.
In examining the reported numbers, it became clear that the idea of objective data isn't present. The Ruby-X project, for example, either raised $1.2B according to one reporting service or merely $200M, says another. One group wouldn't even include Ruby-X's ICO due to questions about the group and its "unreliable" online footprint. The Venezuelan Petro had similarly disparate numbers, ranging from the government's reported $5B to $735M, per CoinSchedule and ICORating, two of the reporting agencies. Concerns were also raised about privately sold tokens, which by their nature don't appear on public blockchains. As a result, data gathering remains a challenge and transparency about who bought what and how much they paid fades away. What is visible to the public can be calculated, while what occurs before is often opaque. (Source: Bloomberg)
