Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys,

We at CoinGecko (https://www.coingecko.com/) just published our 2018 Yearly Crypto Report (https://bit.ly/2018CoinGeckoReport). This is our 6th quarterly report and the second time we are making a full year report after our 2017 Yearly Report (https://bit.ly/2017-year-review-cryptocurrency-report-coingecko).

In this report, our team of researchers worked tirelessly to produce 83 pages of insights covering the market in 2018. For this full year report, we partnered with industry leaders to provide insights into the various crypto segments. We have Dapp.com (https://www.dapp.com/) covering decentralized applications, TokenMarket (https://tokenmarket.net/) covering Security Tokens, Masternodes.Online (https://masternodes.online/) covering masternodes, and NonFungible.com (https://nonfungible.com/) covering Non-Fungible Tokens.

Market Dynamics

https://i.imgur.com/CfyShY9.png

2018 was a very bearish year for the cryptoasset industry. The market capitalization of the top-30 coins fell on average 78.85% in 2018.

Among the top 5 cryptoassets, Bitcoin Cash (https://coingecko.com/coins/bitcoin-cash) saw the worst loss where its price fell by 93%. We have a section (pages 39-42) looking deeper into the Bitcoin Cash split that caused this massive fall in value.

EOS (https://coingecko.com/coins/bitcoin-cash) saw its value increase mid-year as it completed its gargantuan $4.2 billion ICO and geared up for mainnet launch. However, after the initial excitement of the mainnet launch, its price tumbled and ended the year 66% lower than the start of the year.

https://i.imgur.com/eZMqJ0A.png

As the market fell throughout 2018, we saw a “flight-to-safety” towards Bitcoin (https://coingecko.com/coins/bitcoin). Market dominance for Bitcoin went from 40% to above 55% by the end of the year. We also saw a stablecoin, Tether (https://coingecko.com/coins/tether) ending the year as one of the top 10 cryptoasset by market capitalization, ending the year as the 7th largest cryptoasset.

ICO Insights

https://i.imgur.com/mSl5Y7b.png

Towards the end of 2018, as the price of bitcoin and ether touched yearly lows, we saw ICOs struggling to raise funds. The percentage of ICOs meeting their hard cap decreased from around 53% at the start of the year to 10% by the end of the year. Among the projects that raised funds and successfully listed their tokens on exchanges, a majority of them saw their value decreased soon after.

--

There are 83 pages of crypto insights. Do take a look and let us know what you think.

Blog Announcement: https://blog.coingecko.com/coingecko-releases-2018-full-year-crypto-report/
Slideshare: https://www.slideshare.net/coingecko/coingecko-2018-full-year-cryptocurrency-report
PDF: http://bit.ly/2018CoinGeckoReport

No surprises there. Who would have thought that a trash coin which has a civil war and splits itself in to two even more trash coins, both headed by scammers, would be a good store of value?


Good. I've been saying for a long time that I hoped a prolonged bear market would start to squeeze the ICO market. Given that >99% of ICOs are pure scams, ICOs struggling to meet their hardcaps and failing before they even start is a good thing. Hopefully this trend continues, and see less of the "get-rich-quick" mindset that leads to newbies getting scammed so often.

Yes most definitely! Most of the ICOs are now trying to be STOs now. Let's see what 2019 has in store for them

I often read the news at https://www.coingecko.com/, technical analysis and current price monitoring really helped me in mastering the market, no doubt that the crypto market has a tendency that cannot be predicted with large

You summed it up there. While the data helps with slightly understanding what's going on. Anyone who can say they're 100% certain of an outcome often have misunderstood their capabilities. The whole industry is still very nascent (for lack of a better word) and wildcards will appear all the time.

After a while, Bitcoin looks even better than other currencies!
I think Bitcoin will outlive us all. Because everything cannot end now, I just can't imagine such a scenario in my head (I hope I am not alone in this).

Thank you for such analytics!

Sorry, I did not read the entire report but I wish there would be more technical classifications than economics.
If we look at the market, most currencies are similar in ideas, which means that their purpose is to manipulate the market or make gains for their developers.

If the price of Bitcoin collapses, all currencies will end except for the currencies that have technical support and new ideas.

I suggested that the focus on these cryptos "top 10" and then assess them seriously than the evaluation of 1000 useless shitcoins.

Thanks for support grin coin (https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/grin)

Bitcoin cash should not even be in the top 5 so that is a wasted report. Hopefully it will be overtaken by either tron or stellar and make it's way out of the top tenmfor good.

most ICOs are trying to become STOs now, but I don't think that will bring any change.

At least you're one of the guys who understand that about data! All information gained helps us to perhaps make sense of what has already happened, but I think anyone with a bit of sense knows that it does very little to harden up what the future will bring. Price is just one aspect that's almost completely unpredictable in the short and even medium terms, yet is often the one most discussed and analysed.

Nascent's an overused word but it's the truth isn't it? And among every product, it's still Bitcoin that's most likely to still be around after every culling.

BTW, you talked about STOs as the 2019 trend. Something every one almost is also saying. Any predictions on which country or jurisdiction will provide the first significant one?

Thanks for useful charts and information. Last year was indeed a pretty hard one. Unfortunately, 2019 doesn't look promising as well with the price not even managing to climb over $4k. And we used to think $6k was a bad price... I still believe in full recovery, but it might happen in a long time from now, so it won't matter much to those people who lost their money in 2018. I also find it interesting how ICOs almost follow the chart with bitcoin's price. I thought that perhaps with the main market being down people will invest more in ICOs, but that's not what happened. I hope that new projects and friendly regulations will strengthen the market and contribute to at least partial recovery by summer.

Solid data, especially the ICO success rate analytics. Thank you for this, it does prove my point from a few years back that the bubble was due to too much money being directed into too few ICO-s - so scams were easy to create.
Now that there's little interest in ICO-s, but more interest in conducting one for your own company - competition solved a ton of issues without the need for a government to intervene and regulate.

Their decline is related to hard fork events on the platform. In particular, the hard fork event of Bitcoin at the end of 2018 has caused Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash to be greatly affected, causing them to decline sharply in the long run. You see that many developers want good markets back by creating the hard fork, but the results go against their hopes.

There is no fork of Bitcoin at the end of 2018, only BCH with their hash war drama. Someone suggested that Ver and CW sold their Bitcoin to fuel the war and protect their ego which is why Bitcoin dumped too, but it is hard to determine the truth of this statement.


Not sure what you're saying but essentially I get that more company want to run their own ICO? I'm pretty sure 2019 onward we won't see ICO bubbles like in 2017. Regulation will probably take place and prevent scam ICOs to run, or people will be a lot smarter in determining which ICO they wanted to participate. Most of them will probably run STO though.

I don’t like the situation on the market lately, and many ico have become just a source of collecting money, it's a shame.

That's right, there's no point at all in evaluating thousands of useless crypto, if one of the thousands of crypto is able to survive then that's the future crypto that will replace top cmc.
If the traders or investors only focus on crypto in the top cmc, it might be a new history for bitcoin.