Last year, we saw many good ICOs increased its ICO price more 100x (see a few examples below). Here, the increase was calculated based on All Time High (ATH) somewhere in Dec~Jan time. We also saw many existing cryptos (by early 2017) in top 30~50 increased more than 100x last year (see some examples below).

At the beginning of 2017, there were around 600 cryptos and the total market cap was around $17.5B, and this January, the no. of cryptos increased to more than 1350 and the total market cap was more than $800B (at ATH), which is 45x increase in total market cap.

So, in 2017, people bought many ICOs or those projects at early stages because some of those ideas were new (not launched before). People also chased many existing cryptos. That is why we saw price increases in both ICOs launched in 2017 and the existing cryptos. Except at later part of 2017, many ICOs had hardcap at less than $10m, where as nowadays, we see many ICOs have hardcap around $30-40m (on average), and some even go beyond $100m.

Now I fear that we will never see 100x ICOs as almost every ideas have already been put into blockchain projects, so we may not see new exciting ideas coming. Also, like we saw many existing projects gave 100x gains, now people may look into existing cryptos more than 2017. Also, I dont think we will see more than 10x in whole market from the last ATH. If we were to see similar increase in the whole market, we have to see $30T total market, which I don't think we will see in a year (or within 2 years at least). My realistic goal would be to see around $5~10T market, which is around 6~12x of the last ATH.

I would like to hear your comments on these points.

Q1. based on above facts, do you think we would be better off holding into existing projects than upcoming ICOs? or still this year as well, may some ICOs gain 100x?. Or if 2017 was 100x ICOs, do you think this year would be 10x ICOs?

Q2. Where do you think the total market would be within a year?

Q3. Is there new ideas yet to come to blockchain projects?

Q4. This is quite subjective. Why do you think many ICOs collect huge amount of money? Do they really need these big amounts to start those projects or are they simply greedy? When an ICO has hardcap at $10m, it is much easier to gain 100x (when it reaches $1B mark), but when an ICO has a hardcap at $50m, $1B market cap would give only 20x. Do you think the community (ICO participants) should force ICOs to lower their hardcap?

Q5. Many existing projects still have problems (e.g., scaling issues in bitcoin, ethereum, etc.), so do you think there will be new projects solving them and overtaking these existing projects? or when these existing projects have worked many years, they are definitely miles ahead of new projects, so new projects will have short lives until the existing projects solve them? Everyday I'm seeing many ICOs talking how they are going to solve ethereum scaling issue, but I feel when they (existing projects) have worked more more than 2~3 years, and still finding issues, how a new project would solve them earlier!

Q6. I wouldn't think this would happen, but do you think many governments would regulate crypto ecosystem (to reduce scams projects, money laundering, etc.), but will encourage new innovations such as even 20~40x increase in the whole market is still possible?

I would like to hear many opinions. When I get many ideas, I'll summarise them in a later post. Please take your time and give wonderful ideas.

ICOs in 2017
Ark*         1050x  ($0.9m)
Ethos        370x     ($ ? )
Qtum        350x    ($15m)
Vertiseum 320x    ($6.5)
Neblio       300x    ($2.5)
Populous   270x    ($10m)
Etheroll     120x    ($0.3m)
OmiseGo   110x    ($24m)
Icon          100x    ($43m)
*ICO was in Nov 2016

Already existing cryptos (at the start of 2017)
NEO      1350x
Ripple    570x
NEM      570x
Stellar   390x
Lisk       250x
ETH       170x
DASH    140x
LTC       80x