[LINK TO FULL DOCUMENT
https://www.uni-trier.de/fileadmin/fb4/prof/BWL/MIT/Download/13-WS_1819/ICO_Survey_Results_FischMasiak_10102018.pdf]
Empirical evidence on ICO investors is lacking and the current discussion mostly relies on anecdotes. We do not really know who invests in ICOs and why. We decided to approach this topic in an explorative and quantiative fashion and designed a survey that focusses on ICO investments.
As you may remember, we collected data between June and August 2018. A lot of people from Bitcointalk joined. As promised, we analyzed the data and compiled a document that assesses the data collected in the survey:
https://www.uni-trier.de/fileadmin/fb4/prof/BWL/MIT/Download/13-WS_1819/ICO_Survey_Results_FischMasiak_10102018.pdfAgain, we want to thank you for helping us out. Hopefully you will finde some of the findings interesting!
Some points:
- Most of the 517 respondents reside in the US (14.7%), Germany (11.6%), and the Netherlands (9.5%). 95% were male. The average age was 33 years. However, there is a large heterogeneity with regard to country of residence and age. The average level of education is rather high: 80% of the respondents had a Bachelor‘s degree or higher. The most common field of studies was business or economics (32.3%), followed by computer sciences (22.8%). Most respondents were employed (48.9%) or self-employed (36.4%). 38.7% had a professional background in technology.
- Contrary to popular belief, investors do not seem to be inexperienced: 51.8% rate their investment knowledge outside the cryptosphere as ‘good’ or ‘very good’. More specifically, investors stated that they had previously invested in stocks (41.6%), funds (42.2%), or real estate (30.0%). Only 19.1% had no prior investment experience.
- Very interesting findings emerge with regard to the money invested (p. 17). Investment volumes are almost equally distributed across categories, indicating a considerable heterogeneity among investors. For example, 11.4% of respondents invested less then 250 USD in total, while 8.3% investsted more than 100,000 USD. It is thus very difficult to characterize the „average investor in ICOs“ with regard to the money invested.
- The most important motive (p. 21–23) for investing in ICOs is the ‘future sale of the token at a higher price (at a later point in time)’. However, this motive is immediately followed by ‘personal enthusiasm for the business model or business idea’ and ‘personal enthusiasm for the technology’. The differences between those motives are marginal and not statistically significant. It can be concluded that most investors are not singularly interested in profits.
